While the mainstream news media was engrossed in the resort politics of Gujarat’s Congress legislators and the subsequent income tax raids on Karnataka’s Minister for Power D K Shivakumar, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Prime Minister Narendra Modi glided past the Congress Party to become the largest party in the Rajya Sabha.
When Sampathiya Uikey took her oath of affirmation last week, she made history for the BJP by edging the Congress off its perch in the 245-member upper house of parliament. The BJP now has 58 members to the Congress’ 57. Uikey was elected unopposed in a by-election for the Rajya Sabha seat held by federal minister Anil Madhav Dave, who died in May this year.
The Congress could have retained the lead had it had enough support in West Bengal from where it is set to lose one seat to Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress in the current round of biennial elections. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who is also Leader of the House in the Rajya Sabha, said the BJP becoming the Number 1 party is a “natural consequence of our support base increasing”.
“We are in power in most states (18 at last count) and since the Rajya Sabha is a council of the states, the strength of the BJP has to be reflected,” he said.
The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) with 77 members on its side is still short of a simple majority that is required to pass most laws. The United Progressive Alliance (UPA), of which the Congress is the major component, has 84 seats.
But that is soon going to be short-lived with the change of government in Bihar. Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal-United (JD-U) has 10 members in the Rajya Sabha. Although senior leader Sharad Yadav is ambivalent as to whom he would support, the majority of JD-U members will vote with the BJP now that the two parties are partners in Patna.
That should take the NDA well past the UPA but a simple majority will still elude Modi. But the Prime Minister Modi can take comfort from the thought that he has friends in Tamil Nadu’s AIADMK (13 members) and Odisha’s Biju Janata Dal (8), besides the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) which, with its three members, is slowly moving closer to the BJP. That should put him within striking distance of the magic number which, hopefully, will finally be met by April next year when Uttar Pradesh sends its 10 new members.
Venkaiah Naidu will be the new Chairman of the Rajya Sabha later this week. Although a dyed-in-the-wool BJP-RSS member, Naidu has already pledged to be a “non-party man”. Nevertheless, having one of its own at the top will not hurt the BJP.
The economy may not be what Modi had wished for three years into his reign what with industrial production at its lowest in four years and unemployment figures showing no sign of leaving the red zone. But the monsoon has been benign in most parts for the second consecutive year and inflation on various parameters has been under good control for a fair bit of time now, a fact that was borne out by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) reducing interest rates by 25 basis points last week.
Experts feel that the economy is not going to turn around even if the RBI were to have cut the rate by 50 points. For that to happen the investment climate has to turn favourable. Much needs to be done towards this end. Both demonetisation and the goods and services tax (GST) have been received well by industry and people in general and that is a good sign for still more game-changing reforms.
The move to sell off loss-making Air India is a step in the right direction although it remains to be seen what the final outcome will be on that front. There are several other businesses that the government has no business to be in, almost all of them vestiges of Soviet-era socialism.
But disinvestment or sell-off of government property has to necessarily address the labour issue. Labour reforms are a difficult area because simply imitating the capitalist West will not suit the Indian setting. The planners have to come up with fresh ideas to make sure that even as the government gives away control of projects and businesses, safeguarding employee interest will have to be accorded prime importance.
For long government-run enterprises have been the breeding ground for ennui thanks to the safety and security that these jobs provided. But that’s changing slowly. Even senior bureaucrats have been asked to pack up and go home after their performance reviews turned negative. Performance evaluation, independent of nepotism and friendship, must be made the guiding spirit for all government jobs be they in offices or factories or airlines. The salary at the end of the month should be earned for executing the desired work and not as a right for holding the job. And those who perform well should be incentivised to create an atmosphere of friendly competition.
If labour reforms are important, those in the judiciary and police are far more crucial. The bedrock of every stable and happy society is the dispensation of justice and by extension the implementation of judicial orders by the police as and where necessary. India’s democracy may be only 70 years old, but its judicial system moves as if it’s 700 years old. Judges even in the higher courts have been found to be illogical and uninformed, not to speak of those with unstable minds.
All these have to change. Actually they should have changed yesterday. Modi’s new stature as the master of all he surveys puts him in a unique position to get things done at double quick time. The handicap in the Rajya Sabha was a major hurdle. That is not the case anymore. Indians have shown that they are willing to sacrifice a lot for the greater common good. It is for Modi to harness that sentiment to take the country forward. If he succeeds he could well become the greatest prime minister India has seen. And if he doesn’t…


Congress missing 
a chance in Kerala
Even in Kerala, small as it is, Kannur is considered back of beyond. The 450-plus km journey from capital Thiruvananthapuram to Kannur on the state’s narrow, crowded highways is an arduous one and with every kilometre the significance of the far-flung district decreases. So when political murders took place almost on a weekly basis in Kannur, most of it was good enough just for a one-day headline and for the political parties a one-day general strike.
That changed dramatically late last month when Thiruvananthapuram itself witnessed the murder of a BJP-RSS activist allegedly at the hands of goons with allegiance to the ruling Communist (Marxist) party. If the murder of Rajesh Edavakode shook the state, it made national headlines for two consecutive days, forced Governor Palanisamy Sathasivam to summon Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and police chief Lokanath Behara to explain the situation, pushed federal Home Minister Rajnath Singh to warn Vijayan that political violence was unacceptable and even sent Finance and Defence Minister Arun Jaitley to Thiruvananthapuram to meet with the bereaved family.
While the Marxists refuted any link with the murderers and Vijayan asserted that the guilty will face befitting punishment, there is indeed doubt in the ruling party’s mind that things are beginning to go out of hand. There is even talk of the likelihood of President’s Rule in the state.
Vijayan has embarked on a damage-control exercise and as a first step has taken out full page advertisements in most national newspapers extolling the virtues of the state and his administration. How far such public posturing will wash remains to be seen.
But while the Left-Right face-off continues despite half-hearted attempts at reconciliation, the Congress Party is strangely relegated to the role of a mute spectator. And therein lies its folly.
If the Congress had taken to peace-making, calling press conferences and addressing rallies, the people of Kerala, fed up with the cycle of violence, would have greatly appreciated such efforts. Going one step further it could have unilaterally declared that henceforth it would not resort to general strikes that disrupt people’s lives. That sort of gestures would have endeared the Congress to people of the state. And that’s how you win confidence and votes. But who will tell the Congress?