R K Misra - Heads, I Win. Tails, You Lose.
Destiny is a tyrant’s authority for tomfoolery and a
fool’s excuse for failure. More so in
politics. Not all are born great; some have greatness thrust on them but then
neither are those perceived as great, always wise.
And when respected citizen-journalist, Arun Shourie speaks,
the toast of the times, Prime Minister Narendra Modi need take a reality
check on his politics and pursuits rather than be guided by personal pique to
engineer a contrived PR show counter. Shourie, unlike the two other
mercurial mavericks, Subramaniam Swamy and Ram Jethmalani, who stood by Modi in
his worst hours of crisis (2002 communal riots etc,etc), commands respect in
both journalism and politics. A man of unimpeachable integrity, he has earned
every bit of it through his exemplary conduct, and high quotient credibility.
And when he speaks, people listen.
For most of those who have watched Modi
and his politics over years and decades, he has now become very predictable in
his unpredictability. So was the first exercise at damage neutralization. Thus
it was that the doyen of media PR in Delhi, Finance Minister Arun
Jaitley called over selected big media names for a get together where the Prime
Minister just sauntered in by happenstance, as genial as ever, though seeking
to avoid any reaction on Shourie’s views.
Shourie has referred to the triumvirate of Modi, party
president Amit Shah and Jaitley ruling the BJP. The union finance minister only
proved this point. Shah owes everything to Modi and Jaitley quite a bit.
Inducted into the Rajya Sabha from Gujarat courtesy then chief
minister Modi, Jaitley saw no conflict of interest or pangs of guilt in
defending scamster Ketan Parekh in the supreme Court against the
interests of lakhs of Gujarat depositors of the besieged Madhavpura
Mercantile cooperative Bank (MMCB) of Ahmedabad. Jaitley had faced angry
protestors seeking his resignation for betraying people’s interest though
being an MP from the state in 2005.He remained unfazed and Modi too chose to go
along with Jaitley though it led to a major split in the ranks of the party.
Shourie’s words are no revelation. Everyone in the
party knows about this concentration of power. ‘Minimum government, maximum
governance’, is the slogan he first coined as Gujarat chief minister. It was an
exercise in deception.The fact however is that the state never saw so much
concentration of power in one hand ever in it’s 55 year old history as it saw
in the 12 plus years of Modi rule. For almost two full terms,Modi did not
make political appointments to state boards and public sector corporations,
preferring bureaucrats to head them. After an initial tussle for power, he was
the government and he was the party. Even within the Gujarat BJP, those not
with him were deemed to be opposed to him and therefore marked out for political
obliteration.
It was after the advent of Modi on the Gujarat BJP scene
that maximum number of party stalwarts were either packed out or
sent into the wilderness.These included seniors like Shankersinh Vaghela,
party patriarch Keshubhai Patel and former chief minister Suresh Mehta to name
a few. Ironically, Modi used L.K.Advani to send all these seniors packing
and then finally neatly sidelined the former deputy prime minister himself. One
has been witness to the spectacle of Modi hanging onto to Advani’s coattails in
2001 and then pushing him into oblivion last year. Modi does not believe in
sharing power. He only commands, his
colleagues in what is a master-follower relationship. Take the case of the Tata
move of the Nano plant from Singur in West Bengal to Sanand in Gujarat. The
policy concessions to the business house required a cabinet nod and yet
not a single minister knew the contents of the agreement signed.
Except the three emergent angles of the BJP
triangle,everyone can see the slowly gathering turbulence within the party,
particularly in the aftermath of the Delhi election results.The posters episode
on the occasion of RSS leader Sanjay Joshi’s birthday was the firstly overtly
defiant posturing against the dominance of the threesome. Modi has no
hesitation in opening lines of communication with China and the USA which
stoutly refused to give him a visa until he became Prime Minister but yet
shuns a dialogue with his own RSS colleague. All manner
of state and central agencies kept tailing Joshi when he recently visited
Gujarat. But the more, the present power grouping treats him as a pariah, the
more is Joshi’s popularity on the increase, particularly amongst the
cadres.
National party chief Shah,on his part, seemed to be more
interested in soliciting details about who all from the party were reaching out
to Joshi in his home state, then the disappointing draw of the party in
the recently held local self government polls in West Bengal. The BJP had
claimed a voter strength of 42 lakhs there but it found hardly any proportional
reflection in the results. Shah has gone on record to state that the real
strength of the enrolment will be visible when the Assembly elections are
held there next year.
According to him, the BJP national enrolment figure has
crossed ten crore. There are complaints galore on this count.This
correspondent’s wife received an sms thanking her for becoming a member of the
BJP, giving her enrolment number and asking her provide her personal
particulars though she had never ever applied to join any political set up.
Lots and lots of people have received such messages. This is one of many
examples.
And now word is out that prime Minister Modi is set to join
all time greats like Emperor Ashoka and Chandragupta Maurya in a
tele-serial. The mahurat for it was performed recently. Self generated illusions can lead to delusions of
grandeur but it is at best a mirage that disappears with time.
