Have Ambedkar's fears come true?
21 Jul 2008, 0355 hrs IST, Dhananjay Mahapatra ,TNN
Moments of crisis always bring the best out of a nation, army or a person. When a nation faces crisis, citizens close ranks obliterating the caste, creed and religious divide. When an army faces war, soldiers close ranks and fight till the last. However, when a government plunges into crisis with its survival at stake, politicians show their true colours.
Crisis has befallen the UPA government, which will face the survival test on July 22. Till then, we all are spectators to a unashamed display of lust and bargaining in the political circus.
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At the drop of a hint about need of support, it brings forth in MPs an inborn trait of keeping suitors guessing. Their expertise in demanding their pound of flesh â both politically and financially â has been finetuned since the JMM bribery scam tainted the 1993 trust vote victory by the Congress government led by P V Narasimha Rao.</b>
What role were the MPs expected to play in independent India? Dr B R Ambedkar, in his speech marking the closing of the Constituent Assembly in November 1949, had expressed apprehensions about misconduct of politicians and the grave danger that would pose to a young democracy. He wanted the political parties, endeavouring to lead India towards a robust democracy, to first sow the seeds of intra-party democracy to shake off the lurking danger of dictatorship within the party.
He had said 'bhakti' or hero worship, as prevalent in Indian politics, was unparalleled in any other country. "Bhakti in religion may be a road to salvation of the soul. But in politics, bhakti or hero worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship," he had warned.
Neither Congress, BJP, BSP, SP nor the regional parties and to a certain extent the Left have escaped the influence of the âbhaktiâ concept of politics.
Is this the reason for today's state of affairs where the stocks of politicians in the political market are high, but very low in the hearts and minds of the people?
Ambedkar no doubt championed the cause of 'dalits' but never forgot to mention the equal weightage that the economically downtrodden deserved. He wanted politicians to strive for removal of social and economic inequalities and had warned that failure to do so would imperil democracy.
"How long shall we continue to deny equality in our social and economic life? If we continue to deny it for long, we will do so only by putting political democracy in peril," he had warned. The path towards the exalted platform of social equality has been muddied by the rush to corner votes by first dividing it on caste lines. Social affirmative action has been reduced to a mere ritual of fattening the list of castes, which alone would get reservation in jobs and admissions to central educational institutions.
There appears no one who is ready to seriously stand up for the impoverished lot, despite the Supreme Court dropping hints about it in its recent judgment okaying 27% OBC reservation in admissions to central educational institutions. Why has politics, which common men increasingly perceive as devoid of ethics, come to such a sorry state. The concluding part of Ambedkar's speech provides an insight.
"Independence is no doubt a matter of joy. But let us not forget that this independence has thrown on us greater responsibilities. By independence, we have lost the excuse of blaming the British for anything going wrong. If hereafter things go wrong, we will have nobody to blame except ourselves. There is a greater danger of things going wrong. Times are fast changing," he had said.
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Despite the strides by India, things have actually gone wrong, especially in politics. Instead of accepting the blame, the politicians or those at the helm of affairs have always found the 'foreign hand', 'communal forces', 'pseudo-secular forces', 'Manuvadi forces' or 'imperialist forces' handy to point fingers at.</b>
<b>Trust vote: Congress looks confident but shaken</b>
21 Jul 2008, 0028 hrs IST, Bhaskar Roy ,TNN
Ninan's cartoon
NEW DELHI: Congress had entered the weekend confident and perhaps a little complacent about surviving the critical trust vote in Lok Sabha on Tuesday. ( Watch )
The numbers worked out by party managers had given them the comfort of getting through the rough and rigour of the acid test with RLD chief Ajit Singh and JD(S) boss H D Deve Gowda dropping hints of coming on board. Then, smashing the cool comfort of a wet Sunday morning came a blitz which loomed like a bad omen on the Congress horizon.
In a matter of hours, Ajit Singh and Gowda â both having three votes each in the Lok Sabha â did a volte face. Ajit Singh met Mayawati and told TV channels that his party MPs would vote against government. The IIT graduate railed against nuclear energy and extolled virtues of hydel electricity.
Gowda's son Kumaraswamy, former Karnataka CM, made an appearance at a press conference Mayawati addressed, leaving no doubts about the sudden U-turn the Gowda family had made. "The single-point programme before us is to defeat the UPA government on July 22, all our leaders now have to work to ensure that," the Uttar Pradesh chief minister said.
With Left stalwarts Prakash Karat and A B Bardhan, TDP boss Chandrababu Naidu and Kumaraswamy looking reverentially at her from the side, this could be Mayawati's finest hour in politics. One Congress spin doctor admitted that with the UP CM's emergence on the scene like a Goliath, the complexion of the numbers game had changed. "But for her the opposition would not have been in contention," he said. Party mandarins accused Mayawati of unleashing resources made available by the industrialists in her state.
She almost had guessed the allegation. "Mulayam Singh and his friends are talking of MPs from their camp being bought over; I would like to ask them to give names of those who have purchased the MPs and for how much," Mayawati said. She perhaps wanted to focus on the nuclear deal only but the Leftists persuaded her to raise the issue of inflation as well.
Echoing Mayawati, Karat said that the only job on hand was to get rid of the government. "We will meet on July 23 to chalk out a future programme," he said. Faced with so much action, Congress maintained that close to the finishing line, its movement was "silent and surreptitious". One party manager hinted that faced with the setbacks, the sharpshooters from the government were looking at "unsuspected territory". He probably meant those constituents of the NDA which had not so far appeared vulnerable to poaching.
With each and every vote now absolutely crucial, late night reports suggest that CPM has renewed pressure on Somnath Chatterjee to quit as Speaker after publicly saying it was up to him to decide.
The all-out poaching drive saw Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh displaying BJP MP from Balrampur Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh to the media on Sunday evening and UPA managers hinting that there were more defections in the pipeline. They suggested two JD(U) MPs â P P Koya and Ramswaroop Prasad â would part company with NDA.
Though set back by Ajit Singh and Deve Gowda, UPA managers tried to recoup their losses by targeting Shiv Sena MPs and others belonging to the NDA. They refused to drop the claim even after 11 of the 12 Sainik MPs attended a dinner hosted by Leader of Opposition L K Advani on Sunday.
<b>N-deal has made India subservient, says Advani</b>
New Delhi (PTI): Holding Prime Minister Manmohan Singh directly responsible for the present political crisis, Leader of the Opposition L K Advani today said the Indo-US nuclear deal has become an agreement between two individuals making India "subservient" and a "junior partner".
"UPA is like a patient in the ICU room. The first question everyone asks is whether he is going to survive or not," Advani said in a scatching attack on the Prime Minister and the ruling UPA coalition.
Speaking on the confidence motion moved by the Prime Minister, the BJP leader accused the Prime Minister of having opposed the 1998 Pokhran II tests, triggering an immediate rebuttal by Singh who said he had only spoken about sanctions and whether the country was prepared for it.
Advani referred to "sharp exchanges" during that period in Rajya Sabha between Singh and late BJP leader K R Malkani but the Prime Minister retorted saying let any objective person read the proceedings and draw his own conclusions.
Singh said his remarks on the tests and the criticisms were made in the context of sanctions imposed on India after the tests and also in the light of India's stand on non-proliferation.
The BJP leader said the present situation was entirely brought about by Singh and not precipitated by opposition NDA or even Left parties.
He said people would decide in the next elections "even if the Governemnt survives tomorrow".
Advani said Singh had sparked the political impasse with his interview to a Kolkata newspaper where he had said that if the Left parties want to withdraw support, "so be it".
"If the Governemnt was so serious about the (nuclear) deal, why is it not mentioned in the Common Minimum Programme or even the Congres manifesto. It is a kind of an agreement between two individuals and one happens to be the Prime Minister," the BJP leader said.
Attacking the Governemnt for speaking in "different voices", Advani said External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee had assured the Left parties that India would approach the IAEA for the safeguards agreement only after getting the approval of Parliament.
But the Prime Minister had chosen to give a different line and suddenly the draft agreement was sent to the nuclear watchdog, he said.
Unequal deal
The draft text was described as "privileged" and "classified" but it was circulated to IAEA members first.
"I have never seen a Governemnt paralysed for so long" with nothing else but the deal, Advani said.
He said BJP was not against forging close relations with the US but was against India being party to a deal which was "unequal".
"If people vote NDA back to power, we will renegotiate the deal to make it equal and ensure that there are no constraints on our strategic autonomy," the BJP leader said.
"I don't agree with the Left. We differ very widely on various issues. But if the Governemnt is destablised after four years and two months... and faces the likelihood of being voted out... then this situation has been brought about not by the opposition NDA or even the Leftists," Advani said.
PM responsible
"This has been invited by the Governemnt itself, and Mr Prime Minister, I am sorry to say, by you personally," he said, adding that even Left parties "wanted to prolong" it.
"Please don't blame anyone else. It is your Governemnt and in a way you, personally, and even the Congress President without whom you would not take a single step is to be blamed. The opposition has played no role in this," Advani said, claiming that his party would strive to "defeat the Governemnt on the floor of the House".
He drew a distinction between defeating the Governemnt and destablising it by saying "it is not in our nature to destabilise Governemnts. You may do it with Chandrashekhar's Governemnt or those of H D Deve Gowda or I K Gujral.
"Even the Vajpayee Governemnt was destabilised with the help of a member who was made the Chief Minister of a state," Advani said apparently referring to the vote by Giridhar Gamang in during the 1999 trust vote.
Maintaining that he had seen several "short-lived" and "unstable" Governemnts in the past, the Opposition leader said "but I have never seen a Governemnt so paralysed" that it pays no heed to the people's problems.
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Manmohan Singh's trust Vote, ninth in three decades
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New Delhi (PTI): The trust vote moved by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday is the ninth taken in the Lok Sabha in nearly three decades since 1979.
Of the eight trust votes taken in the last 29 years, the government of the day won six while in two cases the incumbent prime ministers simply resigned without facing the house.
Interestingly, historical facts about trust votes saw Leader of the Opposition L K Advani and External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee clash during a tense debate in the Lok Sabha on Monday.
Advani while opposing the motion said it was certainly an "irony" that for the first time the prime minister himself would not be able to vote for his own motion of confidence.
The BJP's prime minister in waiting was quickly corrected when Mukherjee said it was not so.
"Did I K Gujral vote for the confidence motion. Did Deve Gowda vote for the confidence motion," Mukherjee sarcastically asked. Like Singh, both Gujral and Gowda were not members of the Lok Sabha to be eligible to take part in the trust vote.
The concept of a trust vote started only in 1979 because in all the general elections before that - from 1952 to 1977 - the mandate was so decisive that there was no need for a confidence motion.
<b>N-deal a passport for ties with the world: Mukherjee</b>
New Delhi (PTI): The government on Monday said it will seek the consent of the Parliament before operationalising the Indo-US nuclear deal which it described as a "passport" for cooperation with the international community.
Making a strong defence of the nuclear deal during the debate on confidence motion, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee rejected the Left parties' allegations of betrayal and took pot-shots at Leader of Opposition L K Advani, saying he should not "distort" facts in "over enthusiasm" to score political points.
He sought to allay fears on account of the Hyde Act, saying it had no reflection in the 123 agreement and the "prescriptive" elements in the US law will never be acceptable to India.
Emphasising the government's commitment to non-proliferation, he said "we still believe nuclear weapons are not to win battles. It is total disruption and destruction of civilisations".
At the same time, he added that civil nuclear initiative with the US would end the country's 30-year-old isolation and help reduce electricity deficit by 1.50 lakh MW by 2050.
He said unless India gets exemption from Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), even "friends" like Russia and France cannot agree to cooperation in the civil nuclear field.
"NSG and IAEA clearances are like passport and visa. Whether we travel or not, it depends on us. If there is no passport we cannot travel," he said.
"Please, let us have this passport and visa. Then we will decide if travel and if we travel, what should be the destination," he said in an impassioned speech that won him accolades from Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and other colleagues.
<b>N-deal will propel India to a place among world superpowers'</b>
Thanjavur (PTI): Veteran scientist Prof. C N R Rao has said that the Indo-US civil nuclear deal would propel the country among the superpowers of the world and that New Delhi should seize the opportunity to help operationalise it.
Delivering the 22nd convocation address at Sastra University here this weekend, the 74-year-old Rao, Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, said that the deal would provide India with various competitive advantages to catch up with powerful countries of the world.
Rao, currently the President and Linus Pauling Research Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru Centre in Bangalore, said, "India should seize the opportunity not only because of the current energy crisis but also for the country's improved image in the global order."
At present, India cannot procure much of equipment and fuel to produce nuclear energy, which is why most Indian nuclear reactors worked only to 50 per cent of their actual capacity, he said.
Rao, the recipient of Padmashri, Padma Vibhushan and the French Government's highest civilian award "Knight of the Legion of Honour," said that "one truth" about the deal was that it was conceived during the previous tenure of A B Vajpayee.
It would provide India the freedom to work with countries like Russia and China and other members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). So the deal should be considered as an opportunity to achieve holistic development of the nation.
Regarding Mayavati
I think she will actually make a good PM
It will sharply reduce alienation and conversion of SC/STs
She is also a decisive administrator
and while she will take muslim votes, she is not an ISI agent like some of the Yadav CMs
She has shut down the muslim mafia in UP
My only concern is that she will be dependent on CPM votes
however, being a master manipulator herself, I think she will screw the CPM like she screwed the BJP
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->My only concern is that she will be dependent on CPM votes
however, being a master manipulator herself, I think she will screw the CPM like she screwed the BJP<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think she is excellent or shrewd manipulator. Her rise is most amazing thing in Indian history. I want to see her PM now. She is not linked with any foreign power and came out from heart of India, that is rural India with no elite connection. She will give lot of heart burn to elitist media. Fun to watch. Mamta as always missed her boat again.
Now that the debate has started what are the ighlights and also the prognostications? There must be some one commenting on this out there.
How do the absentations on NDA skew the numbers?
Looks like politicsparty.com has a running commentary on the Lok Sabha speeches. But the site has too many hits and is slow as diesel oil in winter.
All the pro-dealers in the UPA are folks who are against nukes especially in Indian hands. So they have figured out that the opposition will come to power eventually and want to make them ineffective. So they negotaiated with the outsiders to neuter the capablity in case of a test. So its a self-conquest just as in the old days. And to add to the mess the DAE folks are only good for barking. No bite. So this is not a politics as usual kind of vote. The govt has subverted and bypassed many of the traditions setup by even JL Nehru. Its a Constitutional coup using the loopholes in the Indian Constitution and laws.
Lying in public about the process for submitting the draft IAEA.
Repeated changes to the assurances of the PM.
The office of the PM from the Rajya Sabha.
Now this vote buying.
<!--QuoteBegin-ramana+Jul 21 2008, 10:58 AM-->QUOTE(ramana @ Jul 21 2008, 10:58 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->
How do the absentations on NDA skew the numbers?
[right][snapback]84728[/snapback][/right]
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10 absent MPs may save the day for Govt
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->UPA is now banking on the 10 MPs from the NDA who may not show up. CNN-IBN learns they include one from Shiv Sena , two from JD(U) , 1 from the BJD, two from Karnataka BJP, two from Rajasthan BJP, and two from Gujarat BJP.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
So whats with the six MPs form the BJP? Whats their complaint? Why dont they want to support their position? the Gujarat MPS are those miffed with Modi? Are the others also miffed with their CMs?
What are the local papers fo these states saying? Eg. Gujarat Samachar etc? So the opposition has the appearence of being divided. Is this psy-ops or its it true?
US Business interest is coming across highly in this game.
They have mobalized the Indian business group to lobby among the Indian
people as never before
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7500212.stm
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->
Started mobilising
The State Department though has repeatedly said that the current administration will keep trying until 19 January, the day before the next president takes his oath of office.
"There will be a lot of lobbying from US industry to make the Congress move as quickly as they can," says Ms Dormandy.
In fact, the lobbying has already begun.
Swadesh Chatterjee of the Indo-US Friendship Council, a group that has worked hard for the deal, says if the Congress wants, it can reduce the timeframe needed to ratify it.
"We have already started mobilising our group, working closely with US business interests and the administration," says Mr Chatterjee.
He points out that the 2006 Hyde Act, which provided the framework for the nuclear deal in Congress, was passed at 0130 hours on the last day of a lame-duck session in 2006.
"This needs a simple up and down vote and they better think twice if they can't assemble for something that's so important for US business as well as Indian-Americans," says Mr Chatterjee.
The race against time is now well and truly on.
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I dont know about others but as far as gujarat goes, i think one is a suspended MP (anti party activities) and the other is hospitalized. Somebody had posted a link i think.
<b>SPARKS FLY IN LOK SABHA BETWEEN PM AND ADVANI</b>
By GLOBEGATHER.COM NATIONAL NEWS, NEW DELHI NEWS BUREAU, 21 JULY 2008
Sparks flew in the Lok Sabha between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and L K Advani on 21 July as the countdown for the trust vote entered a tense, decisive lap amid indications that the UPA government may be bailed out through abstentions by the Trinamool Congress and possibly 10 others from the NDA.
The body language of the UPA in a packed Lok Sabha, which has an effective strength of 541, appeared confident and combative as External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee claimed that the Congress-led alliance has the support of 276 MPs, clearly crossing the majority mark.
Moving a one-line motion that "this House expresses its confidence in the Council of Ministers", the 75-year-old Prime Minister said "every single decision" taken by his government in the last four years was in the "best interests of our people and our country."
In a frontal attack on Singh, Advani, the Leader of the Opposition, said the prime minister was "singularly" responsible for the current political crisis and held that the Indo-US nuclear deal has become an agreement between two individuals, making India "subservient" and a "junior partner."
"UPA is like a patient in the ICU room. The first question everyone asks is whether he(patient) is going to survive or not," Advani said opposing the confidence motion.
Advani's comments that Singh had opposed Pokhran-2 nuclear tests in 1998 drew a sharp response from the prime minister who said he had spoken only about opposition to sanctions that followed the explosions and how the country should be prepared to face the challenges.
TC chief Mamata Banerjee made it clear she would abstain from tomorrow's voting. There was intense speculation that around 10 MPs from BJP, Shiv Sena, JD(U) and BJD may abstain.
<b> COALITION ENJOYS SIMPLE MAJORITY: MUKHERJEE</b>
By GLOBEGATHER.COM NATIONAL NEWS BUREAU,21 JULY 2008
As the numbers game intensified, Mukherjee said in his "simple arithmetic", UPA's combined strength of 237 with Samajwadi Party's 39 added upto 276. With the Lok Sabha having an effective strength of 541, the ruling coalition enjoyed a simple majority, he said.
BJP leader V K Malhotra claimed that the groups arrayed against the UPA were together and needed just four to five MPs more to defeat the government.
Failure of Shiv Sena MP Tukaram Renge Patil to turn up at the party"s parliamentary group meeting fuelled speculation that he may desert the party which has 12 MPs.
The atmosphere in the Lok Sabha was surcharged with BSP members at one point virtually coming to blows with rival SP.
An emotional Mukherjee, who has been UPA's pointsman for talks with Left parties on the nuclear deal, asked his former allies to "touch their heart" and asked "Is this an issue(nuke deal) that you(Left) are bringing down the government?
Given the bitterness that has marked relations between the UPA and the Left in the recent weeks, the Prime Minister was forthcoming in his praise of veteran Marxists Jyoti Basu and Harkishan Singh Surjeet for their "sagacity" and "leadership" for helping set up the coalition government.
Singh made no reference to Prakash Karat with whom he has been at odds over the nuclear deal. The import of the fact that the Prime Minister made no mention of CPI-M general secretary's name was not lost.
In a brief speech while moving the motion of confidence in his Council of Ministers in the Lok Sabha, Singh recalled the contributions of Basu and Surjeet and called them as "architects of our coalition government.
Singh's remarks were seen as a veiled dig at the Left parties which withdrew support to his government over the nuclear deal.
Voting expected at 6 pm on Tuesday . Twelve hours have been alloted for the debate and the voting is expected on Tuesday evening at about 6 pm after the Prime Minister's reply.
Singh, who before entering Parliament expressed confidence that the UPA government would prove its majority on the floor of the House, made a brief speech in which he did not not speak on the merits of the Indo-US nuclear deal over which the Left parties withdrew support necessitating the trust vote.
Moving the motion, he said for the past couple of decades the country was used to governments being forced to seek a vote of confidence within months of coming to power.
"I regret that this session of parliament has been convened when the attention of the government has been on the economy, particularly on the control of inflation and on implementing programmes for the welfare of our people, particularly our farmers. This exercise, I submit sir, was wholly avoidable," he said.
"I assure the House and the country that every single decision, every policy initiative we have taken was in the fullest confidence that we are doing so in in the best interests of our people and our country," the 75-year-old leader said to the thumping of desks by the ruling UPA MPs.
The two-day special session began in the shadow of mounting pressure from the CPI-M which directed Somnath Chatterjee to step down as Lok Sabha Speaker before the trust vote but in defiance he presided over the House.
Advani, who was unsparing in his criticism of the government, said "if people vote NDA back to power, we will renegotiate the nuclear deal to make it equal and ensure that there are no constraints on our strategic autonomy."
07-21-2008, 10:28 PM
(This post was last modified: 07-21-2008, 10:34 PM by acharya.)
<b>LEFT ACCUSES PM OF TELLING 'BLATANT LIES' IN PARLIAMENT</b>
By GLOBEGATHER.COM NATIONAL NEWS BUREAU, 21 JULY 2008
Left parties today accused Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of telling "blatant lies" during the trust vote debate in Parliament and said his "short and dull" speech was a reflection of his "low confidence level".
Senior Left leaders said his speech while moving the confidence motion in Lok Sabha was a "reiteration" of his belief in unilateralism by violating the understanding that had been reached under the Common Minimum Programme.
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"Singh's statement is a reiteration of his belief in unilateralism. He violated the understanding by going ahead with nuclear deal when there was no agreement between parties on the issue," senior CPI(M) leader Nilotpal Basu said.</b>
On Singh's remarks that veteran Marxists Jyoti Basu and Harkishen Singh Surjeet were among the architects of the ruling coalition, he said that the promises given to them were violated. "<span style='color:red'>A minority government cannot go ahead with the deal unilaterally. There was a CMP and it has been violated." RSP General Secretary T J Chandrachoodan said the "sagacity and vision" shown by the veteran Marxist leaders were "blatantly betrayed" by Singh, compelling the Left to withdraw support to the Government.</span>
Terming the Prime Minister's speech as a "short, dull" one with "deceitful utterances", he said he expected it to be a "soul searching" exercise. "He has nothing to say. The speech conveyed nothing. He was repeating blatant lies," he alleged.
Forward Bloc Secretary G Devarajan said Singh's short speech showed his "low confidence level" and accused him of even hiding truth before Parliament.
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