Decline of MMS, but who is rising?

It was sometime in 2011, most likely in August, when I realised that Manmohan Singh’s reign as the PM was for all practical purposes over. I do not know what triggered the exact thought, it could have been the fiasco around the Anna movement, the CWG scam or a culmination of one scam being unearthed after another. Probably it was also the February 11 meeting with select editors, wherein he expressed his inability to stop the alleged loot around him because of “compulsions of coalition politics”. Whether it was the compulsions of coalition politics or his own party’s compulsions since the loot seems to have gone on at all levels, including allegations against Robert Vadra, the first family’s son-in-law, one is unlikely to know. I had then SMSed a few people that the PM is likely to be changed over the next 12 months. My reason was not any gossip from the capital. My rationale was simple — Manmohan Singh had lost all utility for the first family of the Congress and also for the Congress. Manmohan Singh, the darling of the middle class, because of his humility and also his incorruptible nature, was no longer the darling of the middle class. [caption id=“attachment_648973” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Reuters[/caption] The same people who loved and admired him were now cracking jokes openly about him and it was all over the media, particularly emails and social media. The fig leaf of respectability was no longer one since personal honesty was not enough any longer given the alleged scale of loot under his very watch. His helplessness made him a sorry figure but garnered little sympathy for him from the mercurial middle class. Rajiv Gandhi had encountered the same after the Bofors scam broke out. With Manmohan Singh no longer useful to the party or the family, another one would have to be found or the family will have to take over, was my thought. What confounded and disappointed many was that Manmohan Singh stuck on to his chair; he for one was supposed to be beyond the lure of the chair. My “prediction” was incorrect and Manmohan Singh is still the PM. Possibly the UP election debacle changed the Congress party’s intended narrative. The new Finance Minister has usurped the limelight, brought life back into the UPA (at least the policy stasis has ended), but the PM is increasingly invisible. Without a government, everybody has become a government and everyone wants to write his/ her own laws. That is what has happened today. Otherwise what explains the Supreme Court’s questions to the government on FDI in retail: 1. Has the policy brought some investment in the country or is it just a political gimmick. Has the policy brought some fruits? 2. What checks are there to ensure that free trade is not affected, particularly the interest of small traders? Most people who read the SC outbursts were probably feeling happy. But is it really for SC to find out how much investment had come in four months after a policy was announced? Let’s assume that no investments come in for 12 or 24-months. It could be due to many reasons - simply that global conditions are bad, Indian mares are not attractive enough, the fine print of the policy keeps potential investors away. So whatt? Isn’t policy making the prerogative of the legislature and examining its constitutional validity the judiciary’s domain? Of course, the SC bench also said, “Any policy is not sacrosanct and it must be within the constitutional parameters.We are not policy makers and we cannot substitute government policy but we will see that it is reasonable and within the constitutional framework.” As someone in Delhi recently told me that MPs are no longer interested in policy making or do not have the time. So it is increasingly being outsourced. This government has outsourced it to the NAC. There you have it. So why not to the SC, to Anna Hazare, to ________ (please fill in the blank). One would have thought that the largest opposition party, the BJP, would be sitting pretty given the debacle that UPA II has been so far. But no. BJP is yet to sort out its leadership issue, yet to decide what its policies are other than oppose what UPA proposes and 2014 is not far away. BJP will not win simply because Congress can lose. BJP is yet to provide an alternate vision for the country. During the recent Kumbh Mela, the RSS, VHP and the present BJP president once again raised the bogey of Ram Mandir. They are still stuck in a time warp like a broken record while India has moved away. Like Congress is stuck in the politics of dole outs and povertarianism, to usea a term Shekhar Gupta has coined, section of BJP is stuck in the early 1990s. The mandir is no longer an emotive issue even in the heartlands of India and even there people do not believe that BJP will build any temple given that it did not do anything in the six years it was in power. One of the two major parties will have to break out from its comfort zone and give an alternate narrative — break the logjam of governance and of our institutions, talk about hope and not doles, talk about a united India, not an India divided along caste, religious, and gender lines. Otherwise 2014 elections will likely throw up a more fragmented, more fractious and an unruly coalition. The alternate narrative will have to be powerful enough to galvanise voters and also to polarise voters (a wave) to one side. If not then we will have municipal elections to 543 Lok Sabha seats. On 02nd March 2013, Shekhar Gupta wrote in The Indian Express (Still Mandal, still Mandir): “It also follows that this may just present a perfect opportunity for somebody with the political intellect and courage to break the stalemate.” The intellect and courage that Shekhar writes about could bring about the necessary wave and the only someone who at present raises that hope is Narendra Modi, in my view. Others may emerge from any political party, but are not yet visible. The questions are will the BJP give him that opportunity with enough time left for 2014 and how does Modi use his obvious intellect and courage to generate a wave from a pluralistic and increasingly aspirational Indian society?