India is witnessing a changing political discourse – Gurbir Singh
Gurbir Singh
I have met many journalists — some who ask dumb questions and then some who come up with questions that you just don’t have answers for. Here is one journalist who has always asked the right question. He has got the right answers and, at times, evasive ones.
Gurbir has been a good friend for the past 15 years. I’ve seen him progress in his profession and life. I have utmost respect for him because there is nobody like him, so devoted to what he does. He uses the best possible tools available to ensure the news you receive is well-researched and scrutinised.
Gurbir is a senior journalist whose career in the profession spans more than three decades. He is presently with Business World magazine. He is also the President of the Press Club of Mumbai and takes keen interest in civic and social affairs. He is the co-founder of Nivara Hakk Suraksha Samiti, an NGO, along with Shabana Azmi and other professionals.
Gurbir, we are looking forward to your speech.
— Rtn. Pranay Vakil
Pranay, thank you very much for those kind words. We recently saw the Vote-on-Account or the Interim Budget being presented by P. Chidambaram. Twenty years ago, the Budget was an extremely important thing. Every government action on the financial front was crunched around the Budget. But slowly, the Budget, as a singular financial document that the government viewed through the year, started losing its importance. There is constant financial planning by the government throughout the year now.
Coming back to the Vote-on-Account — it was an election strategy, yes. It was aimed specifically at those people who had become disillusioned and had started drifting away. You have the army men, who were given the ‘one rank-one pension’ scheme. The youth received educational sops — Rs. 2,600 crore in interest will be waived on outstanding education loans. And then you have the middle class, who are most disillusioned as far as the voting public goes. They were offered sops on motor cars, small cars, refrigerators, mobile phones and much more. What we are seeing here, with great interest, is a changing political discourse.
Let us look at our prime ministerial candidates. When did we ever have a pitch for the Prime Minister’s post? Narendra Modi has changed the way people judge and vote in elections. Earlier, in the Lok Sabha elections, people would vote for their candidate and, in the end, the winning party got together and elected one amongst them as the Prime Minister. But here, he (Modi) has pushed the envelope and BJP, six months ago, announced Modi as the PM candidate. It’s positive as the electorate knows who stands before them, what he stands for and what they are voting for.
The negative side is that it stirred up the possible allies, who could have been part of the NDA. Suddenly, Jayalalithaa, Mulayam Singh Yadav and Nitish Kumar want to be prime ministerial candidates too. While on the other hand, we still don’t know if Rahul Gandhi is a candidate or not. Ultimately, they (Congress) may pull a rabbit out of the hat and say he will not be the Prime Minister.
These are again the confusions faced by the electorate. If you compare the report cards of UPA, from 2004 to the present, and NDA, till 2004, then the results are not very different. UPA’s first phase was better. There were tailwinds behind the government, the global situation was much better and so was the country’s GDP performance.
The second phase is where the dip comes. The paralysis came with corruption. Corruption and wrong use of governance has damaged whatever credibility they (UPA) had managed to achieve in the first phase. People are horrified at the levels of corruption that politicians and their allies have reached.
The area where the NDA clearly scored was food inflation and wholesale price inflation. The consumer price index inflation was 3.9% for NDA, while it is 10.4% for the UPA. This hit the masses, where month after month, things have become more expensive. To evaluate what is going to be the picture post-elections, we have to understand the Aam Aadmi Party phenomenon. AAP took up the issue of corruption and demanded the implementation of the Jan Lokpal Bill. They changed the agenda from a boring two-party debate into something more interesting. Even after their dismissal, you will be surprised to know that the surveys coming out of Delhi continue to show their rising popularity. In the future, they can definitely play a very strong opposition role.
So what is going to happen now? We are looking at a Lok Sabha number of 545; the first party to pass the post of 273, gets to form the government. Modi or the BJP can put up a maximum of 200-250. Surveys show that their ability to put together alliances is more stymied than the Congress. Congress are past masters in putting together alliances. People who completely oppose the Congress party can still hop on to their bandwagon. Unfortunately or fortunately, BJP has not been able to strike such a chord. So BJP enters the elections with a smaller alliance pattern — they have the Akali Dal; it is predicted that Mamata Banerjee may join them and the Shiv Sena.
In this scenario, the regional parties will become strong. A third front is likely to emerge with the regional parties. There may be a lot of changes compared to what the surveys say or what I say when the 2014 elections take place. But those who think it is clearly going to be a Modi victory should get it out of their heads because a lot is going to change before that. It is likely that a third front, even if they are small groups, may emerge with a larger number of votes. That gives rise to what we all fear — a fractured, nonfunctioning government. We all hope for a clear majority, which makes governance easy. The government has to put down a clean and clear tax regime, attract investments and deliver the results. These three things are important and Modi has scored with Gujarat in the past.
There is a fair amount of consensus as to where the problems of governance lie and what has to be addressed. It is a free-for-all situation and nobody can predict what is going to happen. Thank you.
An excerpt from the Q&A session:
Q: How far has the Rahul Gandhi interview affected the voter’s mind. Has it worked in favour of the BJP? And will the Aam Aadmi party make a dent beyond Delhi and Haryana?
Gurbir:
It was an English interview and I am not really sure how it affects the masses in a broad way. The concerned, intellectual middle class group are saying don’t underestimate what Congress has done for the farmers. They have invested a lot of money in the Food Security Bill and loan waiver schemes for farmers. They have a substantial grass root base in the rural areas. AAP, for two years, went from slum to slum in Delhi and took up issues of the public, which got translated into votes. Delhi impacts Haryana and western UP and hence, there was some impact there. But that kind of grass root work hasn’t been done in other parts of the country. A large number of votes, which would have otherwise gone to BJP, has gone to AAP. We’ll have to wait and watch.