01-05-2008, 12:02 AM
B@stard psec Lord Desai shares his most esteemed opinion with ToiLet readers.
"Modi is evil, but he is smart. Congress will have to become smarter"
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LEADER ARTICLE: The Time Starts Now
4 Jan 2008, 0119 hrs IST,Meghnad Desai
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The Gujarat elections were pretty decisive. The 'right-minded' people who are secular and progressive are appalled at the verdict. Something, they say, must be wrong with the people of Gujarat.
How could they vote back a man they think is a monster? On TV, people asserted that a man who had just won a second election in a row with a two-thirds seat count was a dictator. He had to be just because he was not one of them.
I know the feeling well. I had similar feelings - as a member of the British Labour Party - as my party lost election after election to Margaret Thatcher. All the 'right-minded' people like myself and my friends thought she was authoritarian, strident and more or less fascist.
Yet the Great British Public went on voting for her and we kept losing. It was only after three defeats that we began to ask whether we had not got something wrong and whether the public was trying to tell us something.
After a fourth defeat even without Margaret Thatcher, the Labour Party decided to change. It adapted to the positive kernel in the Tory package. Thatcher, far from being reviled as an authoritarian monster, is now recognised as one of the greatest British prime ministers of the post-war period.
Analogies are never exact and the Great Indian Public has not yet spoken on Modi; only the Great Gujarat Public has done so. But Congress would do well to study the Labour Party's experience.
As it is, the party may shout its secularism from the rooftops, but it fought the Gujarat elections as a BJP B team. It fielded BJP dissidents despite their record during the riots in the hope that they would topple Modi.
Having stayed away for four and a half years, Congress woke up to Gujarat in the last six months and thought that by reminding Gujaratis about Godhra and the riots, it would win. But by taking on BJP rejects and depending on the old warhorse Keshubhai Patel to deliver the Patidar vote, Congress behaved shamefully.
It had no principles, no alternative and Sonia Gandhi by herself was not enough despite the stunning 'maut ke saudagar' phrase. Muslims were not given enough seats, and, except for being used as reminders of the Godhra riots, they were largely dumped.
Congress has clearly no grass-roots organisation left in Gujarat. It has not had a leader from Gujarat since Morarji Desai who could command national attention. At this rate Congress cannot win the next general election whether it is in 2008 or 2009. For the past six months the UPA government has been paralysed by its CPM 'friends'.
The poor prime minister, perhaps the last honest man in Indian politics, has been marginalised and abandoned by Sonia Gandhi. She knows that Rahul baba is not yet ready for the job and until then there can be no mid-term election. The contrast with a PM who has been sidelined is Advani who the BJP shrewdly projected as PM-in-waiting: not to outdo Modi, but to show it had a strong candidate to run the country.
Narendra Modi is a shrewd political operator and those who hate him would do well to study him. He did fight the election on a development agenda, but Congress wanted to talk about the riots. So he did, but about terrorists. <span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>He may be evil but he is no fool. </span>He was stung by 'maut ke saudagar' and brought out his communal agenda. Now Modi will be Lakshman to Advani's Ram.
I know some people think the idea is hateful but they better get used to it. If Congress goes on like this - with no grass-roots organisation, no policy distinct from the usual casteist rubbish - and if all the workers hang on outside madam and baba's offices rather than work, then it will be in a sorrier state than it is now. Modi is on the
fast track to becoming India's PM but after Advani wins the next election whenever it is called.
The only politician who has any new ideas now is Mayawati. Her pitch for economic deprivation rather than jati labels as a way of defining affirmative action is a genuine innovation. BJP has suddenly discovered that helping Muslims is against India's unity.
Why did it not oppose Mandal which is equally divisive? For that matter why did the Congress succumb to Mandal? How can any party claim to be for either Hindutva or secularism if it supports every caste vote bank? Mayawati has offered a way out and she has UP in her bag to prove it.
Right now Congress is a hollow shell. It needs reorganisation and some discipline. Rahul is too young and visibly too disinterested to fight Modi. Sonia has tried and failed.
The only way out is that the three wannabe PMs - Modi, Mayawati and Rahul - will have to think strategically. Perhaps Mayawati can take Rahul under her wings and along with the bits and bobs of UPA sans the Left yet delay Modi's ascent. But time is short.
The writer is a member of the British House of Lords.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/The_Tim...how/2672997.cms
"Modi is evil, but he is smart. Congress will have to become smarter"
-----------------------
LEADER ARTICLE: The Time Starts Now
4 Jan 2008, 0119 hrs IST,Meghnad Desai
Print Save EMail Write to Editor
The Gujarat elections were pretty decisive. The 'right-minded' people who are secular and progressive are appalled at the verdict. Something, they say, must be wrong with the people of Gujarat.
How could they vote back a man they think is a monster? On TV, people asserted that a man who had just won a second election in a row with a two-thirds seat count was a dictator. He had to be just because he was not one of them.
I know the feeling well. I had similar feelings - as a member of the British Labour Party - as my party lost election after election to Margaret Thatcher. All the 'right-minded' people like myself and my friends thought she was authoritarian, strident and more or less fascist.
Yet the Great British Public went on voting for her and we kept losing. It was only after three defeats that we began to ask whether we had not got something wrong and whether the public was trying to tell us something.
After a fourth defeat even without Margaret Thatcher, the Labour Party decided to change. It adapted to the positive kernel in the Tory package. Thatcher, far from being reviled as an authoritarian monster, is now recognised as one of the greatest British prime ministers of the post-war period.
Analogies are never exact and the Great Indian Public has not yet spoken on Modi; only the Great Gujarat Public has done so. But Congress would do well to study the Labour Party's experience.
As it is, the party may shout its secularism from the rooftops, but it fought the Gujarat elections as a BJP B team. It fielded BJP dissidents despite their record during the riots in the hope that they would topple Modi.
Having stayed away for four and a half years, Congress woke up to Gujarat in the last six months and thought that by reminding Gujaratis about Godhra and the riots, it would win. But by taking on BJP rejects and depending on the old warhorse Keshubhai Patel to deliver the Patidar vote, Congress behaved shamefully.
It had no principles, no alternative and Sonia Gandhi by herself was not enough despite the stunning 'maut ke saudagar' phrase. Muslims were not given enough seats, and, except for being used as reminders of the Godhra riots, they were largely dumped.
Congress has clearly no grass-roots organisation left in Gujarat. It has not had a leader from Gujarat since Morarji Desai who could command national attention. At this rate Congress cannot win the next general election whether it is in 2008 or 2009. For the past six months the UPA government has been paralysed by its CPM 'friends'.
The poor prime minister, perhaps the last honest man in Indian politics, has been marginalised and abandoned by Sonia Gandhi. She knows that Rahul baba is not yet ready for the job and until then there can be no mid-term election. The contrast with a PM who has been sidelined is Advani who the BJP shrewdly projected as PM-in-waiting: not to outdo Modi, but to show it had a strong candidate to run the country.
Narendra Modi is a shrewd political operator and those who hate him would do well to study him. He did fight the election on a development agenda, but Congress wanted to talk about the riots. So he did, but about terrorists. <span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>He may be evil but he is no fool. </span>He was stung by 'maut ke saudagar' and brought out his communal agenda. Now Modi will be Lakshman to Advani's Ram.
I know some people think the idea is hateful but they better get used to it. If Congress goes on like this - with no grass-roots organisation, no policy distinct from the usual casteist rubbish - and if all the workers hang on outside madam and baba's offices rather than work, then it will be in a sorrier state than it is now. Modi is on the
fast track to becoming India's PM but after Advani wins the next election whenever it is called.
The only politician who has any new ideas now is Mayawati. Her pitch for economic deprivation rather than jati labels as a way of defining affirmative action is a genuine innovation. BJP has suddenly discovered that helping Muslims is against India's unity.
Why did it not oppose Mandal which is equally divisive? For that matter why did the Congress succumb to Mandal? How can any party claim to be for either Hindutva or secularism if it supports every caste vote bank? Mayawati has offered a way out and she has UP in her bag to prove it.
Right now Congress is a hollow shell. It needs reorganisation and some discipline. Rahul is too young and visibly too disinterested to fight Modi. Sonia has tried and failed.
The only way out is that the three wannabe PMs - Modi, Mayawati and Rahul - will have to think strategically. Perhaps Mayawati can take Rahul under her wings and along with the bits and bobs of UPA sans the Left yet delay Modi's ascent. But time is short.
The writer is a member of the British House of Lords.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/The_Tim...how/2672997.cms