PONTIFICATION ALL ALONG

The Chennai Declaration of the BJP starts with recalling the glorious heritage of the country and takes pride in the fact that "1947 saw the rebirth of this ancient civilisation after a glorious struggle for independence." Yes, we all are proud of this glorious struggle. But can one ask: Where stood the RSS, that controls the BJP, during this struggle? What movement did it initiate in British India or in princely states before 1947? True the RSS did intervene in some princely states, but in those ones whose rulers were Muslims, in order to incite communal passions. Its incarnation in Kashmir, the Praja Parishad, did everything to help the Maharaja in his gameplan to avoid a merger with the Indian Union as was being demanded by the people of Kashmir. So much so for the RSS-BJP's pride in our heritage!

Then the declaration comes to the 50 years of independence when, for most of the time, the Congress party was in power, and recalls the saga of the latter's misgovernance and corruption. All this is very true; in fact, it was the Congress record of misgovernance and corruption and its failure to fulfil the aspirations of the people, that enabled the BJP to cash in on the resultant discontent and come to power. But, in so far as putting forward an alternative vision of governance is concerned, the declaration has nothing concrete to offer. In fact, the whole declaration is full of the same verbose and moralising which our countrymen have been listening from the Congress rulers all these years. But, what else could one expect from a party that is past master in pontification!

Another truism put forward by the BJP declaration is about the resources and potentials our country possesses. None can doubt that India is a country of vast resources, both material and human. In fact, the country has so much resources that, if only these are put to proper use and the people's energies are released by ensuring their equitable share in the fruits of development, they can work miracles and take India to great heights. But the question is: Given its policy orientations, can the BJP regime be expected to accomplish this task?

Take one example. Experts of Indian economy have now well established that after the onset of liberalisation and globalisation in 1991, the rate of poverty, that was on a decline path till then, has again registered an increase -- a fact which the government of India too has grudgingly accepted. This is directly attributable to the new economic policies that were initiated by the Narasimha Rao regime. But it is the same kind of policies which the BJP regime is now pursuing, and with a vengeance, posing the threat of a further worsening of the life conditions of the people. Can the BJP, then, really claim that its policies would arouse the Indian masses for national reconstruction? It is one thing to moralise on the people's duties for this gigantic task (precisely what the Chennai Declaration has done by devoting a full section to this moralising), but is is an altogether different thing to create the required material conditions and mass sentiments for this purpose.

VITAL ISSUES AVOIDED

But the basic flaw in the BJP's approach becomes amply clear as soon as the declaration comes to the economic issues. The document, for instance, dilates in detail on the issue of rural regeneration, but forgets just one simple thing. It does not even cursorily mention the need of land reforms which is a sine qua non for India's regeneration. For, without thorough-going land reforms, it is altogether futile to expect that any serious attack on poverty can be launched or the market for Indian industry expanded. Nay, the declaration not even talks of distributing the wastelands among the landless and land-poor, which is the best way for wasteland management and improvement. On the contrary, the BJP governments in states are even contemplating of doing away with the land ceilings in order to benefit the foreign and indigenous moneybags.

Similarly, the declaration sheds crocodile tears on the plight of agricultural workers, but is conspicuously silent on the need of enacting a comprehensive central legislation for agricultural workers, a draft whereof is lying with the central government for the last 18 years. If the Congress party's misgovernance cold-shouldered this task, will the BJP government show warmth about it? No word.

But, can one expect anything like this from a party whose leading ranks include a number of landlords?

Similarly, how genuine is the BJP declaration's concern for the welfare of the working class, has been made amply clear by the Ram Prakash Gupta government of Uttar Pradesh that is adopting most brutal methods of repression against the power workers. But there is nothing new to it. The proverbial short public memory is in fact not so short as to forget the brutal treatment which the earlier HVP-BJP government of Haryana had meted out to the workers, peasants, teachers, state government employees and nurses in the state, or which the Akali-BJP government is meting out to peasants and others in Punjab.

In this background, can the BJP's moralising to the working class to increase productivity have any appeal?

The problem lies precisely here. The BJP government is out to dismantle the public sector which has been the base of whatever self-reliance we have achieved and kept the prices of various goods and services within affordable limits; it is out to destroy the public distribution system and cut various subsidies which gave our people a degree of relief from the excruciating poverty and unrelenting price rise; it is out to privatise and commercialise education, health and other social sectors which will only harm the common man's interests, and yet it talks of development, self-reliance, and the like. If it is no deception, then what else it is! Can the BJP then really hope that mere moralising will enthuse the people in any degree?

ISSUE OF CORRUPTION

As said, the Chennai Declaration talks of the growth in corruption during the half century of Congress rule. All this is very true; in fact, the Congress party is now paying the wages of these very sins of ommission and commission. But when, through the declaration, the BJP pats its own back by saying that "Our record in office has been absolutely scandal-free," one feels constrained to pause for a moment and think whether this is really the truth.

The telecom scandal is a case in point. As has been proved beyond doubt, in its earlier stint, by a single stroke of the pen, the BJP government caused a loss of at least Rs 40,000 crore to the country in order to favour the private telecom operators. The question widely asked then was: Was this done without any quid pro quo? The scams that took place in the sugar and wheat exports from Pakistan have also been widely commented in the press. And the truth remains the truth even if the pro-BJP media barons try to suppress any public discussion on these scams.

What is noteworthy here is that the BJP has added these unenviable feathers to its cap in less than 2 years of its rule.

BJP CULTURE & ETHICS

The same is the case with the BJP declaration's high-sounding talks about "a new political culture" and "a new ethical base." This is an issue on which the BJP leaders have been pontificating all along, in a bid to show that they are a party of morals, a party with a difference, and what not. But all their political morality vanished into thin air as soon as they saw a danger to their rule in Uttar Pradesh. This was too glaring an episode to be erased from public memory. The episode was marked by large scale defections defying the people's verdict, organised by the party leaders in UP with the concurrence of their national level leaders. The state then saw how each and every of the 70-odd defectors was put in a ministerial chair and how the state got the unwanted gift of a jumbo-size ministry, putting a heavy burden on the coffers of the state which is one of the poorest states in the country. The way the UP economy has been bled white since then, also goes to the (dis)credit of the BJP's moralisers. It was not very long ago when The Pioneer (December 4 and 10) pointed out how the state's ministers have been milking the UP State Electricity Board. It is to save the same board that power workers are facing lathicharges, dismissals and other repressive measures today.

This was the most glaring example of the BJP kind of political morality, but not the first of its kind. About a decade ago, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, a BJP luminary, had broken the Janata Dal in Rajasthan by organising defections in order to save his ministry, and had rewarded the defectors with ministerial berths. It was not without reason that Shekhawat was called and made to stay in Delhi in May 1996 and April 1999 when the Vajpayee government's survival was at stake.

Yet another example of the BJP kind of morality was recently seen in Goa, one of the seven states where the declaration boasts "we" are in government. The way the BJP helped bring down the state Congress government there, is no exception but fits well into a too well known pattern. In sum, if "defections became the accepted norm" under the Congress regime, as the Chennai Declaration says, how the BJP regime is different from those days?

As for the BJP's alliance with Pandit Sukhram in Himachal Pradesh, the less said the better.

At the same time, the BJP is not immune to factional fights within its ranks, as the declaration pretends. Not to talk of Vaghela's revolt in Gujarat, Delhi BJP had witnessed bitter infighting between the supporters of M L Khurana and Saheb Singh Verma, a fight which Ms Sushma Swaraj later joined as a third contender. Factional feuds are often reported from other state units also, like Rajasthan. And who can forget the UP episode in which former chief minister Kalyan Singh, once lauded as a hero, was unceremoniously expelled! All this is but a demonstration of the fact that the BJP too is not immune to the "groupism" and "power lust" for which the declaration criticised the Congress party.

FOREIGN POLICY

The declaration also boasts of the so called achievements of the BJP government in the area of foreign policy. But can one forget that its nuclear jingoism only isolated India from the peace-loving developing countries and fuelled a nuclear arms race in the sub-continent? Moreover, the subsequent events exposed the futility of the BJP's theory of nuclear deterrence, as was proved by the Kargil episode when the government was caught napping; as a result, the country had had to suffer a lot of avoidable losses in life and resources.

In fact, the Vajpayee government has proved its competence in just one field -- in running after Strauss Talbott to one or another part of the world. Just a day before these lines are being written, secret Jaswant-Talbott talks started at some unknown venue in London, like the earlier secret talks, behind the back of our people. Sorry, we are wrong; this government has showed its competence in internationalising the Kashmir issue as well.

And, now, they are preparing to extend a red carpet welcome to Bill Clinton, ignoring the real character of US imperialism and ignoring what they have done in Iraq and Yugoslavia. Do they really hope that the US will embrace India and break its relations with Pakistan? But we need not repeat these things which we have already dealt with in our last issue.

Conspicuously, the declaration is silent on the Diego Garcia issue, and the US nuclear base there, which poses a direct threat to us and other countries on the Indian Ocean's rim.

Not content with all this, the BJP government is now playing with the security of the country by handing over the management of five big airports to foreign private capital.

WHO CARES FOR COALITION!

The Chennai Declaration has made one more boastful claim -- that the BJP has evolved the most stable coalition at the centre since independence. This is altogether different from the refrain only two years ago, that the BJP would form a government at the centre on its own. (Only in 1999 did the BJP agree to issue a common poll manifesto with its allies.)

But an inkling of the real thinking inside the BJP circles can be had from a sentence that was there in the earlier version of the declaration but was expunged later. The released version of the declaration says: "The BJP expresses the confidence that every party worker understands that our agenda for governance is the National Agenda for Good Governance" (Tasks before the Party, para 1).

But the expunged sentence read: "Each and every activist of the party must fully understand that the BJP has no agenda other than the common agenda of the NDA."

Thus "the National Agenda for Good Governance" took the place of "the common agenda of the NDA." This was meant to appease the BJP activists who do not want to be too much identified with the common NDA agenda.

However, there is another, more weighty point to consider. Within the framework of the division of labour which has been carefully evolved within the Saffron Brigade, while the BJP's job is to sing paeans to coalition politics, other constituents like the VHP, Bajrang Dal and hundreds of others at local or state level in various parts of the country have been assigned the task of pushing through the real RSS agenda which is what people call its "hidden agenda," without caring a hoot for what the other NDA partners may think or say.

But the question is: Even though, out of expediency, the NDA partners are today not paying heed to what the Saffron Brigade is doing, will the exonerable force of events allow them to maintain their stoic silence for long? The future will tell.

Yet there are reasons to believe that the allies will have to break their silence sooner or later. The way the BJP is out to sabotage the republican constitution of the country ("We are proud of our Republican Constitution," the declaration hypocritically said), and the way it is trying to negate the value of the people's verdict by having a 5 year term for the Lok Sabha or by imposing a presidential system of government, is sure to evoke opposition from the BJP's allies. A few of the allies had already conveyed their opposition to the BJP's attempts to misuse Article 356 in Bihar. (The declaration criticises the Congress on this score as well.) The Andhra chief minister has already said he would not agree to any dilution in the federal character of our polity.

Under the BJP, the secular character of our polity is also under attack, and the constituents of the Saffron Brigade are launching attacks on minorities with impunity in Orissa, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Punjab and some other states. The lifting of the ban on government employees joining the RSS in Gujrat and imposition of the ban on construction of religious places in UP without government's permission, are also against the very secular ethos of our country. Then, in a bid to incite communal passions, the RSS bosses tried to misuse the plane hijack episode by saying that the Hindus behaved cowardly, to the glee of the Muslims. All this is bound to harm national unity. Will the BJP's allies then remain silent for long?