THE TIMES
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A T H O U G H T F O R TO DAY
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OF IDEAS
THE TIMES OF INDIA, NEW DELHI WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23, 2011
Projecting The Alternative
They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself. ANDY WARHOL, American artist
The opposition should form a shadow cabinet to take on the UPA more effectively
Can Bengal Change? How the Trinamool can show it’s different
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here will be some sighs as the Trinamool and Congress parties finally seal their seat-sharing deal for the upcoming Bengal elections, the allies sighing in relief, the incumbent CPM in resignation at the challenge posed. With the Congress settling for 65 of 294 seats, some aspects of realpolitik come to light. Aware of the crest Mamata Banerjee is riding, the Congress has made a wise decision to not squabble over numbers but give in to its more powerful regional partner. On its side, the Trinamool recognises the advantages of the alliance, keeping the anti-Left vote to gether and retaining its link with the national-level party. Why the last is a plus is connected to the Left’s history in Bengal. The CPM came to power in 1977, riding a tide of hope and achieving accomplishments like Operation Barga, land transferred to sharecroppers, while maintaining communal harmony in a state that experienced horrific rioting at Partition. However, it also choked much of Bengal’s civil society, party politics dominating everything – whether college entrances, job allocations, law and order, the last a terror tactic used by party musclemen snatching rights and resources. Bengal once held myriad businesses and manufacturing. Over the years, faced with regimented bullying, these dried up. Meanwhile, the state’s performance in poverty reduction and education dipped, its fiscal debt rose, its professionals migrated and the desperation around land intensified. Recently attempting to rejuvenate industry, the Left blotted its copybook severely. Its ‘official’ goondas terrorised locals at sites like Nandigram, handing Mamata a moral advantage. Currently, while her own precise vision for Bengal’s development is yet to fully emerge, Mamata’s electoral strategy has been astute. The Trinamool first broke open the CPM’s rural bastion, performing well in panchayat, zila and civic elections. It won over intellectuals, roped in software guru Sabeer Bhatia to help its cyber campaign and announced FICCI secretary-general Amit Mitra’s candidature, sending encouraging signals to industry. In all this, its link with the Congress remains significant for it sends a message that Bengal’s days of isolation may be over. A government working with the Centre, not constantly opposing it, could serve popular aspirations well. The implementation of poverty reduction strategies, such as NREGA, could improve in an environment divested of patronage politics and ideological wars. And being linked to a party often in central government, answerable to Parliament, could help reduce political violence in the state. It is through moves like these that Mamata can show the Trinamool Congress isn’t just about realpolitik but also real change, providing the break Bengal longs for.
Concerns In Libya The West must keep the Arab League on board
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ust three days after the United Nations Security Council approved resolution 1973 – that authorised member states to take ‘all necessary measures’ to protect civilians and to implement a no-fly zone in Libya – the Arab League has expressed reservations over western powers’ interpretation of enforcing such a no-fly zone. US President Barack Obama has wisely ruled out the involvement of American ground troops, and the British and French are hardly likely to send their soldiers in. But does enforcing a no-fly zone include attacks on Colonel Gaddafi’s forces on the ground, thus trying to tilt the balance of Libya’s civil war in favour of the rebels? The West must understand that it needs the support of Arab states. Alienating the Arab League would not only undermine the credibility of the UNauthorised resolution on Libya, it would lend legitimacy to the claim that this is another war by the West on the Arab world. The initial objective of the resolution was to discourage a massacre that Gaddafi was openly threatening to inflict on his own people. One needs to tread carefully here. If aerial attacks by western powers begin to inflict civilian casualties, that is no different from Gaddafi’s forces massacring civilians. The West must, at all costs, avoid an Iraq-like intervention in Libya. Regime change cannot be paradropped from outside, only Libyans have the right to bring about such regime change. External intervention must limit itself to strictly humanitarian objectives. And it must at all times carry neighbouring Arab nations along. Intervention with a heavy hand will only provoke a nationalist backlash in the Arab world, putting at stake the democratic resurgence taking place in the region.
Winner takes all
Tuhin A Sinha
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ive years is a long time in the life of a democracy. It seems even more laborious in the rapidly transient world of today where any event or issue, irrespective of its consequences, ceases to impact public opinion for long. That only raises a simple question: Will the government’s indifference to corruption or the opposition’s no-holds-barred attack that we see today have any bearing on the elections of 2014? A case in point is the way UPA-I handled terrorism. For four and a half years, Shivraj Patil, then home minister, was consistently ridiculed for inaction. The BJP was all set to fight the 2009 elections on the plank of “national security”. However post-26/11, thanks to some deft damage control initiated by the new home minister, P Chidambaram, “national security” was instead usurped by the UPA. And instead of incurring losses for its mediocre performance in the first four years, UPA-I reaped the benefits of forging an image of aggressive governance in the last six months. In a country where vast chunks of the population are not well-informed or discerning with their electoral choices, it is easy to psychologically manoeuvre their perceptions. That possibly explains why UPA-II continues to remain indifferent in the wake of umpteen scams. It knows that the opposition will find it virtually impossible to drag these issues till the next elections, especially if UPA-II
changes its prime minister sometime in 2013 and effectively kills the very issue of a “weak PM”. In that situation, it will be easy to paint Manmohan Singh as the culprit, while the Congress from being the culprit will effortlessly don the mantle of ‘saviour’. And, for all you know, the party might fight the 2014 elections on the promise of cleaning up the mess that Singh had left behind. This is where the opposition needs to show more foresight and form a shadow cabinet, a move that has been discussed at various points but has never taken a concrete form. In the present Indian scenario, a shadow cabinet holds
By pitting the shadow minister directly against the actual minister, the opposition will aid voters in making informed choices. Setting a new agenda is an important role for the opposition several advantages. First and foremost, we ought to understand that the public today has only a limited attention span. The sheer pace at which scams have been unearthed one after another in the last few months makes it easy for individual attention to slip from one to the other. In the long run, it provides the government adequate scope to fudge investigations as strong action taken in
Actor Amitabh Bachchan speaks to Subhash K Jha about his new film Aarakshan and other projects : ■ You've just about completed Aarakshan with director Prakash Jha. How was the experience? Yes! I just completed my last shot and the experience has been delightful. It’s been wonderful working with Prakashji. The choice of subject, its intensity in today’s world, the language of the film and its purity, issues that have been addressed and overall, the meticulous planning in drawing up the schedule of this film and making it work to order, have all been a rewarding experience. ■ You shot Aarakshan in your sasural (Bhopal). Did that make the experience special? The film required a setting that was commensurate with
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THEY ■ SAID IT
the environment of a place like Bhopal. So Prakashji’s choice to shoot the film here was justified. I would strongly recommend Bhopal for outdoor shoots to directors and makers that desire this kind of a backdrop. The most encouraging factor has been the city itself…disciplined, humble, respectful and most cooperative. We never had a single problem during the entire making from the city or its people. Being the ‘jamai’ (son-inlaw) of the city always puts one in a special category, and i was never made to forget that. ■ The film Aarakshan goes into the issue of job reservation. What is your take on the issue? Aarakshan does mean reservation, but i think the film deals with many more aspects than that issue. It would not be
Q&A
Environmental impact assessment reports are a bit of a joke. I admit it publicly
Jug Suraiya
SECOND
OPINION
secondopinion@timesgroup.com http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/jugglebandhi/
In search of that vision 2014
one case might give it the benefit of the doubt and enable a successful cover-up in other cases. It becomes equally difficult for the public to keep a tab on the opposition’s handling of each of these cases, especially when two key leaders speak in different voices. This raises the need for a clear role division among opposition leaders. As, say, a shadow finance minister, Arun Jaitley will have a clear area of jurisdiction. Similarly, Sushma Swaraj as, say, the shadow home minister or Sharad Yadav as the shadow defence minister will have clear agendas to pursue. Thus, clear demarcation of responsibilities will ensure more groundwork, continued pressure and effective follow-up throughout the tenure of the shadow minister. The latter ought to compile a performance report of his
ministry in the end, which should serve as a ready reckoner of facts for the public. Second, it is often seen that while opposition leaders clamour to be heard on specific political issues that are likely to grab media attention, many of the other mundane issues are ignored. For instance, the recent death of nearly 20 pregnant women at a Jodhpur government hospital due to neglect could have just as well put the government on the mat, provided the opposition had a shadow health minister pursuing health issues with equal zest. Thirdly, by pitting the shadow minister directly against the actual minister, the opposition will only aid less discerning voters in making informed choices. For instance, if we had a younger and more alert shadow external affairs minister, S M Krishna
The writer is an author, scriptwriter and columnist.
‘I will be playing my age in Bbuddah’
Manmohan, Modi and Lalu show that electoral might is the only right Hats off to Manmohan Singh. He’s had the courage of his convictions to show us what Indian democracy is really all about. With three notable exceptions, almost all other major figures in India’s political firmament today are hypocrites, in that they put up a public pretence as to what the word ‘democracy’ has come to mean in our country. Almost all our politicians try to foster the increasingly indefensible illusion that democracy – the supposed rule of the people, by the people and for the people through their elected representatives – involves a certain set of principles and practices above and beyond the successful contesting of elections. Among many other things, these principles include transparency and accountability in governance and the promotion of social and economic equity for all sections of society. Though such principles and practices have been remarkable for their absence from our polity ever since Indira Gandhi’s authoritarian regime which culminated in the Emergency, most of our netas have tried to convince us by putting up a show that these considerations – accountability of governance, the pursuit of social and economic justice, etc – are indeed part and parcel of the bori-bistar of our democracy. Everyone knew, of course, that this was only a show, a tamasha put up for our benefit. Like the clown’s routine in a circus, for a while the show was amusing. Then it began to become tedious, like a clown’s act which goes on for too long, and finally it became an insult to the citizen’s intelligence. Now, with admirable candour, Manmohan Singh, following the example of Lalu Prasad and Narendra Modi, has brought the curtain down on this theatre of political hypocrisy by telling us in totally unambiguous terms what Indian democracy is all about, shorn of all stage props: it is only about winning power and hanging on to it by any means possible, once you have got it. The prime minister said as much when he brushed aside the opposition’s charge of the cash-for-votes episode which occurred during the tenure of UPA-I. Singh’s argument was that the fact that the coalition government had won the people’s vote and been reborn as UPA-II was enough to absolve its previous avatar of any charge that might be levelled against it. The message of the PM (who himself hasn’t won an election) was clear: Indian democracy is about the winning of elections and nothing else. Once you have won at the hustings you can justify anything that you do by claiming that you have the people’s mandate to do it. In other words, electoral might is not only right, it is the only right that exists in our democracy. Lalu Prasad had used a similar argument when, as chief minister of Bihar, he was indicted by a court of law for his involvement in a scam. At that time he had famously proclaimed that the only court he was answerable to was the ‘court of the people’. In other words, his winning of an election was absolution for any crimes he might commit, before or after the event. That same argument has been used by supporters of Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, who has yet to be cleared of his alleged implication in the post-Godhra riots in the state. That Modi – billed as the architect of ‘resurgent Gujarat’ – won the subsequent election is seen by his followers as a baptism by ballot which has cleansed him of all taint. Manmohan, Modi and Lalu – for all their seeming ideological differences – represent the common reality of India’s democracy: political power is its own justification. Might is right. Jiski lathi, uski bhains (the owner of the lathi, owns the buffalo). Or, to update the saying: Jiski jeet, uska desh.
would have found it difficult to get away with indifference after reading from the Portuguese minister’s speech at the UN. Similarly, a shadow railway minister would have taken an absentee Mamata Banerjee to task over Indian Railways’ escalating losses. Finally, from the country’s perspective, a shadow cabinet might help in setting a constructive agenda for each ministry. This has been proved in the case of Britain, Canada and Australia where shadow cabinets are looked up to. Issues need not come up for discussion only when something has gone haywire. Setting a new agenda is as important a role for the opposition. If the BJP feels strongly about pursuing a more aggressive policy for introducing biofuel in India, it should take the lead by appointing its shadow petroleum minister who raises the issue regularly inside Parliament, besides educating the public about its advantages. It is worth noting that the media simply loves one-pittedagainst-another situations. In the event of a shadow cabinet being formed, one can imagine the media conducting its own popularity polls between the minister and his shadow, especially before the elections. The results are bound to influence public opinion and the poll results. With so much at stake, the opposition could be losing out on a huge opportunity by doing things the old way.
To our son, his excellency, Mr Barack Hussein Obama. I have said to you before, that even if Libya and the US enter into a war, god forbid, you will always remain a son
– JAIRAM RAMESH, Union minister for environment, on enforcement of environmental standards
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SACRED S PAC E
Always perform your duty efficiently and without attachment to the results, because by doing work without attachment one attains the Supreme. Dedicating all works to me in a spiritual frame of mind, free from desire, attachment and mental grief, do your duty. Bhagavad Gita 3.19, 30 ✥ There is nothing left to you at this moment but to have a good laugh. Zen master ✥ I am open to the guidance of synchronicity, and do not let expectations hinder my path. The Dalai Lama ✥ The original source of all tension is becoming. One is always trying to be something; no one is at ease with himself as he is. The being is not accepted, the being is denied, and something else is taken as an ideal to become. So the basic tension is always between that which you are and that which you long to become. Osho
Politicians should not use religion as an agenda…issues like education, women’s uplift, leadership qualities are the basic political issues which need to be looked at
– MUAMMAR GADDAFI, Libyan leader, on Obama
Towards Harmony Of Faiths
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Overcome Stress
prudent to go into specifics just yet. We should wait for the release, allow it to be seen and then address any questions, if at all there were to be any. ■ You worked with Deepika Padukone for the first time. Many feel she physically suits the part of your daughter? Yes Deepika and i have worked for the first time. She has an inherent warmth which she
Swami Vivekananda clarified as follows: “The Christian is not to become a Hindu or arendra Dutt, better known as Viveka- Buddhist, or a Hindu or a Buddhist to become nanda, established the Ramakrishna Christian; each must assimilate the spirit of Order to share and spread the values of the other and yet preserve individuality and Vedanta, and reach quality education and grow accordingly.” Ramakrishna Paramahealthcare to as many people as possible. hansa said: “As many opinions, that many Swami Vivekananda renewed people’s in- ways”. Swamiji greatly valued plurality of terest in religion. He promoted inter-faith harapproach in human affairs and spoke against mony. Hence his teachings are of great rele- uniformity that ends any kind of diversity. vance, particularly in the current context. For Vivekananda said: “The greatest misforVivekananda, service to God meant service to tune would be if all were to recognise and the disadvantaged. He coined a new word, Dari- accept but one religion, one universal form dra Narayana – seeing God in the less privi- of worship, one standard of morality. This leged – and it was upheld as a religious axiom. would be the death-blow to all religious and Like Buddha, Vivekananda promoted ratio- spiritual progress.” nality in human conduct so that reliThe Ramakrishna Order takes gion relates to intellectual conscience care of each and every member’s and rational thinking. That way, it food, clothing, shelter and healthwould appeal to a wider audience. care needs. It motivates its personAny religion that divides people nel through rigorous training and or exalts privileges, encourages idealism. exploitation and instigates wars Terrorists are using religious cannot be justified. Hence his was slogans to justify their gross deeds. THE a gender-neutral espousal of lofty But how could a man of religion be ■ SPEAKING ■ religious values that he believed a terrorist? How could a religious would help expand human conperson join a suicide squad if he TREE sciousness. According to Vivekabelieves in service of the disadvannanda, we need to renounce hatred and culti- taged? Swamiji’s answer was to encourage pluvate love and compassion for all; only then can rality of faiths and harmony among religions. we begin to live in peace and harmony. Swami Vivekananda declared in the ParIt is not possible to live an isolated life. liament of Religions that “If anybody dreams As more and more people migrate to urban of the exclusive survival of his own religion areas, an increasingly greater number of and the destruction of others, I pity him, and people of different faiths live side by side. point out to him that upon the banner of every Hence there is the need for greater under- religion will soon be written, in spite of resiststanding of each other’s aspirations, faiths ance: ‘Help and not Fight’, ‘Assimilation and and beliefs as well as practices. not Destruction’, ‘Harmony and Peace and not To Vivekananda, Vedanta was not Brah- Dissension.” As we celebrate the 150th birth manism or Buddhist, Christian or Muslim. anniversary of Swami Vivekananda, let’s also Vedanta was the sum total of all of these. celebrate all that the young monk stood for. In his historic address to the Parliament of The writer is governor of Sikkim. His work, BahuReligions in Chicago on September 11, 1893, dha and the Post-9/11 World, was published in 2010. Balmiki Prasad Singh
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■ You now return to Mumbai to shoot Bbuddah, where you play a man who won't accept his age. Since you've never had a problem accepting age with grace, how do you connect with such a defiantly 'young' character? No...I think far too much speculation on the content of Bbuddah is being played out and unjustifiably so. The film isn’t about me playing a character that refuses to accept his age; it has a lot more going for it. I will be playing my age in the film, but some of the circumstances that i get surrounded by and how they are eventually dealt with, would perhaps make people in the story of the film wonder, how someone of my age was able to accomplish it. That’s all. He is going to be tough. And yes, a bit vulnerable too. Much like most heroes in films. The only difference being the difference in age!
infuses in all she comes in contact with. She is a consummate and accomplished artiste, with an underlying grace. The choice by Prakashji, for her to play my daughter in this film, where i play the principal of a college, is greatly justified, and not merely because of her physicality. ■ You worked with Saif in Eklavya. Again, you’ve worked with his mom Sharmila Tagore. How do you rate Saif ? It was a joy to have worked with Saif. He is different from his mother, in having carved his own perception of the roles he has played so convincingly. I always believed an artiste brings along with his creativity a whiff of the kind of upbringing that he had. I notice glimmers in his temperament of a western education combined beautifully and so aesthetically with his regal background.
– SHAH RUKH KHAN, actor, on politics
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E D I T PAG E MAILBOX
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MY TIMES MY VOICE Blessing in disguise With reference to the editorial ‘Final Eight’ (March 22), with no upsets enabling expected teams to line up for the knockout stage, the cricket World Cup has entered an exciting phase. Though Team India was the favourite in the beginning, that expectation seems to have evaporated due to its unimpressive performance so far. But let us construe this as a blessing in disguise. It takes off the undue pressure on the home team, thereby allowing it to perform freely. India’s squad possesses the wherewithal to overcome any challenge along the way. So let’s hope it brings home the coveted trophy. M V Krishna, BANGALORE
Message forgotten With reference to the article ‘The Argumentative Nation’ by Sunil Khilnani (March 12), B R Ambedkar, architect of the Indian Constitution, had expressed his apprehension that politicians’ misconduct could pose a grave danger to our young democracy. While advising political outfits to first sow the seeds of intra-party democracy, he also urged politicians to remove socio-economic inequalities. However, politlcians seem only interested in their own survival, that too at the cost of the country’s well-being. Ambedkar had also warned that independence would bring greater responsibilities and, if things went wrong, we would have nobody to blame except ourselves. P Senthil Saravana Durai, HYDERABAD We want your views and comments. Please SMS MYVOICE <space> your comments and name to 58888. Or email mytimesmyvoice@timesgroup.com with Editor, Delhi in the subject line. Or write to us at My Times, My Voice c/o Edit Page Editor, The Times of India, 7 Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, New Delhi 110002.