‘Did you mind the inconvenience faced in our fight to curb corruption, black money, terrorism and counterfeiting of currency?’

Two weeks since India’s midnight tryst with demonetization.

We still don’t know if we collectively took a step forward or backward. The only thing we know is that never have our steps so decisively led to banks and their ATMs, insistently, consistently, day or night, dawn or dusk. We depend on hope like never before; the hope of seeing our own money once again in our hands.

The question is not whether demonetization is good or bad because good or bad, it cannot be reversed. The question is how long will cashless-ness prevail. It cannot go on like this forever. That’s the general worry. Prime Minister Narendra Modi also shares this worry with his party, though a slightly different worry.

Will the situation normalise at least by the time the Election Commission announces the elections to assembly in five states? The BJP has been anxious about the sentiments of the people in Uttar Pradesh in particular – the largest of the five states where elections are imminent. The stakes are the highest in UP.

Local party leaders are informing Delhi that  the no one is overtly criticizing demonetization in principle, but things are not actually bright:

1.The poorest of the poor are not unhappy with the announcement; they have nothing to lose, not even a 500-rupee note.

2.The middle class in the urban and rural areas was initially circumspect but it soon gave way to affirmation.

3.After two weeks, the patience is running a bit thin.

4.Unlike the metros, big cities and towns of UP including Lucknow still do not have adequate new notes in banks and ATMs.

5.The situation in the rural areas is worst. The rabi crop may just fail. Marriages are being re-scheduled. People are unable to pay fees of wards studying outside the state. Business is at a standstill. Daily wage earners are full of spare time.

6.The Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party are already in election mode.

The BJP has to counter all these factors if it has to win UP. And quite a section within the state BJP is confused. What is the party’s poll plank? Nationalism-post-Uri? Ram Janmabhoomi? Demonetisation? It is as if the attack on black money has subsumed all these issues! There is no talk of Kairana, no beef, no ghar-wapsi, no love-jihad, no Ram temple, no Uri, no strikes. The talk is only about money. Party cadres who micro-manage select campaigns for the BJP are in a quandary. They look up to their state-level leaders guidance. But they are clueless too.

They ask the central leadership: Has polarization just changed its marker? The standard, well-tested mechanism of corralling voters through religious polarization on the one hand; polarization on the basis of the colour of money – black versus white – on the other. And both topped by the icing of nationalism.

Modi will clarify. He is leaving enough clues that suggest he is on his way to resolving the party’s doubt. He has talked to his party leaders in a closed-door meeting where he takes on the opposition: Whose side are u on, the hoarders or those who are cleaning up? He is getting emotional inside the party meeting and at rallies in UP. He is not talking in Parliament. He is addressing what he senses is the bigger parliament – the people at large. Directly. He asks the parliament of people for their opinion on demonetization.

He asks people 10 questions on November 22, which he wants the people to answer on his app. They range from the rhetorical (Do you think that black money exists in India; Do you think demonetization will help in curbing black money, corruption & terrorism; Do you believe some anti-corruption activists are now actually fighting in support of black money, corruption & terrorism) to the leading (Do you think the evil of corruption and black money needs to be fought and eliminated; Demonetization will bring real estate, higher education, healthcare in common man's reach) to the suggestive (Overall, what do you think about the government's moves to tackle black money; Do you have any suggestions, ideas or insights you would like to share with PM Narendra Modi).

At the half-way mark in the questionnaire, comes this, at no. 5: What do you think of the Modi government's move of banning old Rs. 500 & Rs. 1000 notes? And towards the end, comes this, the question engaging the entire country today:

Did you mind the inconvenience faced in our fight to curb corruption, black money, terrorism and counterfeiting of currency?

The people’s answer  -- a simple yes or no -- to this particular question ranking no. 8 out of 10 will define the BJP’s strategy not just for the assembly elections, but for much more in the future.

We have our own; the Americans have theirs

The Americans did not see the writing on the wall till it was too late.

Just as most Indians disbelieved the writing on their wall in 2014.

India has its Narendra Modi; the Americans now have their own in Donald Trump.

I am not referring to the perplexing ideology of the individuals concerned.

I refer to them in the context of both of them being political outsiders, the “pariahs” as the self-claimed insiders called them.

Their anxiety to keep themselves relevant  won them their day on the day their day came. They didn’t actually have to do anything. They just needed to be there, at that moment.

Albert Camus described the modest beginnings of their fanatic perseverance in L’Etranger long ago: “I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.” 

Donald Trump, if he wins,  did not win the US Presidential elections; the corrupt cabal lost.

Just as it was not entirely Modi magic at work; the coterie of coalitions lost.

In both cases, the people triumphed even though the world did not expect them to rebel and later, never gave them credit for the change.

Hillary Clinton represented perhaps the brazenly low of American interests to ever come together to protect their turf.

These interests ranged from the politicians of all hues, the industrialists, the military manufacturers, the think tanks, the media, the FBI, Hollywood, literally everyone who could name someone in the Capitol or the New York bourse.

Never before had Americans seen such a devastating, below-the-belt, personal, vulgar campaign to try and neutralize a presidential candidate. Like Trump.

Of course, Trump helped matters coming out as a true psychopath as the campaign progressed.

But the voters did not see the psychopath in Trump. They knew him. Of course, he is that bad boy who gropes girls, who abuses power and people, who comes across as a charlatan and a bigot.

They saw in Trump, instead, the man who spoke their language. The language of the wretched. The language of those who did “not” belong anywhere, who were middle class only in name and without even $40 cash left at the end of the month, who for the last two decades were drawn into wars not of their own making, who were finding it difficult to send their kids to college, who were unable to pay the insurance premium or the home installments. They wanted a square meal and a sound sleepl; the cabal instead gave them a look at the next-gen fighter craft on its way to a distant client in a distant land.

And the ordinary Americans rebelled. The cabal tried all measures – portraying Trump as anti-Hispanic, anti-gay, anti-God, anti-child, anti-girl, anti-Black, etc. The cabal tried the favourite trick: Tell Americans Trump would put the image of their America as “the” super power at risk, that he would lower America’s prestige as a power to reckon with. What the cabal failed to see was that the ordinary American wanted peace at home first. He or she had paid a heavy price for the cabal’s tryst with geo-politics outside American shores that brought war their own homes.

The Americans wanted the status-quo – which was profitable for everyone that was part of the cabal, including the anti-Trumpers among the Republicans – to simply go. It went.

Just like the coterie went out of power in India in 2014.

During the years the Congress was in power, it ruled with a live-and-let-live policy, throwing crumbs at other centrist and left parties in the name of common political interest. Thus, this political coterie kept at bay other parties which did not fit their interest groove. The BJP, by default rather by intention, became to represent this “outside” party, later on, in the 1990s cloaking itself in impractical nationalism that would one day kill the coterie and even threaten secularism. When the Congress could not rule alone, the coterie turned into a coalition to help the Congress rule. It was anti-BJP, but essentially it was pro-Congress. 

The people saw through the charade, finally. Modi was the result.

Now Modi is drawing up his own political coalition.  Just as Trump will, in the coming days.

Politics has but one direction, one end, if not today, tomorrow.

The Art of Political Scavenging

Do vultures have claws?

Yes. They have beaks and feathers as well.

They also have brains.

Unlike the two-legged scavengers we have been seeing at the door step of a dead soldier in Delhi yesterday and Bhiwani today.

They simply don’t go away.

They want to be seen scavenging. That is the only skill they have. Only, they call it politics. They play it well.

Remember that girl, Nirbhaya, who was gang-raped by thugs whose hanging was stayed by the judiciary with as much alacrity it displayed to hang terrorists?

After Nirbhaya died, there was a public protest in Delhi. The Delhi Police beat up the protesters, used lathis against women and girls to disperse them.

The home minister, Sushil Kumar Shinde, defended the police action.

Shinde also said he didn’t see the need to meet the protesters himself.

Four years later, the scene replayed itself in Delhi with a different subject – a former jawan who took his own life because he was not getting OROP money.

The Delhi Police acted without thought or compunction against those protesting the suicide.

For good measure, they also manhandled and detained the family members of the dead jawan.

The home minister, Rajnath Singh, defended the police action.

Singh also did not see the need to meet the protesters himself.

Rahul Gandhi was on protest too. He must have thought it funny, being detained inside a police station for most of the day and evening.

I didn’t hear him say precisely why he was protesting. I only heard him shouting at the policemen.

I did notice the eternal smirk on his face.

The smirk is of 2012 vintage, when he did not join the Nirbhaya protest at India Gate in Delhi.

All he thought fit to do was to meet a small group of protesters briefly along with his mother Sonia Gandhi.

His party was in power then, not now. That perhaps explains the selective protest.

Arvind Kejriwal was not even chief minister in 2012. He was an aspirant. So he joined the protest, flayed the ruling Congress and after elections, formed a government in coalition with that party.

In 2015, as chief minister, he brushed off all protests and decided to provide eligible state assistance to Nirbhaya’s juvenile rapist out of jail.

In 2016, he found himself unable to leave the closed gates of a Delhi hospital without seeing the dead jawan. No other reason comes to mind other than that he relished another confrontation with the Delhi Police.

Kejriwal and Rahul Gandhi select the protests they wish to support.

Those in government, whether of the BJP or Congress or anyone else, select the protests they wish to control.

The Congress paid a price for such foolishness.

The current dispensation is yet to begin listing its acts of foolishness.

1.Like culture minister Mahesh Sharma being allowed to visit the home of the murderer of Akhlaq of Dadri, while Rahul and Kejri couldn’t see a dead soldier.

2.Like the police finding no fault with that murderer’s family draping the corpse with the national flag, while the government defended the police roughing up the dead soldier’s family .

3.Like minister VK Singh, who once headed the army, tactlessly questioning the motive behind the ex-jawan’s suicide, while he was embarrassingly quiet on whether OROP was skewed more in favour of officers. 

Jayalalithaa: What are we to make of her medical bulletins?

Amma, as Tamil Nadu endearingly calls Jayalalithaa, is not able to run the show herself. 

Her ill health has confined her to a bed on the second floor of a hospital in Chennai.

We are told Amma’s situation is improving, that she is in control of things, that orders are being duly executed and/or conveyed by her closest friend Sasikala and the latter’s extended family.

Sasikala was running and controlling things ever since Jayalalithaa succeeded MGR, so as to give Amma the needed time and space to administer the state effectively.

They are ensuring that Amma gets the best possible medi-care available so that she returns to Poes Garden as early as possible.  

There is talk of setting up a parallel medical facility at Poes Garden to take care of Jayalalithaa in the event of her return home.

It is said Jayalalithaa is extremely serious that the state’s administration should not get neglected because of her illness. The top administrative service officials of the state bureaucracy visit one of the floors in the hospital daily , to get a briefing on the day’s decisions. 

Amma was distracted in her last term , 2011 to 2016, by the burden of the wealth case against her, but now administration is getting top billing, we are told.

How long will Amma be in the hospital?

That is the million-dollar question. There is no answer yet.

It is all about retaining power. Who retains it after Jayalalithaa.

The AIADMK never believed in a second rung of leadership. MGR ran the party alone, just as Jayalalithaa did thereafter. By compulsion, the tradition has to be followed after her.

As of now, things – personal and professional – are happily under the control of Amma’s friend Sasikala.

There is no proof of this, other than reports that the brother of Amma and her foster son were not allowed to see her in the hospital.

This is what often happens when the rich and famous are transiting from life to death. The ventilator can become a convenient  tool to keep the person alive until the transfer of power is effected smoothly.  Do recall how another Tamil leader was a guest at the same hospital at the turn of the century. Murasoli Maran. In the case of Maran, he was alive thanks to artificial appendages for a long time; that was sufficient time for the family to get a sense of his affairs.

We are told Amma would be alive to ensure that her successor is found, selected and in place. But we do not know how much time this exercise will take. Names of successors – like O. Paneer Selvam or even film star Ajith! – are inconsequential, as long the fact is clear that the reins will remain with Sasikala.

If time is not a factor, then a decision may have to be taken on keeping Amma in the hospital for too long. She’d rather be back home, we are told.

What is in Sasikala’s mind? We have not been privy to that, as yet. Just like no one could read Jayalalithaa’s mind when MGR stopped breathing.

If there’s someone who is equally desperate to read Sasikala’s mind, it is the DMK patriarch Karunanidhi. A majority of AIADMK legislators crossing over to his camp for a consideration is an enticing dream. But he will not make a move now, because that would discredit him in the state where people will be quick to point out he was playing politics while Amma was helpless. The other political parties, including the BJP, do not matter.