Rahul Gandhi
was elevated as the Vice-President of the Indian National Congress in the
recently held party meeting at Jaipur. He delivered his first Vice-Presidential
speech on January 20, 2013. It had all the elements of a Rahul Gandhi speech (http://severallyalone.blogspot.in/2012/12/rahul-gandhis-love-for-potato-potato_19.html).
CORRUPTION VS ERADICATING CORRUPTION, GENDER JUSTICE AND POLITICAL
APATHY
THE CONGRESS
PARTY VS THE IMPERIALIST ENGLISH
Maharashtra Irrigation Scam: Rs. 72,000 Crore
India
India
But since it was the first one after his formal elevation (even
if the elevation was just a symbolic one and he was already the part of central
decision making pivot along with his mother, Sonia Gandhi, in the grand old
party of India), let’s have a look on the content and contention.
The speech had many contradictory elements and the central-most was
his rhetoric on ‘power centralization’ in the country and ‘no focus on
leadership development’ in the Congress party.
Now there can be alternative ways to look at the contradictions in the
context of this speech.
The elements of contradiction
may be an indication that Rahul Gandhi realizes the pitfalls and negative
elements in the functioning of the Congress party and intends to work to
rectify them.
Alternatively, it was a
poor speechmaking again which belied the content of the speech in the context
of the history of the background.
Let’s take up contradictions* from the speech (sourced from the All
India Congress Committee website (1)):
LEADERSHIP AND CENTRALIZATION OF POWER
“Power is grossly centralized
in our country. We only empower people at the top of a system. We
don’t believe in empowering people all the way to bottom.”
“We need the aam aadmi to
participate in our politics. Because even as I speak their future is
being decided in closed rooms.”
“अब मैं थोडा हिंदी में, संगठन के बारे में बोलना चाहता हूँ। आपने मुझे ये बहुत बड़ी जिम्मेदारी दी है, और ये एक पार्टी कहलाती है मगरसचमुच में ये एक परिवार है। इस बात को आप मानते हैं की ये हिंदुस्तान का, शायद दुनिया का सबसे बड़ा परिवार है और इसमें हिंदुस्तान केसब लोग अन्दर आ सकते हैं।”
“दूसरी बात, हम लीडरशिप डेवलपमेंट पर फोकस नहीं करते। आज से 5-6 साल बाद ऐसी बात होनी चाहिए। अगर किसी स्टेट में हमें chief-minister की जरूरत हो, तो जैसे पहले फोटो हुआ करती थी कांग्रेस पार्टी की, चालीस फोटो हुआ करती थी। नेहरु, पटेल, आज़ाद जैसे हुआकरते थे, giants होते थे, उनमें से कोई भी देश का PM बन सकता था। उनमें से कोई भी देश को चला सकता था। सिर्फ प्रदेश को नहीं, देश कोचला सकें, ऐसे 40-50 नेता तैयार करने हैं।”
Yes, Mr. Rahul Gandhi, power is absolutely centralized in our country
and it has much to do with the absence of the internal democracy in the
political parties and an ever-strengthening dynasty politics.
The prevailing culture of the political parties in India
It began with the Congress party just after the Independence
A look back at the prime-ministerial tenures and the Congress party
presidential tenures is self explanatory.
Presidents of the Congress party from the Nehru-Gandhi family
post-Independence (since August 15, 1947)
Jawaharlal Nehru – 1951, 1952, 1953, 1954
Indira Gandhi – 1959, 1978-83, 1983-83
Rajiv Gandhi – 1985-1991
Sonia Gandhi – 1998 to Present
Total number of years when the Congress party has had a party
president from the Nehru-Gandhi family: 32 years (Out of 65 years of Independence
Prime ministers of India
Jawaharlal Nehru - 1947–1964
Indira Gandhi - 1966–1977, 1980–1984
Rajiv Gandhi - 1984–1989
Total number of years when the country had a prime-minister from the
Nehru-Gandhi family: 38 years (Out of 65 years of Independence
Since 2004, the Congress party is in government and Manmohan Singh is
the prime-minister but the world knows the real power lies with Sonia Gandhi.
So if we add these 8 years to the 38 years, we find that the country has been
under the rule of Nehru-Gandhi family for 46 years out of its 65 years of Independence
Lal Bahadur Shastri who was prime-minister from 1964-1966 after
Nehru’s death, though seen as a person of probity, was seen as a Nehru loyalist
and was chosen to corner Morarji Desai. At that time, Indira Gandhi was just
beginning her journey to the political centrestage of the country.
1991-1996, when PV Narasimha Rao was the prime-minister, there was no
one from the Nehru-Gandhi family to take the political centrestage of the
country so we cannot say it was the internal democracy of the Congress party
that chose Mr. Rao as the prime-minister of the country.
So, no true mass leader, not from the Nehru-Gandhi family or
independent of the patronage of Nehru-Gandhi family, could emerge in the
Congress party to reach to the political top when there was a name from the
family in the active politics and ‘circumstantially’ fit to take the
prime-ministerial chair.
And still, it is the same old story.
Now do we call that an element of democracy Mr. Rahul Gandhi?
It is this culture of absolutely centralized political parties in India
The giants that you speak of like Patel, Azad were the making of the
pre-Independence days. Why can’t the Congress party produce such giants in the
post-Independence phase who were (and who are) not from the Nehru-Gandhi
family?
How can we say it a democratic decentralization of power?
Congress party has become a family where the authority has narrowed
down to the realm of the Gandhi clan (the Sonia family). Yes, everyone can
become member of this family, but the person needs to follow the dictum that
the ‘top’ is reserved for the Nehru-Gandhi clan.
Manmohan Singh was never a prime-ministerial material and he was
chosen for being a yes-man. He has performed the assignment given to him
dutifully. There is no other political giant in the country from the Congress
party including you.
What separates you from others in your party is your inheritance, the
legacy of the Nehru-Gandhi family and the Gandhi surname.
There are many in your party and the larger political fraternity who
have spent decades in politics and yet are not seen as suitable
prime-ministerial material. How do you qualify with just 8 years in active
politics then?
The fact is, there is no one in the Congress party qualified enough to
become the prime-minister of the country at the moment. The party does need to
focus on the leadership development but needs to reform the process.
When the political top is so centralized and narrowed down to very few
‘political elite’, it is foolhardy to expect that an ‘aam aadmi’ would be
allowed to participate in the political process and grow in stature.
How should we read this element of contradiction in your speech Mr.
Rahul Gandhi?
The need is to have its unorthodox side, away from the Congress party
legacy, the upper hand but the ground reality favours the worn-out line.
CORRUPTION VS ERADICATING CORRUPTION, GENDER JUSTICE AND POLITICAL
APATHY
People who are corrupt stand
up and talk about eradicating corruption; and then people who disrespect women
everyday of their lives talk about women rights.
What about the Robert Vadra cover-up then?
When it was done by the people sitting at the top, don’t you think the
statement made by you regarding corruption squarely contradicts its pretext, if
there was any?
Corruption was always there but the country has seen it touching
mammoth scale since 2004 when the United Progressive Alliance government took
over. All the big scams like the 2G spectrum allocation, coal-block allocation
or Commonwealth Games scams or many others have seen genesis during the term of
your party rule.
Instead of treating them as the warning signs and embarking on a
course-correction mode, your party’s government chose to go in denial, delay
probes or castigate Constitutional agencies like the Comptroller and Auditor
General (CAG), the reports of which unearthed many scams.
What do you have to say on the corruption ombudsman, the Lokpal?
Given the fact that the Congress party has been in power most of the
time in the Independent India, the formation of the Lokpal should never have
lingered on for over four decades. And your party’s government, along with
other political parties, has successfully derailed it even this time to
formulate a toothless anti-corruption ombudsman. Given the goings and thanks to
a corrupt and alienated political class, the upcoming Lokpal (whenever it
comes), not going to be a gamechanger. It will be a Lokpal of political
scheming and not of public demand.
Do you remember your parliament speech where you spoke of making
Lokpal a Constitutional body and the gamechanger stuff? Whatever little that
the political class has agreed to empower the proposed Lokpal with is nothing
but a lip-service to mislead the people.
Can corruption, that has become a chronic malaise of the Indian
society, be eradicated with such a lip-serving attitude Mr. Gandhi?
You also spoke about women rights.
It’s basically about sensitivity that is not there in your government
and the larger political class. You too, fall short on it. The recent context
of the Delhi
The major reason behind death of the Delhi
Also, why it took you so many days (your first reaction came on
December 23, 2012, a week after the crime) to break your silence?
The youth of the country that you so emphatically spoke about in your
first speech as the Congress party Vice-President, was there on the streets,
raging silently, questioning the authorities’ inaction and demanding quick
answers and reforms of permanent nature. Why were you so reserved in
communicating with them then?
Your very own government initially snubbed the report submitted by the
Justice J S Verma Committee that slammed the government, the police and the
public for crime against women. Why your government had to do so when its
spokespersons had assured the country that the committee was constituted to
address the concerns and demands of the masses on crime against women?
The committee, then seen as a face saving exercise in the aftermath of
the huge protests, slapped back in the face of your government with its report.
Reportedly, Mr. Sushil Kumar Shinde and his Ministry of Home Affairs were
unhappy with the report. After intense public scrutiny, the government had to
bring an ordinance to incorporate some of the recommendations in the Indian Penal
Code with the promise that others will be discussed in the Parliament. Mr. P
Chidambaram conveyed this to us. Where was Mr. Shinde who compared the young
protesters with Naxals?
Also, do you remember what you had said on the Delhi
Mr. Gandhi, like you tried to deliver an
emotional speech, policymaking for humans too, should have emotional connect,
especially when the public outrage pours on the streets, when the remedy given
the law fails to deliver, and when the need of change acquires sense of urgency.
Why can’t some decisions be
driven by emotions, when an issue has been stretched to the level of emotional breakdown in the
society; when the ghastly incidents are breaking every heinous limit; when the
criminals are easily finding ways
to skirt the law; when the criminals are becoming more and more audacious
feeding on the parasitic fear of the victims; and when the rule-book and the
defined procedure is failing to control the rot.
Sadly, the political class of the country today is emotionally disconnected
from the problems of the ‘aam aadmi’.
THE CONGRESS
PARTY VS THE IMPERIALIST ENGLISH
Rahul Gandhi
said while setting the tone of his speech:
In 1947 India India
Now Mr. Gandhi,
how do you justify your silence on the brutal use of force by the police on the
protesters against the Delhi
Mere expressing
regret on what happened wouldn’t absolve the Congress party of this
anti-democratic sin.
Sushil Kumar Shinde
is not a thinking minister of independent thought process we all know that. He
could not have taken this decision in isolation and that too, when
the atmosphere was so tense, when every voice was
a raging call against the ineffective political class demanding it to act
pro-people and not pro-power.
The emotional
quotient of the masses, reflected by the spontaneous outpour of the youth in
the streets, was not for ‘nothing’. It was there, after the insensitivity of
the political class had tested enough the public’s patience.
But,
ironically, the political class is still about sucking the common man. Ministers
continue to make bizarre comments on issues ranging from corruption to women
rights.
Your government
is now looking to act on the Justice Verma Committee report but given the
initial snub, (reports saying the Home Ministry believed the committee had exceeded
its brief), is a familiar ominous sign for the ‘pro-public’ policymaking. It is
not about quality of the report whether it is practical or academic; whether it
is narrow in approach; whether it is just new wine in the old bottle.
Here, it is not about the report, it is about the haste in which your
government reacted on it. That was absolutely uncalled for. The government action
on the report is not a spontaneous one. That shows the mindset.
Shall you
confirm us that you are going to respond to the youth in spirit and letter; the
youth that was the high talking point of your Jaipur speech?
Shall you
confirm us that you are going to identify and crackdown on the elements who
allowed the use of force on the peaceful protesters?
Tell us, are
your own countrymen not dignified human beings, as you are, for your political
colleagues and be treated in a way that imitates the mentality of the
colonialist British who enslaved us for centuries?
Why do you
contradict yourself Mr. Gandhi? On one hand, your party said no to using
violent means to oust the colonialist British, while the very same party
mercilessly beats down the peaceful protests when the protesters are your own
countrymen.
Do you have
clear answers to this Mr. Gandhi?
How ironical!
If you and your
party claim to be the apostle of peace and non-violence in India
Your
proclamation falls flat even in other cases like the midnight Delhi police
crackdown on Ramdev and his supporter at the Ramlila Ground or
arresting Anna Hazare under the garb of maintaining law and order or for that
matter, the historic blot of the anti-Sikh riots where the Congress party is to
share the central blame.
If the Congress party is so peace-loving, why it tries to scuttle
every peaceful protest movement as has become
the trend since the anti-corruption movement of Anna Hazare?
HYPOCRISY OF THE
‘CLOSED’ SYSTEMS
Rahul
Said: All our public systems –
administration, justice, education, political systems – all of them are
designed to keep people with knowledge out. They are all closed systems. Their
design promotes mediocrity and mediocrity dominates discussion while the voices
of insight and thought are crushed by the loudness of those who possess neither
understanding nor compassion.
And every single day all of us are faced with the hypocrisy
of this system. We all see it. And then we pretend that it is not there.
The time has come to question the centralized, unresponsive
and unaccountable systems of decision-making in governance, administration and
politics. The answer is not that people
say we need to run the system better. The answer is not in running these
systems better. The answer is to
completely transforming these systems.
So far so good! But how (HOW)?
By promoting good-for-nothing
populist measures like the one that your government brought in 2008 to score
electoral mileage in the 2009 general elections or the attempted present
incarnations of similar mediocrities?
After four years, now the reports
have started pointing out large scale scams in the farm debt waiver scheme
launched by the United Progressive Alliance government in 2008. A Business
Standard (2) report on January 28, 2013 said: “Senior
CAG official confirmed the reports detailing how UPA could not deliver on the
loan waiver scheme. CAG conducted an audit of over 90,000 farmers’ accounts
between April 2011 to March 2012. Of the audited accounts, over 34% were not
issued debt waiver certificates, over 8.6% were not eligible but still got the
waiver and around 13% were disqualified by banks despite being eligible.”
Now, implementation of this scheme
has been a high-talking point of your government Mr. Gandhi.
You have been talking emphatically
about the direct cash transfer. The food bill is Sonia Gandhi’s brainchild.
The fear that the direct cash
transfer of subsidy and the food security bill, some more election-oriented
populist measures, would only deepen the purse-strings of the corrupt
bureaucracy and the political class with the real beneficiaries used as pawns
to siphon-off the money is not
unfounded.
Don’t you know that majority of
the Indians are illiterate when it comes to the ‘quality education’ like learning
and realizing their rights? There is no dearth of such studies done
independently. How can they ask for their due in a system that breeds
corruption at its every level? How can they bypass the middlemen present at
every level of implementation of such benefit schemes when over 65 per cent of
them cannot earn even Rs. 3500 a month? Remember, we are in a country where
bribing has become a norm to get anything and everything done.
Now projected as a PM-in-waiting, I should assume that you are
aware of this aspect of India
How,
then, can
you allow diversion of the
scarce public funds in such mammoth projects when the track record has been so
poor? Every such project is inundated with reports of misuse and corruption -
take any, be it MNREGA, NRHM, highways development projects, universal
education scheme, mid-day meal scheme, Antyoday or so many others.
Isn't it hypocrisy to call the
systems ‘closed’ and at the same time, feeding these ‘closed’ systems with
lubrication of easy prospects of under-the-table money?
Don’t you see and hear of these
scams? Your government is aware of the scams and has ‘dutifully’ tried to
suppress them from coming into the public domain as long as it could. The country very clearly saw it in 2G
Spectrum scam and the Commonwealth Games scam.
Is this how you and your
government intend to make the system better?
You talk of the ‘closed’ systems
yet your government denies naming the criminals stashing black money in foreign
tax havens.
You talk of questioning the centralized,
unresponsive and unaccountable systems of decision-making in governance,
administration and politics – yet you represent the
biggest face of centralized decision-making system in the country – the
Congress party.
Yes, all our public systems are in
urgent need of change. But the precedents set by the Congress party and others
in political fraternity tell us they want to maintain the status-quo.
THE DRUM, THE DRUM, THE CONGRESS DRUM
The Past, the Present, the Future – summed up..
The Green Revolution restored
the voice of the farmer. Bank nationalisation
restored the voice of the poor in the market for credit. The IT and telecom revolutions literally gave
the people voice, millions of people’s voice.
And if you have a cell phone in your pocket today, it is result of that
revolution. And it’s an honour that
Manmohan Singhji is sitting here because he spearheaded another
revolution. In 1991, he unleashed the
voice of thousands in the field of entrepreneurship and changed this country
forever.
The Food Bill will ensure
that no mother sees her child go hungry at night; the RTI allows every single
Indian to personally take on the battle against corruption; MNREGA has given
millions of Indians pride in their work; Right to Education enables every child
to aspire to greatness. All of these
radical innovations were possible only because of the growth provided by the
Congress Party and the UPA.
Now how many times Mr. Gandhi? What you speak
of so authoritatively and so possessively is not yours. Everyone knows and
realizes it. You run to beat the drum but why don’t you see the wisdom that every
big decision in India
It is not about ‘good’ or ‘bad’. It is about
claiming the legacy. The Mahatma never claimed the legacy even if he remained
the central figure of India
I would like to borrow from a previous article
(3) that I wrote on the subject:
..staking claims for achievements like mobile
phones or computer revolution in the name of the glorious history of the
Congress party is equally counterproductive.
Now no one is going to buy these statements. As
said earlier, these are basically consumer-driven industrial policies and have
to be followed and promoted by every government.
Like the retail FDI decision, every such
decision to introduce a new format of businesses or a new technology for
commercial purposes is taken in the global environment. It is not about who let
the television technology come to India
Such decisions are driven by the incumbent internal
and external factors. The decision to allow the multi-brand retail FDI is the
telling example in hand. The slowdown of domestic and global economy and the
pressure of countries like the US
And claiming benefits of such decisions, the
outcomes of which are so huge, spread over a long period of time, dissected and
diversified, to a single party or a single or group of persons, is another
thing that one should avoid while writing speeches (India may be a half-baked
democracy but certainly it is not a North Korea or China) – no singing paeans
please.
1991 was a compulsion. The country had no
other way but to open the economy. China
Also, it took years of struggle (over two
decades) to get the Right to Information Act passed. Why didn’t you speak of Lokpal? After all,
your government is going to burden the country with yet another unproductive
administrative while elephant.
MNREGA and Right to Education are grey areas.
Scams are routine. The corpus of fund involved in such populous and routine
schemes could have achieved much better scale provided you and your government
would have thought of ‘transforming’ the systems before introducing them.
There is nothing radical in these overstated
and hyped achievements. The only radical element is the scale of easy money
that public welfare schemes have provided to the corrupt officials. From few
crores, now the scams run in multiple thousands of crores.
Also, why don’t you introspect and talks about
the negatives? Your party has cursed the country with appeasement politics.
What the Congress party has done is dangerous enough to divide the country on
the lines of religion and caste. The social affirmative action, an innovation
in the beginning, has become a political tool promoting social aberrations.
Then there are other blunders like gifting
China membership of the UN Security Council, the Emergency, the Sikh riots,
blindly following a model of mixed economy with socialist pangs, and above all,
suppressing the democratic soul in the country, by promoting the dynasty
politics. And this list is not exhaustive Mr. Rahul
Gandhi.
WHY NOT 100 PER
CENT MR. RAHUL GANDHI?
My father used to speak about 15 paisa to the rupee reaching
the people and we today are preparing the system that is going to answer that
question. We are going to answer that
question. And 99% of our people’s money can go to them. It is a revolution that
no other country has done.
Let’s count the magnitude of Big
Daddy UPA scams as reported by different sources:
Coalgate: Rs. 185,591.34 Crore
2G Spectrum Scam: Rs. 1.76 Lakh
Crore
Commonwealth Games Scam: Over Rs. 30,000
Crores
And,
The black money stashed abroad: In multiple of tens of
thousands of Crores
And,
The different land scams (including the Delhi
International Airport Limited): In multiple of hundreds of thousands of Crores
Do you know Mr. Gandhi these scams have flourished during
the regime of your party led coalition government?
And you claim of ‘having a system in making’ that will
deliver 99 per cent when it is the same system that has ‘revolutionized’ the
scale of corruption in the country.
Rajiv Gandhi had talked of ‘15 paisa of the Rupee reaching
to the people’. It cannot be said if it was an eye-opener or some electoral
speech rhetoric. Before Rajiv, the country was ruled by the Congress party most
of the time. After Rajiv, the story remains the same. Since 1991, the Congress
party has been in the government for over 13 years out of the 21 years.
It should indeed be a revelation that scams have touched
unheard of proportions in the UPA regime.
Their riot requires nothing but a complete and ruthless
crackdown. It needs 100 per cent. Are you ready for it Mr. Gandhi? (While forwarding
this question everytime for your kind perusal, Mr. Vadra makes the intent of
the possible answer shadowy.)
Nothing can match your commitment when your set your goals
to the absolute limit – promising the deliver the 100 per cent.
And why not!
In a Republic, government’s income and expenditure is
directly accountable to the common man. In theory, he elects the representatives
to manage the resources with maximum efficiency. He needs the 100 per cent ‘honest’
utilization because a country with large poor population base can afford
procedural mistakes but cannot survive the intentional mistakes of corrupt
practices.
It is the time to practically realize the demands of the democratic
theory.
Time has told us about increasing
reports of corruption in MNREGA, NRHM and other such big-ticket social empowerment
schemes. The futility of the windfall farm debt waiver scheme for farmers
launched in 2008 has started unearthing. It is a glaring fact that in-spite of
the huge debt waiver scheme of 2008, 17,368 farmers committed suicide in 2009.
Take it or not Mr. Gandhi, the direct cash transfer of subsidy and the food
security is going to see the same outcome if implemented by the system you are
talking of ‘being in making’. The rot is deep.
The worrying feature of India India
Also the per-capita expenditure
requirement is simply outdoing the majority of the Indians and incessant price
rises (and now the subsidy cuts)
are adding havoc to the already dilapidated psychological frames. The 2012 Global
Food Security Index puts the world's fourth largest Economy at 66th position
out of the 105 countries surveyed. India
The Indian growth story is there
but its vital signs are not as vital for the majority of the Indians. It is
already over 65 years of the sovereign India India India
Only time
will tells us if the country is going to see the answers in you.
©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com
