The puppy-under-motor car analogy drawn by Gujarat chief minister and BJP’s national election committee chief Narendra Modi whose prospects of becoming prime minister following the 2014 General Election are improving by the day, reveals a dangerous mindset. Responding to a question by a Reuters correspondent on whether he experienced remorse over the massacre of 2,000 Muslims in a pogrom under his watch in Gujarat in 2002, this BJP strongman and alleged youth icon with patently faux sanctimony said he felt the same remorse as he would have if a puppy was crushed under the wheels of a motor car “driven by someone else”.
Since Modi made that revealing analogy, BJP spokespersons have issued numerous clarifications and explanations. Yet the point that seems to have been missed in all media debates and commentaries, is of trivialisation of the worst communal pogrom in recent memory. In pathetically misgoverned contemporary India in which stray dogs roam streets freely, and vehicular traffic is chaotic in every urban agglomeration, the accidental death of puppies under rashly driven motor cars are commonplace. To equate this — let’s face it — routine occurrence with the deliberate, targeted murder of 2,000 sentient citizens of a particular religious community is a deep insult, which has rightly aroused widespread indignation within right-thinking members of society.
Curiously this crude politician has emerged as the icon of youth countrywide. If so, it’s an indication of how poorly the nation’s youth are educated. Any student of history should be aware that what Modi — a former canteen contractor without any notable academic achievement — is unwittingly practicing is classic fascism, i.e, forging a big business-politician alliance contemptuous of civil liberties and labour. This was the politics that Adolf Hitler and Gen. Franco practiced to come to ruin, but not before inflicting huge damage and suffering upon their societies. Juvenis emptor (‘youth beware’).
Last priority
A defining feature of déclassé politicians who have scrambled their way to the top of Indian politics, is astonishing disregard of their obligation to create meaningful, well-paid jobs in the national interest, especially for youth of the country. This characteristic of the species politicus indicus was brought into sharp focus by Maharashtra home minister R.R. Patil when he peremptorily imposed an absolute ban on Mumbai’s once-famous dance bars in 2006. Quite obviously, this small-town simpleton’s imagination was pushed into overdrive by the prospect of nautch girls gyrating to Bollywood music in men’s bars, prompting him to order their shutdown in Mumbai, throwing 75,000 bar girls and 125,000 other people employed in these establishments — and reportedly earning a decent living — out of work. It took seven years of determined litigation by dance bar proprietors for Patil’s foolish diktat to be struck down by the Supreme Court, which held that the state government’s ban of dance bars was illegal and violative of the proprietors’ (and bar girls) fundamental right to carry on a business, trade or profession under Article 19 (1) (g) of the Constitution.
During the past three months, several huge employment generating projects have been canceled because of onerous terms and conditions imposed by the Central and state governments upon foreign and domestic investors. Among them: the Korea-based steel company POSCO and Zuari Agro have canceled their plans to establish a $5.3 billion (Rs.31,000 crore) steel plant and a Rs.5,000 crore urea manufacturing plant in Karnataka; Warren Buffet won’t be investing in the ‘liberalised’ Indian insurance sector; Ikea Furniture is a doubtful proposition as is Walmart.
These ventures which would have generated over 1 million well-paid jobs for heads of 5 million households, have been canceled. For India’s myopic politicians every consid-eration ranging from protecting national sovereignity, prevention of monopolies, combating neo-colonialism, etc is a greater duty than generating well-paid jobs.
Morality tale
The death of former union minister Arun Nehru on July 25 marked the culmination of a life and career characteristic of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, which has dominated Indian politics and the nation’s failed national development effort since independence: it promised much, but delivered little.
Right until the 1980s, Arun Nehru was a fairly successful corporate executive who rose to the position of managing director of Jenson and Nicholson, the well-known paints company. But after Indira Gandhi returned to power in Delhi in 1980, and her son Rajiv was inducted into the party, Nehru was parachuted into the Congress. Subsequently after Mrs. Gandhi was assassinated in 1984 and Rajiv was duly sworn in as her successor, Nehru was appointed Union power minister and spectacularly improved the average plant load factor of the power sector from a miserable 48 to 56 percent within a few months, giving a huge boost to Indian industry.
Impressed by Nehru’s business management skills, your correspondent who was then editor of BusinessWorld asked for — and was given — an appointment to write a cover story on this proactive technocrat, who was enabling the Indian economy to break out of the so-called Hindu rate of (annual GDP) growth. After I arrived in Delhi on the due date, Nehru’s office kept me on hold for two days. Annoyed, I declined to meet with him despite several importuning calls from his secretary later on.
In retrospect, I believe that by his unwarranted arrogance — he never spoke to me personally — Nehru blew a great opportunity. At that time in the mid-1980s, BusinessWorld was the country’s most respected business magazine, and I had come fully prepared to write a positive story on this new wonder boy of Indian politics. The story could have made him a darling of India Inc and propelled him into the industry ministry, his natural portfolio. Instead, Nehru’s career took a different trajectory into the Union home ministry where he became entangled in the Bofors scandal, and shortly thereafter fell out with Rajiv Gandhi. In 1989, he joined forces with another dissident, V.P. Singh, who formed the short-lived Janata Dal government, and after Rajiv’s assassination in 1991, Nehru spent the rest of his life in shallows and misery, a great talent for organisation and management wasted. A poignant morality tale of hubris and fall.