After Telengana, Why Not Mayur Vihar?

Mayur Vihar in East Delhi is a peaceful middle class locality. It has a mixed population, with a sizeable chunk coming from South India. But that peace is going to be shattered soon, for a section of the populace has taken a decision to seek a separate state. While apparently this may sound unreasonable, ridiculous and even outrageous, the proponents of the ‘Greater Mayur Vihar’ state have their own logic. One, being part of East Delhi, they are a neglected lot compared to their upmarket cousins in say, Greater Kailash, Golf Links, Vasant Vihar etc in South Delhi, not to talk of the denizens of Lutyen’s New Delhi. That’s a discrimination at par with the one faced by the Gorkhas in Darjeeling and Siliguri and worse than the citizens of Telengana. At least, they have a Hyderabad to boast of. Secondly, under a ‘deep-rooted’ conspiracy, Mayur Vihar has been split into three phases, I, II and III, each leagues away from each other. Now, if the Nagas can ask for parts of Manipur and other North-Eastern states for a Greater Nagaland, why not a Greater Mayur Vihar?

Thus, we are underdeveloped vis-à-vis the rest of the city, we have been ‘discriminated’ against and we have been split into three and therefore, the demand for Mayur Vihar as an independent state is fully justified. We will have the comparatively developed Phase-II as the capital city, since it is encircled by the Sanjay lake, possessed with wildlife in the form of monkeys, peacocks and snakes, equipped with its own telephone exchange, a couple of hospitals and banks and of course a bar-cum-restaurant, the symbol of any vibrant city with an active night life. And the protests are also going to be a smooth affair. Since, the sleek modern low-floor buses introduced in the national capital ahead of the Commonwealth Games 2010 are catching fire on their own, we don’t even need to set them ablaze. And since many people in the peripheral areas of Mayur Vihar, such as Kalyanpuri, Trilokpuri et al, find it difficult to get two square meals a day, sitting on fast too is not going to be a great problem. They need not escape from the hospital to have a binge and resume their ‘fast unto death’.

And of course, the Union Home Minister being a highly obliging and ‘sensitive’ person, within a day or two of the protest, we are expecting a midnight declaration to the effect that the process for the creation of Greater Mayur Vihar or Mayuranchal with Mayurabad as the capital as the 30th state of the Union of India, after the establishment of Telengana as the 29th state of the Union, if and when that happens, would soon get underway.

Figment of imagination or flight of fancy or an element of lunacy? But it’s for real. Look at the demands gathering momentum. Television shots of a Sikh gentleman and his supporters blocking railway traffic in support of Vidarbha, demands for Maru Pradesh, Vidarbha, Kodagu, Saurashtra, Poorvanchal, Bundelkhand, Harit Pradesh, the list seems endless.

Is statehood the panacea for underdevelopment or regional imbalance? If today the argument is that large states are unmanageable and hence need to be broken up, tomorrow the same yardstick would apply to large countries too, including India.

So, are we heading for Balkanization, implementing ourselves what a Chinese think tank had contemplated few months back? Are we going back to the days of the principalities and provinces, for whose merger with the Indian Union, the Iron Man of India so assiduously worked. It’s an irony that the modern ‘Lauh Purush’, who claims to be an ardent devotee of the Sardar and even got his bosom pal Jaswant Singh expelled from the party for criticisng the icon, advocates the creation of small states.

Jharkhand and Uttarakhand are examples of how bad an idea small states could be. The recent fractured verdict in Jharkhand and the influential role of small but dubious political parties indicate how fragile and vulnerable their polity is. Except tourism, does small states like Goa and Kerala have anything else to boast of, except for Kerala, the highest liquor consumption, divorce rate etc. Look at the condition of women in small states such as Haryana and Punjab where male-female ratio is among the lowest in the country. Uttarakhand is totally dependent on central funds for its very survival and what is the guarantee that tomorrow the people of Kumaon and Garhwal, the two distinct regions of the state, do not feel discriminated against and demand separate statehood?
In Uttarakhand, every second MLA was given the status of a Minister with a beacon light and hooter in tow. Are not marginalized political leaders such as Chandrasekhar Rao and Ajit Singh behind such demands? Aren’t certain influential castes going to dominate the polity of these states at the cost of others? With her vote bank equally distributed across the state, Mayawati obviously wants her influence to span across three states, to realize her Prime Ministerial ambitions, since her attempts to expand the party beyond Uttar Pradesh has failed to take off so far.

Secondly, is statehood the only solution to under development and regional imbalance? No. There are other constitutional mechanisms such as creation of Autonomous Development Councils and Regions within different states. But the counter argument is that such council have failed, whether it be in Karbi Anglog in Assam or Ladakh or Darjeeling. But that’s not because the mechanism is wrong, but the mechanics. Both the Centre and the respective states gave these regions and districts only autonomy on paper. Rest was tokenism. No real financial or administrative powers. And the result naturally is continued under development and neglect.

So, what’s the solution? To begin with, the very concept of linguistic states was wrong. Had language been a unifying factor, there was no reason why the Telugu speaking people of Telengana should seek separation from their brethren in Rayalseema and Coastal Andhra. There is very little in common between the Tamils in Tamil Nadu and the ones in Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore and South Africa. Even the language they speak have a distinct flavour. The same holds true for Bengalis. The ‘Bhadralok’ from Kolkata used to dismiss the residents of Chittaranjan Park in South Delhi as ‘EDPD’ (East Pakistan Displaced Persons) and till sometime back, even marriage among them was taboo. The people in North Kerala hold the people in south in contempt and vice-versa.

The solution lies in decentralization and devolution of powers from the Centre to the states and the states to the regions, districts and right upto the Panchayats. The solution lies in strengthening and empowering Panchayati Raj institutions. The late Rajiv Gandhi had famously stated once that out of the every rupee sent from the Centre, only 15 paise reaches the target. And the reason for this is rampant corruption, absence of transparency, lack of powers of the local bodies, insincere monitoring and implementation and above all absence of sincere intentions.

Instead of spending crores and crores of rupees in setting up another huge administrative machinery for a state Government, the money could be effectively utilized to educate and employ lakhs of people, provide them a roof over their head and two square meals a day.

As for the growing demands for separate states, instead of rushing in where fools fear to tread, the Union Government should announce creation of another state reorganization committee, which like other commissions of its kind such as the Liberhan Commission, should take at least two decades to finalise its report, to be followed by a leak to a leading newspaper ahead of a parliament session to ensure an uproar and a quick burial, to be subsequently followed by another Commission to study the demands afresh to be followed by….

Remembering 6/12

Remembrance has become a national hobby. Earlier, it was a Government prerogative. From Pandit Nehru to Babu Jagjivan Ram and Chaudhury Charan Singh, not to speak of Birsa Munda, Tiruvalluvar, Subramaniam Bharatu, G V Mavalankar and umpteen others, the Government would dutifully remember their birth and death anniversaries, garland their statues dirties through the year by pigeons and pay floral tributes before their freshly polished portraits in Parliament. Every state, every community, every political party has to be satisfied. The Lok Sabha Secretariat would religiously publish their pen portraits carrying the same grammatical and typographical errors carried over the past decades (it’s a sin to fiddle with legacies).

Much before Akshardham and now the Commonwealth Games village, the banks of Yamuna were usurped by these departed souls for the benefit of the love birds in the capital who find peace (and other incidentals) in thesespacious memorials. We also have a Chief Minister, known for receiving lavish birthday gifts, who decided to inflict her memory on her people by installing larger than life statues of herself across the state.

It was but natural therefore, that the media too has joined the bandwagon. In the past couple of months, we have seen the 25th anniversary of Indira Gandhi’s assassination, the anti-Sikh carnage across North India, the first anniversary of 26/11 etc and now December 6, the day the disputed structure was demolished in Ayodhya 17 years ago.

As usual, there will be pandemonium in Parliament. On a revival drive after the Ferozabad defeat, the Samajwadi Party will raise a hue and cry; to re-establish its Hindutva credentials, the BJP will stage a walkout; Congress spokespersons Manish Tiwari and Abhishek Singhvi would be on all television channels tearing apart the ‘communal’ face of the Jinnah-smitten BJP. Communal and secular outfits would stage demos at Jantar Mantar followed by dosa and idli at the popular stall there. Barkha Dutt would have a ‘We the People’ programme based on it and Sagarika Ghose a ‘Face the Nation’ and of course Arnab Goswami would play it out 24X7/. India TV would interview the ghosts of the post-1992 riots and Syed Shahabuddin and Praful Goradia would be at each other’s throat on different television channels simultaneously.

This year, both the media and the political class have a new whipping boy – the report of the Liberhan Commission.

It is most unfortunate that a golden opportunity to debate on issues as varied and as significant as secularism, communalism, appeasement et al turned into a slanging match to score political brownie points, by the Congress to divert attention from spiraling prices, telecom and Koda scam and problems faced by sugarcane farmers; by the main Opposition BJP to revive its fortunes and regain lost Hindutva grounds and by the Samajwadi Party to regain the Muslim vote bank after its short-lived dalliance with Kalyan Singh, who was the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh when the demolition took place.

If you don’t like the message, shoot the messenger, seems to be the policy adopted by our political class. The emphasis was more on how the report leaked rather than the contents of the report. At stake is the credibility of such inquiry commissions, which was given three months time and submitted a dud report 17 years later and after sending crores of rupees. Justice delayed is justice denied. And are we any wiser?

Let us face it. As of now, rebulding a mosque at the same place after removing the makeshift temple would be catastrophic, so would be building a grand temple over the rubbles of the mosque there. Moreover, neither the Hindus nor the Muslims seem to be obsessed with the issues as is being made out both by leaders of the VHP and the Babri Masjid Action Committee. They want to move on. Their priorities have changed. They are bothered more about bread and butter issues, in this era of recession and rising prices.

Let the status quo remain till both the communities arrive at a mutual understanding to resolve the issue. Time is a great healer and this wound too shall be healed, sooner or later.

And let not the BJP and Samajwadi Party seek to gain political mileage and inflame communal passions. They should not and they cannot. Talking about such issues would be just being out of sync with a resurgent, modern, young India. BJP should not forget the damage done by one speech of Varun Gandhi. They won Pilibhit but lost India. Let them not lose India once again for Uttar Pradesh.

The Muslims have seen through Mulayam’s game plan too. Ferozabad was only a trailer.

And yes, let not the Congress party rejoice over the divisons within Opposition ranks. Sugar cane farmers brought together the Opposition before the Liberhan report and the ‘Aam Admi’ can do an encore if the prices of pulses and other essential commodities continue to hit the roof.

We should remember these events not to deepen our wounds further but to introspect what went wrong and to ensure we don’t repeat them. The Muslims cannot be wished away, the Hindus will remain idolators, India will never become a Hindu Rashtra nor will the days of Mughal glory return. So, why not accept these harsh realities and work together for our tryst with destiny. Let a Hindu batsman break all cricket records as a Sikh Prime Minister is feted around by a US President while a Muslim musician bags the Oscars and a Christian Bollywood Hunk rides into every Indian heart on his bike. This would be the ultimate tribute on 6/12. Jai Hind!

'Bhasmasuras' of Indian Politics

Finally, the political crisis in Karnataka appears to have blown over with a ‘dictatorial’ Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa succumbing to the demands of rebel MPs led by Bellary’s (in) famous Reddy brothers, after an emotional outburst on television. With his wings clipped, the Chief Minister presented a rag-tag compromise as a memento to party stalwart L K Advani on his 82nd birthday in Delhi. In the process, he had to ‘sacrifice’ not only his close aides such as Minister Shobha but also loyal bureaucrats like Baligar.
While the emergence of the Reddys, mining barons who have wreaked havoc with their mining activities on the Andhra-Karnataka border, as political heavy weights influencing the fate of democratically elected Governments is a matter of serious concern for one and all, the development should also open the eyes of political parties like the BJP, which swear by morality and ethics, to the follies of aligning with such elements in their blind pursuit of power.

All said and done, it was the Reddy brothers, who facilitated the formation of the first saffron Government south of Vindhyas, by luring away legislators from the opposition Congress and Janata Dal (Secular) and it was but natural that they would extract their pound of flesh. The days of freebies and free lunches are over, so are convictions and ideological commitments in politics. Politics has become a marriage of convenience and power has become an end in itself and no more a means to serve the masses.

In Indian mythology, we have the story of Bhasmasura, the demon who obtained from Lord Siva the power to turn anyone into ashes by just keeping his hand over them and then turned against the same divinity to try his hand out, literally. In the West, we have the famous story of Frankenstein.

But then grooming monsters are not new to us in Indian politics. Wasn’t it the Congress party which groomed Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale with the vested interest of belittling the Akalis. The Sikh militancy, the Operation Bluestar, the assassination of Indira Gandhi and the unfortunate riots that followed it are too deep scars etched in our national memory. So is the case with the LTTE, which ultimately devoured a promising national leader.

Examples galore both domestically and internationally. The US is paying the price to date for raising the Mujahideen in Afghanistan while Pakistan is today at the receiving end of Taliban, the Islamic student militia, which it sustained and nourished for decades.

The decline of the BJP has little to do with either Hindutva or Jinnah. They are at best excuses. For a party that projected itself as ‘different’, the nemesis has its origins in the umpteen compromises it made for the sake of power. In its pursuit of power, the party threw to the winds all norms of propriety and ethics and colluded with the most corrupt.
Soon, the façade fell of and the people, who were looking for an alternative to the five-decade long rule of the Congress party, realized they were being led up the garden path by a poor copy cat of the very same party they were planning to boot out for good. If corruption and compromise are the hallmarks, then why not the original, they asked and voted back the Congress for a second consecutive term.

From the Tehelka tapes to the cash for questions and MPLAD scam, BJP leaders and MPs ruled the roost and established new benchmarks in political debasement - from a national President taking Rs One Lakh on camera to an MP being sold for Rs 5,000/- for a parliament question. The compromise with the Reddy brothers will add another inglorious chapter to the party’s long list of unpardonable compromises for the sake of sticking on to power. After all, wasn’t this the party which aligned with Jayalalithaa after organizing nation-wide protests against the arrest of the Shankaracharya of Kanchi by her Government? If BJP intends to restore its credibility and regain the confidence of the Indian people, it will have to live up to its ‘PROMISES’ and end once for all, the tendency to ‘COMPROMISE’.

An Agenda for the New State Governments

Now that the first Assembly elections after the last Lok Sabha elections are over, the outcome in Arunachal Pradesh, Haryana and Maharashtra clearly shows that the honeymoon period of the UPA is still on. While poll analysts and observers would get into the usual voter share and percentage calculations, the fact remains “Joh jeeta wo Sikandar” Critics of the Congress have attributed the party’s victory to a divided Opposition while the BJP has sought to hide its defeat by blaming the Electronic Voting Machine describing it as the ruling party’s Election Victory Machine. Had that been the case, the Congress could have easily engineered a landslide for Bhupinder Singh Hooda in Haryana. Howsoever hard it may try to convince the people that the Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena was backed by the Congress, the Opposition will have to concede that it was Bal Thackeray’s a la Dhritrashtra decision to anoint his politically novice son over his winnable and hugely popular nephew that is at the genesis of the problem. And if Congress has taken advantage of this split, then that is what politics is all about. What other qualification does Maneka Gandhi or her son Varun have to justify their positions in the BJP except for their surname ‘Gandhi’.

The fact remains that an incumbent Government has been returned to power for the third consecutive term in Maharashtra and for the second tenure in Arunachal and Haryana. Certainly, the Government might have done something for the people to gain their confidence for the first time. Say, the Prime Minister’s Vidarbha package, the NREGS with all its shortcomings and the fact that the Government acted swiftly, replaced the Chief Minister in the state and the Home Minister at the Centre and ensured that there has been no major terror incident any where in the country after the November 26 Mumbai attacks last year. The infighting within the BJP’s top leadership has disillusioned the people no end with the saffron party, the Shiv Sena had nothing new to offer except the parochial Maratha Manoos slogans, whose patent is now with Raj Thackeray. The people are increasingly getting fed up with the negative agendas of the political parties. They want the Opposition on the streets in their neighbourhood to fight for them and not fighting amongst themselves on television and print media.

Having retained the people’s mandate, the Congress too should not rest on laurels or past glory. They will have to deliver. More than anything else, in Maharashtra, the Government should put an end to the spate of suicides, which refuses to abate even after the announcement of special economic packages. Where is the money being spent? Is it reaching the needy and deserving or are the middlemen making hay while the sun shines? What about agricultural infrastructure and remunerative prices? What about private, non-institutional loans taken from money lenders at a much higher interest rate for purposes other than agriculture yet equally important such as education and marriage of children? The suicides are a blot on our existence as a civilized welfare state. It is a cruel joke and mockery on the very idea of a super power India. It is the fodder on which violent movements like Naxalism sustain.

Secondly, the Congress-NCP Government should rein in the burgeoning strength of the likes of Raj Thackeray and their lumpen elements. The way people from North India were beaten up and a noted film director was forced to change even references to the city as Mumbai as against Bombay virtually at stick point, is a sad and sorry comment on the state of affairs in Maharashtra. While it is true that local talent, where available should be given the fullest opportunity, no civilized state can allow its citizens to be beaten up for seeking a dignified life and means of livelihood. Moreover, Congress should also establish beyond doubt that it had no secret understanding with the MNS by going tough against any anti-national and illegal action by Raj and his goons. Not that there are no other problems, but these two are foremost.

As for Haryana, Bhupinder Singh Hooda was saved by a whisker. His Haryana No 1 was more like NDA’s ‘India Shining’, more on hype, less on substance. Again, like NDA’s disastrous 2004 experiment, an overconfident Hooda went to the hustings, several months in advance. Spending crores on advertisements and propaganda without work at the ground level is the best recipe for defeat. The ever increasing labour unrest, lawlessness of caste Panchayats and the ever widening sex imbalance are major areas of concern for the state.

Last but not the least, Arunachal. Both the voting percentage and the vote was for India and against China. The people want to be part of India. But that patriotism should not be taken for granted. They also want development. Both the Centre and the re-elected state Government should ensure that not a single youth would ever feel that he or she would be better off in China than India. We cannot afford another Kashmir on our North Eastern frontier.

Both Jaswants book and BJPs action lack credibility

After Balraj Madhok, K N Govindacharya, Uma Bharti and Kalyan Singh comes the latest oustee from BJP Jaswant Singh. But unlike others who were shown the door for pointing fingers at the partys top leadership, the MP from Darjeeling got the boot for criticizing a Congress leader, who died several decades back. Ironically, as the former BJP leader himself pointed out, it was during the tenure of Sardar Patel that BJPs parent organization RSS was banned for the first time following Mahatma Gandhis assassination. Advani later claimed that Sardar acted under Nehrus pressure, forgetting that it was Iron Man Patel and not the sartorial (Shivraj) Patil who could have been pressurised. It is also ironical that the Kangaroo Court was presided over by Advani, who committed the original sin of calling Jinnah secular.

Singhs expulsion appears to be an exercise in isolation and has little to do with either the partys poll fiasco or a serious introspection. Singh had earned the ire of the Advani camp for questioning the link between Parinaam (poll results) and Puraskar (rewards) indirectly hitting out at the likes of Arun Jaitley, the partys Chief Poll Strategist who was promoted as the Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha, succeeding Singh.

Singh too has the dubious distinction of not only escorting dreaded terrorists to Kandahar in lieu of the passengers of the hijacked Indian Airlines flight but also making unsubstantiated allegations in his earlier book about a mole in former Prime Minister P V Narasimha Raos office, not to talk about providing opium-laced drink to guests and distributing cash to voters. Thus, both Jaswants book and BJPs action against him lack credibility.

(Same views has been published in the latest issue of 'Sunday Indian')