General
Musharraf, a little nervous before Sonia Gandhi at the Agra Summit
What Went
So Wrong With Vajpayee's Lotus Eaters
By
Arun Rajnath
NEW
DELHI: The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and especially Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP) and particularly PM Vajpayee were bedazzled
by their own propaganda and razzmatazz of cute naked bellies cat
walking on the ‘India Shining’ Fashion Show.
But
serious infighting has broken out as BJP poll analysts are holding
the incumbency factor responsible for the debacle, but it is a
half-truth. The strategists carried out the poll campaign of ‘India
Shining’ and ‘Feel Good’ in a country where
children are being sold, farmers are committing suicide, and minorities
are constantly being intimidated. This is a mandate against anti-people
policies of the lotus eaters.
Three
things are clear now. Nobody can win an election with money and
on the basis of hi-tech poll campaign, by ignoring the common
man and his problems, or by injuring the secular fabric of the
country.
In
fact, voters have not cast their vote in favor of Sonia Gandhi.
They know her limitations as a leader, and that she goes by the
advice of a certain coterie in the Congress party.
As
a matter of fact, people voted for the local Congress candidates
with a hope that they would deliver goods. They voted for the
regional Congress leadership, not in the name of Sonia Gandhi.
This trend is clearly evident from the tally that where the BJP
alone got 138 seats, the Congress managed to get 145 seats only
out of 543.
In
Andhra Pradesh, Rajshekhar Reddy of the Congress party, and sworn-in
chief minister, has proved this point. Reddy knew the ground reality
of his state. When Sonia Gandhi was doing ‘road shows’
all over the country for election campaign, Reddy was doing pad-yatras
(traveling on foot) in the drought-hit state.
He
covered all the villages, and infused hope and enthusiasm in the
people that the Congress party could address their problems. As
a result the Telugu Desam-BJP coalition in the state was badly
defeated in the Legislative and Parliamentary elections. In the
Legislative Assembly, the Congress coalition got 226, TDP+BJP
got 49 and Others got 19 seats out of 394.
Similarly,
in the Parliamentary elections, the Congress coalition got 26
seats, TDP+BJP got two (BJP got no seat) and others 14 out of
42 Parliamentary seats.
It
may be remembered that in the southern Indian state of Andhra
Pradesh, elections for the Legislative Assembly were held along
with the Parliamentary elections as the TDP chief minister Chandra
Babu Naidu had dissolved the assembly.
In
the capital city of Delhi itself, the Congress won six seats out
of seven, not due to Sonia Gandhi, but due to party's chief minister
Shiela Dixit’s good governance. Delhi is also a home of
weaker section and people below poverty line. They outrightly
rejected Center’s anti-people policies including BJP’s
communalism.
In
the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, despite Sonia Gandhi’s
efforts, her son Rahul Gandhi’s presence who himself fought
from his late father Rajiv Gandhi’s and his mother’s
former constituency, Amethi, and her daughter Priyanka Gandhi
who vigorously campaigned for them, the Congress party could not
get more than nine Parliamentary seats out of 80. Even Gandhis’
confidant Satish Sharma, who was shifted to Sultanpur from Raibarielly
(from where Sonia Gandhi stood after vacating Amethi seat for
her son Rahul) could not win.
Uttar
Pradesh is a stronghold of the Samajwadi Party. No doubt in it.
And nobody can be doubtful about its leader Mulayam Singh Yadav’s
secular credentials. The Samajwadi Party got 35 seats, and its
candidate Madhu Gupta gave a good fight to Atal Behari Vajpayee
in Lucknow. Gupta stood second, Bahujan Samaj Party’s (BSP)
Nasir Ali stood third and Congress’s Ram Jethamalani fourth.
This
clearly shows that the people knew that only the Samajwadi Party
can guarantee peace and security for the minorities in this tension-ridden
state where Ayodhya is situated. They also knew that the opportunist
BJP-BSP post-poll alliance would not be able to deliver goods.
The Congress party lost its base in the state during Rajiv Gandhi’s
tenure as prime minister when he allegedly helped open the locks
of Ram temple-Babri mosque precincts which accelerated Sangh Parivar’s
movement against the mosque.
Despite
aggressive campaign by BJP leaders, including Prime Minister Atal
Behari Vajpayee, L.K. Advani and Pramod Mahajan, the party, fraught
with dissension, could not improve its position. Even Human Resources
Development Minister (Education Minister) Murli Manohar Joshi
lost to Samajwadi Party’s Reoti Raman Singh. Joshi is accused
of saffronizing the education system of the country. People even
rejected the new Muslim entrant to the party, Arif Mohammed Khan
from Kaiserganj and voted for secular Beni Prasad Verma of the
Samajwadi Party.
In
Laloo Prasad Yadav’s stronghold Bihar, the NDA got 11 seats
whereas Cong-Laloo combine got 26 seats out of 40. Though the
NDA generally did badly, the union ministers fared worse. Vajpayee’s
decision to include nine MPs from Bihar in his cabinet to counter
Rabri Devi (Laloo Prasad Yadav’s wife, and Chief Minister
of Bihar) did not pay. All the four BJP ministers-C.P. Thakur,
Shahnawaz Hussain, Sanjay Paswan and Hukumdeo Narain Yadav-fell
by the wayside. The fate of another, Rajiv Pratap Rudi, will be
decided later as re-polling in Chapra will take place on May 31.
Another
NDA constituent the Janata Dal (United) fared no better. Of its
four ministers, only George Fernandes and Nitish Kumar managed
to win. Sharad Yadav and Digvijay Singh were trounced, while Nitish
also suffered the ignominy of losing Barh.
The
NDA had constantly been accusing Laloo Prasad Yadav for ill governance,
but this should be remembered that not a single communal riot
ever broke out since Laloo Prasad Yadav has come in power. Apart
from this, when Jharkhand was made another state out of Bihar,
the NDA government had announced a compensation package for Bihar,
but the package was never given. At the other hand, the big industrial
houses were constantly being dissuaded from making investments
in Bihar in the name of crime, corruption and ill governance.
In
Gujarat, communal laboratory of the Sangh Parivar, the BJP got
14 seats out of 26 seats whereas Congress got 12. This is a tremendous
gain for the Congress party as the minorities are still unsafe
in the state, they are still living in relief camps, they are
sacred of openly opposing Narendra Modi, and the voter-list is
still not up-to-date.
In
this situation, getting 12 seats is a good achievement, and which
shows that now after the formation of secular government at the
center, ground situation in Gujarat will change, and people will
come out openly against the communalism of Narendra Modi.
In
Indian villages, ground situation is very pathetic. The Vajpayee
government has claimed that the godowns are full of foodgrain,
but small farmers and landless laborers are committing suicides.
During 1990s, the development in the rural employment was at the
rate of two per cent per annum. Now this development rate has
fallen to 0.64 per cent per annum. That is why, the purchasing-power
of small farmers and landless laborers has also declined.
Where in 1991, 210,000 tons of food grains were consumed through
the Public Distribution System, now the consumption has fallen
to 1 million tons during the last three years. Consequently, there
is tremendous decline in the food-intake of 30 per cent population.
To keep body and soul together, 2250 calorie intake is necessary,
but in India one-fourth population is having only 1100 calorie
intake.
At
the other hand, the share of agriculture sector in the National
Income is gradually declining. In 1980s, it was 38 per cent, in
1990s 31 per cent and now it is 24.7 per cent. The Vajpayee government
did not try to check it.
During
Mr. Vajpayee’s regime agriculture sector has received severe
jolts. The crop-productivity has fallen from three per cent to
1.2 per cent, and crop-production has fallen to 1.9 per cent from
3.5 per cent. During his tenure, agriculture land has also decreased
to 110.3 million hectares from 120 million hectares. This resulted
into the decline of income of the people below- poverty-line.
They are one-third of the whole population, i.e. 39.9 per cent.
Farmers
tried to cope with the ill governance of the Vajpayee government
by taking loans, and by resorting to other means to survive, but
most of them failed. Farmers are trapped in the vicious circle
of debt, and they commit suicide. In Anantpur in Andhra Pradesh,
over 2,000 farmers committed suicide between 1997 and 2001. In
one of the richest state of India, Punjab, there had been at least
600 farmers suicides in the year 2002.
The
arrogant campaign of the ‘India Shining’ and ‘Feel
Good’ was rejected by the people of the country where 65
per cent of households do not have a bank account. In rural India,
it is 70 per cent, and where tens of millions of farmers live
and die in debt.
This
is due to ill-governance of the Vajpayee government that during
his regime India exported food grain to foreign markets at prices
far lower than those the government forced its own people below
the poverty line to pay. In the year 2003, in Andhra Pradesh,
where the BJP-TDP alliance was in power, the hungry population
was compelled to buy rice at Rs. 6.40 a kilogram, whereas the
central government exported rice at Rs. 5.45 a kilogram.
The
denouement of the NDA debacle could be seen in President K.R.
Narayanan’s 2001 Republic Day Speech which could be termed
as the harshest speech ever heard from a President of India. Mr.
Narayanan said, “It seems, in the social calm, some kind
of a counter revolution is taking place….As a society, we
are becoming increasingly insensitive and callous…”
Vajpayee
paid the price for being callous to the teeming millions he considered
dumb and deaf. But they has one recourse at the end, their vote.
