Welcome summer, with deepening water crisis

How good are grandpas?

THE BJP and the Congress Party are both making a big show of migrations to their respective folds from other parties, betraying a sense of nervousness that has gripped them before the Lok Sabha elections. Atal Behari Vajpayee and Sonia Gandhi know it well that their parties have absolutely no chance of securing an absolute majority on their own and may even suffer an erosion in their tally in the dissolved Lok Sabha. Both, therefore, seem desperate about retaining what they had won in 1999 and, if fortune smiles, expect any improvements. Though Venkaiah Naidu set a goal of 300 plus for the BJP, Vajpayee is realistic enough to debunk it by insisting that his party will have to again run a coalition. The publicity blitz let loose at State expense will not bring bagfuls of votes to the ruling party’s fold.

The two main political formations are engaged in a war of attrition with no holds barred in order to weaken each other. Both are accusing each other of descending too low while campaigning. The poll-eve migrations by self-seeking politicians are unlikely to alter the final election picture, but are a sad commentary on the character of Indian politicians without scruples, who wear their ideology like a shirt to be changed every other day. Some of these worthies have hopped from one party to another in search of personal gain. One begins to wonder whether their types are fit to grace the august houses of our legislatures. They are supposed to be the guardians of our democracy and upholders of the Constitution and the rich traditions passed on by our outstanding past leaders, some of whom must be turning in their graves over the depravity characterising our political system.

Arif Mohammad Khan has often hopped from one party to another to be able to fulfill his mission of protecting the interests of Muslims and giving them a proper place in the democratic system. The carrot of a Lok Sabha seat having been dangled before him, Khan believes that he will now pursue his minorities –protection mission by associating with the BJP. The ensuing elections will prove how little clout he enjoys among the Muslims.

After four terms in the Rajya Sabha and Deputy Chairmanship of the House, Najma Heptulla complains that the Congress has not given her proper respect. She was carrying on a campaign against Sonia Gandhi and sending feelers to the BJP that she was prepared to walkover if another term in the Rajya Sabha was assured for her. To embarrass the Congress, the Prime Minister broke all political protocol by publicly inviting Heptullah to join the BJP, which, in effect, assured her another term. So, Heptullah is breaking her bonds with the Congress and becoming a BJP crusader.

Similarly, after changing several parties, Maneka Gandhi, along with her son Varun, has now come to BJP to seek a ticket and get back to the Lok Sabha. She had said many unsavoury things about Vajpayee and the BJP when she was dropped from the Cabinet. After being rewarded with the chairmanship of several bodies, music director Bhupen Hazarika was not expected to say anything other than praising the government and the ruling party, which he has now formally joined, and which assures him patronage for many more years. He will be mistaken in believing that he can sing his way into the hearts of the Assamese voters to make them vote for the BJP. P.A. Sangma also continues to suffer from delusions of grandeur, even after the rout of his party in the last round of Assembly elections in Meghalaya. He has even parted company with Sharad Pawar to fulfill the assurances given by him to the BJP leaders that he would fight the Congress at any cost.

Not to be left behind, the Congress Party too has invited migrations in order to boost its fortunes. It managed to enroll 11 MLAs of the All India Progressive Janata Dal in Karnataka in order to give a boost to the party prospects, now that Chief Minister S. M. Krishna has dissolved the Assembly and his office is at stake. The Congress claimed another prize catch by admitting a prominent Shiv Sena leader Balasaheb Vikhe Patil into its fold. This amounts to a personal setback to Bal Thackeray. With the demand for a separate Vidarbha State petering out and the split in the Shiv Sena, the Congress-NCP alliance, with the expected inclusion of several groups of the Republican Party, is set to acquire an edge over the BJP-Sena combine. The Lok Janshakti Party leader Ram Vilas Paswan conceded to an alliance with ruling RJD in Bihar and, along with the Congress, can effectively counter the BJP-Samata alliance. Laloo Prasad Yadav is also mediating between the Congress and the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha for seat sharing in Jharkhand. The BJP realised its folly in admitting D. P. Yadav, who has a criminal background, to help in the campaign in UP. But the public outcry against the "purification" of Yadav by joining the "sacred" BJP stream forced the leadership to unceremoniously drop him. Those, including Vankaiah Naidu, who had sung lyrics in Yadav’s praise at the televised initiation ceremony saw nothing wrong in first honouring and then dishonouring him in public.

Both parties are, as usual, out to woo the Muslims who have shunned them and taken shelter under regional outfits, such as, SP, BSP, and Telugu Desam Party to ensure their security and well-being. Despite rootless leaders like Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Shahnawaz Khan supporting the Sangh Parivar’s Ayodhya temple agitation and, at the same time, extolling the virtues of the BJP, Muslims have, by and large, kept away from the party. Their distance from the BJP has increased after the Gujarat carnage and they are unlikely to flock to its camp in the next election. They have discovered that Vajpayee keeps reiterating that the temple remains very much on the BJP’s agenda, which he was not able to implement because he was bound by the NDA’s common minimum programme. The Party’s spokesmen insist that the peace initiative with Pakistan would influence the mind of the Muslim voters and make them gravitate to it. There are nearly 100 constituencies where Muslims constitute 10 to 20 per cent of the vote and the BJP cannot afford to ignore them. The Party is supported also by the Sangh Parivar in its quest for Muslim votes for the simple reason that it wants the present dispensation to continue for another five years.

Indeed, normalisation of relations with Pakistan is in the country’s interest and not Muslim interest. As Kamal Faroqui, member, Muslim Personal Law Board, argues that the BJP’s attitude to Muslims sends out wrong signals. "Does it mean that if Indo-Pak relations deteriorate, Hindu-Muslim ties in India will also plunge? "He does not think that the Prime Minister is sincere about the Muslim vote. The attempt is to get the secular Hindu vote by projecting the BJP as a party acceptable to Muslims as well. Ahmed Patel of the Congress points out that a logical conclusion of the Prime Minister’s professed love and compassion for the Muslims should have been an immediate action against Narendra Modi after the Gujarat police was indicted by the Supreme Court in the rape and riot cases. How does the BJP expect the Muslims to shed fear of the Party?

Another opportunistic move by Mulayam Singh Yadav ordering all schools closed at noon on Fridays to enable Muslim teachers and students to offer Namaz was so patently communal that Muslim leaders were first to condemn it. He was trying to project himself as the epitome of secularism and sole protector of Muslim interests and sentiments. He was reminded that the move would be detrimental to Muslim interests and further isolate them from the Hindus. Realising that the move would not get him any votes, Yadav quickly cancelled the order. The unfortunate part is that Muslims, who constitute over 12 per cent of the country’s population, lack sincere and honest leadership. The vacuum left by the lack of enlightened leadership has been partly filled by religious zealots, who have concerned themselves solely with protecting the religious rights of the Muslims, without bothering about improving their economic, educational and social status in a composite society.

Their so-called leaders have attached themselves to parties without discrimination for personal gains, thereby jeopardising the larger interests of the community. The entire Muslim community is sought to be put in the dock over the Babri Masjid-Ram temple issue for disregarding the sentiments of the majority community. And yet, when the election comes, concerted moves are made to get their votes by promising them the moon. The Sangh Parivar projects the so-called Muslim leaders in the BJP fold as proof of the party’s secularism, as show-pieces catapulted to Parliament with Hindu support.

There is so much talk of the "feel good" factor and "India shining", but Muslims, by and large, have not benefited from whatever little economic progress the country has achieved, nor have, for that matter the Dalits, the backward communities and Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, despite their political exploitation by the likes of Mulayam Singh Yadav, Mayawati, Chandrababu Naidu and Jayalalithaa. The feel good factor has increased social inequalities and economic disparities and only introduced the "mall culture" among a mere 10 per cent of the population, which today consumes more than it did earlier – clothing, food, cars, TVs and refrigerators. The rest 90 per cent remain unaffected and the living standards of 30 per cent of the population have actually depreciated due to the population pressures and broken down social services.