How BJP Can Win Over its Enemy Nitish Kumar

So the run-up to upcoming general elections has started with some unpredictable scene. While the whole country was expecting this to be BJP Vs Congress Party war, a new face has made this fight multi-dimensional. Officially JDU and Nitish Kumar say that they have nothing in common with and will never ally with Congress Party. But the manner in which Nitish Kumar is attacking Narendra Modi with intensity increasing with proximity to the general elections, his actions are proving different than his words.
 

The best strategy for Congress Party is to make NDA allies fight each other because it can’t win next elections on the basis of its performance. It can only win if there is no one to challenge it. The biggest alleys of Congress are some of the most corrupt political parties and dynasties, be it Mayawati, Mulayam, DMK or NCP. In fact now UPA led by Congress Party is considered synonym with political corruption in India. Therefore it was important for the sake of the nation that all opposition parties with integrity should unite and give a tough fight to the Congress party. Alas, this is far from what is happening!
 

Nitish Kumar has been acting as an agent of Congress Party. His histrionics against Narendra Modi looks so ugly that it is but natural that his own personal integrity would be starting to be questioned. What does Bihar’s CM got to do with the CM of a faraway state which does not even share boundaries with it? People have failed to understand this and it will not be late when they will realize the truth behind Nitish’s veiled attack on Modi.
 

Nitish Kumar plays minority vote bank politics. His goal is to steal Muslim voters from going towards any other party especially Laloo’s RJD. Biased favors, policies and schemes made with communal vote bank politics in mind, state sponsored racial and communal discrimination – these are the less known sides of his so falled “Bihar’s growth story”. This is the dark side of his government and such communal politics is forcing him to attack Narendra Modi with the assumption that Muslims will love it.
 

JDU has 115 seats in Bihar assembly while BJP has 91. In the last elections, JDU added 27 seats while BJP won 36 new seats. In fact the speed at which BJP is gaining ground in Bihar, is also one of the worries of shrewd politician like Nitish Kumar.
 

So what should the BJP do to pacify Nitish’s attack? It should ask for what is its right. All across India when two equal parties make a coalition, there is also a fair sharing of power. Why should Nitish Kumar alone enjoy the CM’s Chair? Why should not there also be a CM from the BJP? I am sure if BJP demanded its right to have its own CM for rest of the term, Nitish Kumar will be forced to come down to fair terms.
 

Disclaimer: Views expressed are personal and are in no way linked to any organization associated with the author. The purpose of the article is for solely academic and brain storming purpose and there is no attempt to attack or malign the name of any party or person. In case of any complaints on this article or blog, please use the Guest Book entry.

Indian Democracy is Faulty on Caste and Religious Lines

I think our democracy is faulty because it has been exploited on religious and caste lines. It does not matter by which party, because if a fault line exists someone or the other will exploit it.
 

Ideally we should have declared a state religion after a separate nation was created for followers of Mhd. Since we chose a difficult path, religious minorities became vote banks and Hindus had to live with minority appeasements and also we keep seeing communal riots.
 

Next, caste politics decides who is going to win in most of the seats. The caste based politics stemmed from politics of payoffs by quota and other benefits. All our reservations, subsidy, and scholarships should have been for poor people below poverty lines irrespective of castes. But we made open casteism our state politics and hence worst kind of people came over to rule us, exploiting us by divide and rule policy!
 

I think there is no pride in the fact that our democracy is being exploited by petty people by dividing us on caste and religious lines. I know almost every wrong thing can be attributed to the dynasty ruling us, but I believe if they did not do it then someone else would have done it. We should stop state sponsored casteism and religious discrimination. Then only politics of growth will remain and India will see real growth…

Railway’s Kumbh Mela Surcharge is like Jazia Tax

Ever since Kumbh Mela has started this year 2013 at ancient city Prayag, TV News channels and print media have been bringing out many reports on the arrangements done by the government to facilitate the pilgrims. Everything was going alright and peacefully and the whole nation was getting tremendous positive energy by the good atmosphere created by the Kumbh. But then, as if in an anti-climax, an accident happened at Allahabad railway station which distressed all of us. But reading even little about the accident brings out many hidden truths:
 

Indian Railways had imposed Rs 5-20 tax called Mela Surcharge on everyone using its facility to reach to the Kumbh Mela. The surcharges are as follows:
 

Sleeper: Rs 5

AC Chair Car: Rs 10

3AC: Rs 10

2AC: Rs 15

1AC: Rs 20

The Target for Railways was: Rs 1000 Crores of Profit during the Kumbh Mela!
 

It was a shocking revelation that Indian Railways imposed a tax on Hindu pilgrims for completing their pilgrimage!!! Though there is some business logic in it – how could the Railways provide additional and exceptional services to the huge number of people traveling if it did not charge more? Total 10 Crore people were expected to visit the Kumbh and the number of foreign visitors is expected to be 10 Lakh! But the manner, in which the accident was handled, exposes the Railways to the core:
 

The Times of India reports that Railways had released only 50 medical boxes for the lakhs of passengers expected to come to the Allahabad Railway station on the Mauni Amavasya day. And when the accident happened, these boxes were nowhere to be found! And how did the accident happen in the first place?
 

The railway station was totally packed with lakhs of outstation pilgrims (who were forced by the authorities to leave the riverside immediately after taking the holy dip and hence had come to the railway station to travel to their places). Trains were running as late as 20 hours and were all packed. A train was expected to come at Platform number 4 but suddenly Railways announced that the train was arriving on Platform number 6! People rushed to change the platforms using the bridge. Then GRP (Government Railway Police) then lathi-charged (caned) the pilgrims to control the crowd! This created a panic in commuters who ran and stampede happened… It is clear that this was a “man-made” disaster!
 

Why I say Railway’s Kumbh Mela Surcharge is like Jazia Tax because the Railways taxed pilgrims but failed to provide then facility! Minister  “In charge” Azam Khan has resigned from ministry but it is expected that after some weeks pass he will be inducted back into the Samajwadi Party government in UP. 36 people are dead and so many injured. It is immensely sad the way Railways and the Government have used Hindu Pilgrims as Cash Cows for monetary benefits…
 

References:

Times of India, “No justification for Railways’ Kumbh surcharge”, TNN | Feb 12, 2013, 04.55 AM

Jagran Post, “Railways increase Kumbh Mela surcharge from 1st January”, 07 Dec 2012, 08:47 PM

Times of India, “Crowd mismanagement, change of platform caused Kumbh stampede: Witnesses”,  Feb 12, 2013, 12.40 AM

Afzal’s Execution tells Congress is desperate and ready to Risk

“Terrorist Mohammed Afzal’s execution may indicate desperation in the Congress Party to come up well before general elections, but the risks it is taking may not be best for the nation”
 

So finally, after a long wait, terrorist Mohammed Afzal Guru met his destined fate of being met with capital punishment. At the time of posting this post, Congress leader Manish Tewari has accused principle opposition party BJP for playing politics over its criticism of delay in the hanging. That there has been a huge delay can’t be denied. We just have to look at the timeline:
 

Attack on Indian Parliament: December 13, 2001
Sentenced to death by the court in Delhi: December 18, 2002
Death sentence upheld by Delhi High Court: October 29, 2003
Appeal rejected by Supreme Court: August 4, 2005
Actual execution: February 9, 2013

So the party in power can’t accuse the principle opposition party of playing the role of an opposition party. Finding fault lines in the govt is one of the main jobs of an opposition party. This verbal-war aside, the execution itself reveals disturbing truths about the way government is headed towards.
 

During the last 2009 General Elections, BJP had made Afzal’s hanging case a poll issue. It fared miserably in moving the masses and channelizing the voters on the issue of terrorism. By this time, Afzal’s issue was not even able to raise the brow of the voters. So the probability that the issue of pending-execution of Mohammed Afzal would have created some big difference in the upcoming general elections would be a far-fetched vision. So what made the Congress party go for it suddenly and unexpectedly?
 

One reason was to preempt BJP from keep citing pending execution as a failure of government and as a proof of minority appeasement politics which Congress Party plays. Narendra Modi often cited Afzal’s case as a big failure of govt, which would have been in the mind of Congress strategists for some time now. Then Dr. Subramanian Swamy had threatened to pull Manmohan Singh govt to the court, claiming that no-execution was equivalent to insult of the Supreme Court’s order! Then there can be a reason that Congress party always wanted to hang Afzal but the law and order situation was bad and hence had waited for a peaceful spell to thwart any hazard or riots and communal violence. Nothing can be far from the truth than this!
 

Over the last few months, the law and order situation and communal harmony has not been at its best. There was an atrocious attack from Pakistan side where the beheaded one of the Indian soldiers and took the head away (which they never gave back despite Indian side ‘asking’ for it). Then Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde made a provocative and colorful allegation on the BJP-RSS of so called terrorism, which resulted in charged moments. Lately, an FIR was filed against Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Dr. Praveen Togadia for so called “hate speech” when he tried to offer a reply to the hate mongering Owaisi. Just when everything was going from bad to worse, govt came up with this execution which resulted in some protests in the Kashmir valley. By all logic, Congress Party was not to lose a lot but would have won some minority votes if it kept Afzal’s execution pending. If it won the next elections, it could have gone ahead with the execution to honor the spirit of the law.
 

What this decision tells most is that the Congress Party is desperate to preempt the opposition parties from having any valid poll-matter. Then, perhaps more importantly it is a clever maneuvering of national psyche where systematically the government is trying to alter the mood of the nation towards anything other than the “real issues”. For how many days now “corruption” has not been in the news? The plan it seems is to keep people engaged and distracted in other issues which can make them forget the rampant corruption cases and scandals which used to break out till a few weeks back. The decision also tells that the govt is ready to take risk for its strategy. It is ready to risk communal harmony in order to win smaller brownie points which may not be in best interests of the nation.

Why Should BJP Declare its PM Candidate

“Will VHP endorse Narendra Modi for PM’s post at Kumbh?” This is a prominent headline in Hindustan Times today. Same is the case with all prominent news media, be it the newspapers or the TV news channels. All are busy focusing on Narendra Modi and speculating on whether he will be declared as BJP’s or NDA’s Prime Ministerial Candidate during the ongoing Kumbh Mela. And a lot of hype has been built around it. The suspicious part is that this whole “campaign” is media devised!
 

The timing of the campaign is much revealing. The campaign was started around the time Rahul Gandhi was declared Vice President of Indian National Congress (popularly called Congress Party) and the news became butt of a joke with people from all quarters ridiculing him and his credentials. Congress Party became uncomfortable, especially with the popular sentiment at the social networking sites and designed its own counter-propaganda initiatives to correct the poor image of Nehru/Gandhi dynasty scion. But the party could not find answer to the one question which was underlying everything, “Does Rahul Gandhi has it in him to become PM some day?” It was from this question, that a need arose to “divert” public attention away from the PM Candidate of Congress Party. Making the focus being diverted to BJP/NDA was a very logical choice. The fact that there were multiple contenders of the post from within BJP/NDA, gave it its much desired leverage.
 

Any discussion to declare Narendra Modi as PM’s candidate would certainly ruffle feathers of a lot of other contenders from within the BJP/NDA. And this media-fed campaign did produce the dividends for Congress Party. Internal fissures within NDA came to the forefront. JDU’s shrewd politician Nitish Kumar was encouraged to further his anti-Modi stance to win some more Muslim voters. BJP came out strongly in favor of Narendra Modi to silence Nitish somehow. Next, NDA’s key ally and an opposite pole of minority-politics player JDU, Shiv Sena came out in the support of Sushma Swaraj. News channels found it easier to keep stretching this campaign for Narendra Modi because of Kumb Mela. Modi’s recent visit to a college in New Delhi (SRCC) to address students was hyped by the media as if it was address to the nation of a future Prime Minister. Everything is falling in the line of what Congress wants!
 

Because of multiple contenders for PM’s role, if BJP/NDA wins the next general elections, it is logically in the best interests of the party to not declare its PM Candidate in advance. Its focus should be on the wrong-doings of the Congress led UPA government’s misdeeds and failures and it should come out as “one team” against the incumbent. Therefore any discussion on “Who should BJP declare its PM Candidate?” is counterproductive to BJP/NDA’s interests. But logically what is wrong for the BJP is good for the Congress Party and using its network and leveraging its power position, the Congress Party is trying to keep the national attention on BJP’s candidate instead of its own!
 

Now the biggest question is: Will the Indian Public look through this design or will they be fooled by the Media barons?