Vain or Able?

Sometime in 2004, when BJP's Lal Krishna Advani described Manmohan Singh as the weakest prime ministers of India, it was seen as an undue mockery at the country's most educated Prime Minister. It was thought that BJP, who were unable to stomach their unexpected defeat in 2004 Parlimentary elections were resorting to unnecessary individual abuses. However true that might be, two years and several issues later, Manmohan Singh appears to be hell bent on proving Advani right.

Let's Consider this - When the electoral process is underway for the Assembly elections in five states in April/May 2006, the Union Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh announces that the government would enact a law to reserve 27% of the seats for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in the institutes of higher learning. The Union HRD Minister was in such a hurry to serve the OBCs that it didn't bother him one bit that he is directly violating the model code of conduct in view of the fact that the electoral process for the five state assemblies were already underway at that point of time. When the Election Commission of India accused Arjun Singh of violating the model code of conduct, he had the cheek to question the Election Commission as to which clauses of the code of conduct, he had actually violated. The Prime Minister, to whom the Union HRD Minister supposedly reports didn't feel it necessary or didn't have the necessary guts or political will to pull up the Minister concerned and ask him to exercise caution.

On the same quota issue, in the past Manmohan Singh has aired his views batting for a system of merits against reservation. Against this backdrop, when a senior minister of the government talks the opposite, it is quite natural to think that there is no consensus on the issue even within the cabinet. When queried by the press about the unilateral nature of his announcement, he repeatedly tells the press that he had kept the Prime Minister in the loop about the quotas in higher education. It is every one's knowledge that Arjun Singh's "sudden" love for the OBCs is not just to play vote bank politics, but also to embarass Manmohan Singh. After all, Manmohan Singh is junior to Arjun Singh in politics and the latter misses no chance to take vengeance. When an issue of such seriousness was being debated across the country, as a Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh should have cleared the air one way or other by confirming or denying what his Minister said to the press. Had he confirmed, that would have given some legitimacy to Arjun Singh's announcement but that would have earned the wrath of the Election Commission for breaching the model code of conduct. Had he denied, he would have been billed as an 'upper caste Prime Minister' and in all probability would have cost him his job. Arjun Singh, very tactfully put Manmohan Singh in squandry, by calculating that the Prime Minister would not hit back.

What would have been termed insubordination by any other Prime Minister and fetched swift retribution, has been quietly accepted by Manmohan Singh, though this is not the first time that the Prime Minister has been let down by one of his colleagues;

In the past two years, we have seen this happen more than once --

We saw it happen in March 2004 during the Jharkand episode when the Governor of the State, Syed Sibtey Razi in active coordination with Central Ministers made a mockery of whatever is considered as democracy in India, and was infamously given a dressing down by the President of the country (Click here to read this writer's post on the topic when the above incidents happened). When Manmohan Singh was questioned about the same, he confessed that 'he was kept in the dark' about it that leaving no assumptions about where his authority lay.

The nation also saw Manmohan Singh struggling hard to exercise control when the country's former Foreign Minister Natwar Lal Singh and former Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar went out of their way in exceeding their limit. Of course, they were pulled up, but not before they managed to dent the authority of the Prime Minister.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is still one of the rare breed of politicians in this country to have proudly earned the 'sincere and honest' tag. Unfortunately, in the last two years he has also earned the 'weakest' tag as well. If at all, Manmohan Singh's tenure so far as Prime Minister means anything, it has emphasised one fact very clearly - education alone doesn't make a person effective.

TN Assembly Elections 2006 - Why Jayalalithaa Lost?

The show is now over. The audience as well as the actors have gone home. Elections to the thirteenth legislative assembly of Tamil Nadu has indeed thrown up some interesting results. For only the second time in history, the first one being 1952 elections to the then Madras Presidency, the electorate have favoured a coalition government in the state. Also, for the first time in the recent memory, the electorate have returned a reasonably good strength in the opposition benches.

There might be quite a lot of reasons for Jayalalithaa Jayaram's loss at the hustings as it is nearly impossible to figure out the exact thought process that goes through in the minds of the voters when they press the button, but the below few factors stand out as probable reasons.

Rainbow Alliance: Though the rainbow alliance of 2004, Parliamentary Elections lost its sheen with the exit of Vaiko's MDMK and with new player in the arena - Vijayakanth's DMDK, cobbling together of seven parties (DMK, Congress, PMK, CPI, CPM, Muslim League) meant that the votes of the supporters of these parties in each of the constituencies didn't get scattered.

Forward Block: Traditionally, the people from 'Thevar' (otherwise known as Mukkulathor) community tend to vote for the party that has alliance with 'All India Forward Block' as the late Pasumpon Muthuramalinga Thevar - the demi-god of that community has once led that party in the state during its formative years. More often than not, AIFB has sided with AIADMK there by bringing the Thevar votes to the AIADMK fold. Few months before the elections, actor Karthik, who happens to be from the said community decided to plunge into politics and joined the AIFB. Soon after, he was made the president of the state unit of the party and wanted to ally with Jayalalithaa's AIADMK. One would never know about the problems between Jayalalithaa and Karthik, but the former didn't show any interest in any sort of alliance despite the fact that Jaya made a public announcement that 'her doors are open' and that her party is looking for allies.

Everyone including Karthik knows that AIFB isn't capable of winning even a single seat on its own. But since 'Thevar' community have got the habit of voting en masse to AIFB, in many constituencies in the southern districts of Tamil Nadu, they managed to garner few thousand votes that would have otherwise gone to AIADMK. If we look at the margin of victory and the number of votes secured by AIFB in few constituencies in Southern Districts (Tirunelveli, Srivaikuntam, Sankaranayanar Koil, Cheranmahadevi, Virudhunagar to name a few), it would be very clear that AIFB has effectively split the votes and was responsible for the defeat of many of the AIADMK candidates. Had Jayalalithaa stitched up an alliance with Karthik led AIFB offering one or two seats to the latter, the story would have been a lot different.

DMDK: Wonder how many people expected the 9 month old party - Desiya Murpokku Dravidar Kazhagam (DMDK) started by actor-politician Vijayakanth to secure 8.32% of the total votes polled in the state? It is a fact that during the campaign Vijayakanth attacked Karunanidhi led DMK alliance more than the Jayalalithaa led AIADMK, but the message that went across to the electorate was actually 'I am here as an alternative'. In many of the constituencies, DMDK candidates polled decent number of votes and finished third. Though the statistics* suggest that the DMDK has eroded the vote bank of DMK, this writer feels that the newer party has managed to lure away voters from both the senior 'kazhagams' and the casteist PMK.

* Statistics:

Vote Share of DMK: 26.40% in 2006 & 30.92 in 2001, a negative swing of 4.52%
Vote Share of AIADMK: 32.52% in 2006 & 31.44% in 2001, a positive swing of 1.08%

It must be noted that the reason for the upward swing of vote share for AIADMK is because it contested in 189 seats in 2006 as against 137 in 2001.

DMK's Manifesto: Until the time DMK released its manifesto, this election appeared to be a smooth sailing for Jayalalithaa's AIADMK. If there is one factor about any manifesto that made people to look up and take notice, it was DMK's promise about providing free Colour Television to every home. Jayalalithaa had every chance to make that promise appear foolish and unfeasible, but she didn't. Instead, she went about promising parallel freebies ranging from 4 grams of Gold to 10 kgs of rice to computers, which made her sound even more of a fool. With in a matter of weeks, Jayalalithaa herself blew up all the chances she had.

Government Employees: Three years have gone past since the over night dismissal of 1,70,000 state government employees in 2003 by Jayalalithaa government and though Jayalalithaa had tried to mend fences with them, it is very difficult to say whether the government employees have forgiven her for the actions she took and the public humiliation they went through.

While the above were some of the reasons for Jayalalithaa's loss, if the question is spun the other way around like 'How Karunanidhi won?', the answers are no different from the above. In all, the political parties in Tamil Nadu has set a very very bad precedent for the rest of the nation by pushing aside all the developmental issues to the backburner and making the people to cast their votes based on whether they fancy a TV, Computer or a milch cow. For the sake of economy and also for people to realise that there is no free lunch, let the new government led by Muthuvelar Karunanidhi does not resort to extreme populism, however feasible they might be.

In hope lies everything.

Dayanidhi Maran vs Ratan Tata - Question of Ethics

At the time of writing this post, elections to TN Assembly is over and the state is eagerly awaiting the verdict.

Sometime during the heat of the campaign - roughly about 2 weeks before the elections - The New Indian Express published an exclusive report alleging that the Union Minister for IT & Communications - Dayanidhi Maran has pressurised Ratan Tata of Tata Group of Companies into selling 33% of Tata-Star DTH project to Sun TV group at a price significantly lower than the market rate. The newspaper alleged that the Union Minister for IT & Communications threatened Tata that the clearance for the latter's telecom projects would be at stake if the shares were not divested to Sun TV group in which the Minister happens to be a promoter and whose Chief Executive Kalanidhi Maran happens to be the Minister's own brother. The New Indian Express raised series of questions to Tata on this issue, who declined to comment.

While the above kicked of the storm in the electoral campaign along the expected lines, it was expected that there would be some detailed explanation from one of the parties or an exoneration/promise of inquiry by the Prime Minister. But more than 2 weeks after the report was published, no further information has come out. Dayanidhi Maran has denied the allegation as baseless and has threatened to file a law suit against the newspaper (or may be he has already filed one). Tata has not denied any of the allegations published by The New Indian Express. To add more spice to the issue, Ratan Tata wrote to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh a letter expressing his distress at the attitude of the Department of Communications in not responding to his letter of April 3. He also referred to his earlier correspondence of May 20, 2005 to Minister Dayanidhi Maran. It is to be noted that Ratan Tata did not specify anything about the above allegations to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister for his part has avoided the press since the controversy erupted and very diplomatically did not go any where near this topic when he campaigned for DMK led alliance in the State last week.

At the risk of sounding biased, this writer feels that the queries raised by The New Indian Express have raised serious questions about the constitutional propriety and political morality in the actions of the Union Minister for IT & Communications, Dayanidhi Maran. It is to be noted that when Dayanidhi Maran was appointed to head the Communications Ministry in 2004, there were widespread resentment against the move as it was a well known fact that Marans were the promoters of the Sun TV, whose business is being regulated by the Communications Ministry. Those murmurs started to gain credence when AIADMK affiliated Jaya TV was denied permission to start a news channel by the Communications Ministry while a Kerala based TV channel got the permission in a matter of days. Also, Raj TV - another competitor of Sun TV group was asked to discontinue broadcast of two of its channels over some technical violation, while such violations by other language channels were overlooked.

The issue of political morality is not confined to India alone. It is prevalent in many countries where parliamentary democracy is practised, especially in United Kingdom, whose model Indian Constitution has adopted. Based on the practices in the UK and other countries in dealing with this issue, India has constituted for each House of its Parliament, a Committee on Ethics. But unlike other countries, the above said committees lack authority. The Indian Parliament has failed to create an impartial authority to ensure ethical conduct of members and ministers. Few years back, there was a talk about empowering Lok Pal to deal with comlaints on unethical deeds, but nothing seem to have moved in that direction.

It is often said that when the Indian Constitution was drafted more than five decades ago, it was done with the thought that men of noble thoughts & impeccable integrity would be elected to the corridors of power and hence loopholes in the constitution were overlooked in the hope that they would never be traversed through. The law makers of the early days did live up to that hope. In 1951, when Congress MP - H.G.Mudgal was in the midst of an allegation for tabling questions for a remuneration (the earlier day version of 'cash for questions'), the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru did not have any hesitation in appointing a Parliament Committee headed by Tiruvellor Thattai Krishnamachari (known as TTK), that ruled his expulsion from the Parliament.

Incidentally, six years later the same T.T.Krishnamachari, who was the country's Finance Minister had to resign as Justice Chagla Commission held him (ir)responsible for asking LIC to buy shares in a Calcutta based Mundhra company. Party considerations did not prevent Prime Minister Nehru and the Congress members to appoint a commission and to uphold the judicial decision. (It is a different matter that TTK was back in the job as Finance Minister and was forced to resign again giving him the dubious distinction of being the only Indian Finance Minister to have been removed twice. More on that in a separate post.)

In 1987, when Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi appointed the current Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram as the Union Minister of State for Textiles, the latter denied the post as he felt that would amount to constituional impropriety as some of his relatives were in the textile related businesses. Much later, in 1991 the very same Palaniappan Chidambaram resigned from the Union Ministry as he & his wife were shareholders in a company whose shares were dealt by Harshad Mehta, who was under investigation for the stock market scam of early 1990s. Ironically, there was no charge of any personal gain of any sorts for P. Chidambaram or his family in the above case.

Coming back to the Maran vs Tata issue, it would also do a world of good for Dayanidhi Maran to quit from the Union Cabinet and request a speedy, impartial investigation as Lal Krishna Advani did in 1996 when his name appeared in Hawala scam (LK Advani resigned as a Leader of Opposition and didn't contest in elections until his name was cleared in the Hawala case). If the charges raised by The New Indian Express are found to be baseless, it would not only boost Maran's political credibility, but would also give him a very legitimate reason to take the above newspaper to the cleaners, rather than firing of defamation threats.

As the above doesn't seem to happen, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh must assume responsibility in seeing to that the charges are thoroughly investigated for he is the one who appointed Dayanidhi Maran as the Union Communications Minister. As done by Jawaharlal Nehru, Manmohan Singh must refer the matter to a public inquiry, which could be seen as a warning to errant administrators. Other wise, Manmohan Singh's image as one of the upfront politicians in the country would take a severe beating. So would be the confidence of the electorate on our much envied democratic setup.