Third Front a hollow threat

The much talked about idea of a political ‘Third Front’ has lost steam. The formation of the front, created mainly by the Left parties (mainly CPI and CPM), has been announced at least thrice since the Left withdrew its support to UPA mid 2008. But now it is trying to silently distance itself from the idea. In reality, the front – supposedly a ‘third’ political alternative to Congress-led and BJP-led government – has been a foolish idea right from its conception. Prakash Karat, having failed to topple the UPA government on the Nuclear deal, wanted to desperately come up with some damage control measure, since his ability of decision making and steering the communists in right direction (I mean left direction) - was seriously at stake. And so he came up with this idea - of a non-Congress, non-BJP front. And surprisingly he did initially find takers in a bunch of political parties that were completely clueless about what they were supposed to do to expand their role at national level.

The already dissolving third front was initially comprised of mainly regional parties which do not exert as much influence as the Congress or the BJP at national level. Apart from the Left parties (CPI, CPI-M, Forward Block and other left parties), the other constituents of the front were TDP, AIADMK, TRS, and few other useless parties like Deve Gowda’s JD-Secular (JD-S). In true sense the Congress and the BJP are the only national level parties and frankly speaking only one of these two deserve to come to power with or without support of smaller parties. There was another national level party - Janata Dal (JD). But it disintegrated speedily into factions ranging from JD-A to JD-Z. Not really that many. Humor aside, but there are so many factions of the former Janata Dal that it’s hard to keep count of those: JD-U, RJD (Lalu), LJP (Paswan), JD-S (Gowda), BJD ( Biju Patnaik) and so on. A classic example of how a national party broke down into regional parties.

The third front has always faced entry and exit of partners before every fresh announcement of its formation.

• Mayavati’s BSP was a part of it for initially as the lure of making her the front’s PM candidate was too good to be ignored. But now Maya is no longer with the front.


• Sharad Pawar led NCP had also shown inclination towards the third front at the very beginning. But Pawar made a couple of U-turns and now he doesn’t look too serious about joining the front.


• Chandrababu Naidu (TDP) did not want to get along with Congress or BJP. Understandable. But what made him see ideological similarities in Left tha he chose to be a part of the front ? Only he knows.


• AIADMK chief Jaya Lalitha initially agreed to be a part of the front, but now she has confirmed that she will look for allies after post poll.


• TRS has formally dumped the front and decided to join NDA since BJP promised the party to give serious consideration to carve Telangana state out of existing boundaries of AP.


• Deve Gowda is not in a state to figure out what to do. He is being totally sidelined since his party is expected to win only two seats. Independents would have more demand than him. His son has met Sonia Gandhi.

This shows that there are too many cracks already in the front. Not surprising when parties with non-intersecting political agendas and ideologies come together. As Advani said – “Indian politics is mostly bi-polar. Not aligning with Congress or BJP does not mean that there is a new front. Post elections, it wouldn’t be surprising to see the constituents deserting the front and aligning with either Congress or BJP”. Well, we don’t have to wait even that long, the front has already started dissolving even before the elections are over. As one Congress leader said – all he can see in the third front is ‘negativity’. He is darn right. The Left-exhibited negativity is going to overshadow all other parties in the front. Karat became too over-confident too early about the success of his idea. He even claimed that he would be the one in position to demand support of UPA, rather than extending support to UPA. A few sensible people that surprisingly do exist in CPM seem to have reminded Karat that he may fall on his face on his claims. Karat soon went on back foot and is now saying that he is open to idea of supporting UPA.

The reality is there really is no alternative to Congress-led or BJP-led government. Each have their own drawbacks (Congress favors minoritism and reservations and BJP has religious quirkiness). But both the fronts agree on the most important front - development, both have a market-friendly thinking and have leaders who are pro-reforms. Left on the other hand has vowed to review each of the positive pro-development reforms done during UPA tenure and threatened of rolling them back it sees a need to do so. That would be a disaster. Remember unlike last 5 yrs, the Left will be ‘in’ the government and not an external supporter – and that would be too harmful.

Nevertheless if the parties in the front do get a sizable chunk of the vote share due to reasons like sheer luck, or poor voter turnout or division of votes between too many candidates, it can get to play king maker. We have had several incidences in the past where a leader of a regional of a third front has become PM by cobbling up external support from other parties. Examples are – Deve Gowda, Chandra Shekhar, I.K. Gujaral, and even Morarji Desai (in 1978). But none of these have lasted full term and on the contrary have fallen apart quickly. It’s not possible to keep too many ideologically differing parties knitted together for too long time. Too many people have to be kept happy at the same time and that doesn’t work well for the country. Alliances like UPA or NDA have been time tested ones on stability. And if third front does get a fair share of votes, then the best solution is to keep it away from power. And that can happen if the two mainstream groups join hands. Yes, it means Congress and BJP should join hands.

The idea of Congress and BJP coming together may sound silly, but is a very logical and powerful idea that would be India’s interest. Consider at the following facts:

• All pre-poll analyses and surveys indicate that the Congress and BJP would be the top two leading parties but would be far from majority. UPA and NDA have seen several allies leaving them.


• The Left led third front after coming to power has promised to rolling back the economy would be disastrous. Prakash Karat is more dangerous than Maya, Lalu, Paswan all put together.


• Sharad Pawar a supposedly ‘true’ ally of Congress attended the joint Left-BJD-NSP rally in Orissa. It is nothing but a clear warning that he wants to claim PM’s post and can even ditch the UPA and join hands with Left. Sharad Pawar, although being a sharp administrator and an able leader, has always ridden on politics of back-stabbing and greed. With only a handful of seats in NCP’s name nationwide, he should realize that he deserves nothing more than a couple of cabinet ministries.


• Can we afford Maya holding the top post of this nation ?


• After all over past years we have seen political rivals joining hands for a common cause. We see businesses acquiring (or you can call them uniting with) rival businesses in order to achieve a common goal. Why not then in politics. The common goals here are variety of issues ranging from development, reforms, foreign affairs, international policies, defense, pro-western and pro-USA alignment and many more. And the advantage is that both BJP and Congress have leaders who agree to a common agenda on all these issues. We don’t mind having two PMs in the five-year term, each playing his role for 2.5 years as a part of power sharing deal. This will have multiple advantages – one, with nonsense parties like Left and other non-development parties out of picture development reforms can proceed on full steam. Second, BJP and Congress can both curb each other’s extreme activities – like BJP going overboard on religious issues and Congress going overboard on appeasing minority communities.


• Investor confidence would get a boost on seeing the two most pro-develompment parties coming together. FDI would go up and Stock Market would get the much needed boost.

Poll results would be out on May 16th and this possibility will remain a dream. P.A. Sangma and a couple of other Congress veterans have already expressed this idea openly to media. P.A. Sangma claimed that Rajiv Gandhi would have welcomed this idea. If only this possibility turns into reality. This had the potential to turn into a model so sustainable that voters would have preferred this forever. The regional parties would have had to either sit in the opposition or pack their bags and vanish from playing a role at national level. The biggest benefactor of this arrangement would have been the people of this nation for whom government exists in first place.

Authored by: Mandar Garge

Go home, Home Minister

Chanakya often used to stress in his writings - "Having no ruler is better than having a bad one". Had he been alive today the first person he would have applied this maxim to would be the current home minister.

What’s the responsibility of a Home Minister ? – even an illiterate would know. Unfortunately our hon. Home minister doesn’t know it himself. Home minister is the country’s highest authority responsible for maintaining the internal security and law and order. It’s an authority to which all the internal-security forces and police-forces in the country directly or indirectly report to and look up to for guidance and orders. But what a tragedy - at the very helm of this hierarchy is a leader who has exercised this authority - to refrain from harming the terrorists rather than - to crack down heavily on them. Why ? Just to keep a particular section of Indian societly happy. What a shame.

While Patil was in-charge of the country’s internal security, hundreds of people were being killed in several blasts across the nation:

October 2005: New Delhi - 62 killed, hundreds injured.
Mar 2006: Varanasi - 20 killed.
July 2006: Mumbai trains – over 200 killed and 700 injured.
September 2006: Malegaon(MH) - 30 killed, around 100 injured.
May 2007: Hyderabad - 11 killed.
August 2007: Hyderabad - 32 killed, 35 injured.
October 2007: Rajasthan - 2 killed.
January 2008: CRPF camp, Rampur – 8 killed.
May 13, 2008: Jaipur - 65 dead, over 150 injured.
July 25, 2008: Bangalore – 2 killed, 12 injured
July 26, 2008: Ahmedabad - 56 killed, over 200 injured
September 2008: New Delhi – 30 dead, 90 injured
October 2008: Assam - 78 dead, over 300 injured

Terrorists have thrived in his rule. Intelligence failure has been alarming. And what has the Home minister done each time ? Nothing more than visiting the blasts sites (a day or two after the blast – when Sonia gets time to visit them) and issuing the same old statements like - “tehkikat chal rahi hai” (investigation is going on) – and making sure that he pleases Soniaji by mentioning without failure 'how she has been prompt to visit the blasts sites’. If this is what Patil thinks is the job of a home minister, then it’s time for him to pack his bag and go home. The same old excuses, same old statements every time a new blast happens. When you see him talking on TV clueless and with utter lack of confidence, it makes your blood boil. An RTI query should be initiated to check how he has been spending his time in office. It probably will reveal that he has been killing time all the time, apart from bowing down to Sonia every now and then.

What is most infuriating is his extreme softness towards the terrorists because they belong to minority community in almost all the cases. Look at the Afzal Guru case. Patil has been avoiding executing the SC’s order (of hanging Guru) in order to not hurt the minority community. In contrast, the case of Sarbarjeet - who by all indications seems to be innocent - did not move Patil’s heart even a bit. When asked for Center's intervention to save Sarbarjeet, the home minister replied - “if you ask for hanging of Afzal Guru, how can you ask for mercy for Sarbarjeet?”. A classic example of only caring about minority sentiment.

Another example: After Jaipur blasts, when the Rajasthan government sent his ministry a strongly worded letter asking its permission to allow dealing toughly with illegal Bangladeshi migrants, the home minister replied that the Bangladeshi immigrants be treated as victimized refugees and treated softly. Needless to say, this infuriated the BJP-led Rajasthan government.

Talking of illegal immigrants, the home mininster has been blatantly ignoring the fact that 'internal security' also means keeping out illegal immigrants as well as 'legal' potential immigrant terrorists. Look at the following statistics of legal Pakistani entrants who have gone missing during Shivraj's tenure, after their visas expired:

7043 in 2005, 7650 in 2006, 7404 in 2007, 9636 till date in 2008

Extremely troubling facts. Clearly an indication of possibility of ISI taking legal route (through legitimate visas) to spread terrorists in India. While Army is doing its best to foil infiltration bids across LOC, Shivraj Patil is doing his best to foil efforts of the Army, by his inaction. As a minister he must be getting security updates like these every morning, but he seems to be caring only about security issues of the Gandhi clan. For instance the home minister promptly took strong view of the slackness in the security provided by UP government to Rahul Gandhi during his recent visit to Kanpur. Shivrajji, you could have diverted atleast 10 percent of that promptness to addressing security concerns of hardworking people of this country.

Minutes after the recent Delhi blasts when Delhi was burning and when the home minister was expected to rush to the site immediately, what did our dear home minister do ? Took time to change his clothes twice before briefing the nation on these blasts. And he visited the blasts only after Sonia found time to visit it herself. What a looser. Does he even have a mind and soul of his own ? He would be quicker in attending Sonia's birthday party than rushing to a blast site. Following the Delhi blasts, when Sonia convened a high level Congress party meeting to review the security situation in the country, she intentionally skipped inviting Patil, who, as a home minister should have been the real in-charge of such a meeting. Pressure had been building up for his resignation to which Patil replied – “I will not quit as my leader has faith in me” - may be, but the people of the country don’t. So please step down Mr. Patil. Patil also said “I will quit if my party wishes so”. On top of that, Patil has been blatantly rejecting pressures to even amend existing terror laws in order to make them more effective. On the contrary he has been saying that existing laws are enough. Well the laws may be enough, but your actions are not. As one congress leader rightly said "we dont need more laws, we need more action from the home minister". A non-performer like him, who seriously lacks the will to tackle terrorism in the country – should actually be expelled with humiliation of highest order before he offers to resign himself (which I don't think will happen as Patil doesn’t have the guts nor the humility to accept his miserable failures).

To Modi's claim that 'he had given PM a hint about Delhi blasts before they happened', Patil reacted saying that 'his ministry had the information even before Modi had it'. Really ? Then why didn't you act Shivrajji ? Were you waiting for your madam's permission ? You should learn a thing or two from Narendra Modi, from the way he made Gujarat police crack Ahmedabad blasts case in record time. But before he learns that, he should be removed from Office. Maharashtra should publically disown Shivraj Patil and India should expel him to Bangladesh which tirelessly keeps pushing illegal immigrants into India to whom Patil has managed to provide a safe heaven.

Post trust-vote scenarios

Now that the trust-vote is over and Manmohan Singh and his team has emerged triumphant, let’s look at the prevailing scenarios in different political groups:

UPA / Government:
The UPA has managed to kill two birds with one stone: 1) The N-deal will sail through and 2) The Left has been left behind and there is hope for some key reforms to be completed before general elections next year. Manmohan Singh has emerged as the real winner over Prakash Karat. But with the victory in its kitty, its already started misusing it. The Congress now seems to have taken up the Sethu-Samudram project, not caring about sentiments of the majority comunity. Thats not a good way to pay back the people who really wished for your survival in the trust vote, Mr. Singh.

Samajwadi Party:
SP has managed to be on the winning side. And no way it’s going to lose its Muslim vote base as the minority parties have themselves endorsed the N-Deal to be one that is in the interest of the country.

CPM/CPI:
Left has been brutally hurt, devastated. Prakash Karat and other senior leadership has come under the line of fire for having driven the Left front towards embarrassment. Another setback they suffered was speaker Somnath Chatterjee’s blatant defiance of party orders to resign before the vote-of-trust event. Somnath with his graceful conduct of speaker’s chair duties, proved that he was driving in an apolitical seat.

Third Front/UNPA:
The third front was a joke right from its conception. It was loosely cobbled-up front of political parties that were desperate to find an identity in the national politics controlled by either Congress-led UPA or BJP-led NDA. Mulayam Singh dumped them. They somehow got trapped in the Maya-jaal. The directionless front suddenly found a ray of hope in Mayawati who was with the UPA till recently. What a pity. Mayawati – with a meager 17 MPs started day dreaming of ousting the incumbent government to become the next PM. She has even blamed the UPA and NDA to have worked together to keep her away from PM post. Well Maya memsahib, take it easy. Don't aim higher than your reach . Try to gulp only what you can digest.
And what has happened to Chandrababu Naidu ? Has he gone insane to have expressed his support for Mayawati as PM? Being out of power has rusted his brains probably. Trying to defeat the government by projecting Mayawati as the prime ministerial candidate is like, as Bal Thakeray mentioned in his mouth piece - "using a a medicine thats more dangerous than the disease".

BJP/NDA:
BJP has been the biggest looser of all. The greed with which BJP showed its desperation to come into power has really damaged its image. BJP has been shamelessly opposing the deal, even though it was Mr. Vajpayee who wanted to seal this deal during his tenure. Were BJP in power, it would have definitely accepted the deal, probably even in an inferior form. Their argument against the deal has been shallow and without any real basis. Several senior BJP leaders were tight-lipped about their views on the deal. That speaks volumes about the real mood in the party. L.K. Advani has become so desperate to be the PM that he didn’t have the patience and the will to wait another 8-9 months when elections were due by their natural course. Rather than debating on the pluses and minuses of the deal, he kept on arguing about the policy failures of the government during the trust-vote, as if it was an election pitch. BJP has showed the same impatience it showed in 2004. It served them right to be left to bite their nails as UPA smoothly sailed through the trust-vote.

As for us people – more than 50 percent of Indian population doesn’t even know what this fight was all about. The attempt to thrust early elections upon us simply out of personal egos and political agendas has been thwarted.

Singh is King

For once, Dr Manmohan Singh has acted like a PM. Less than a year ago, he had to back off from the N-deal, due to fear of early elections imposed by the threat of a Left pull-out. That too when conditions were in UPA's favor. A sad PM had stated that his was not a single-issue government and it was not obsessed with it. Opposition labeled him ‘the weakest PM ever’. What went without much notice then was a statement issued by foreign secretary Shyam Saran that “Dr. Singh was a resilient man and all was not over for him with the N-Deal”. Eight months later the nation is witnessing the truth in that statement.

Dr. Singh’s reluctance to bow down before the Left on N-deal highlight's a never-before-seen facet of his personality - a tough leader. He acted fast in this now-or-never situation to shed off forever, the ‘weak PM’ label attached to his name. Sonia’s strong support to his do-or-die stand deserves as much admiration as does her ability to unite UPA members to put up a show of strength backing the deal at the cost of Left support. She has again proved to be a 'powerful' leader by using her unquestioned authority when it was much needed. Not only has she quelled the opposition within the Congress party but also put full energy in finding new allies to replace the Left. If that wasn't enough she asked her party workers to prepare for early elections.

But Sonia’s hold over the party is not surprising. What has surprised the nation is how and when did Manmohan Singh turn into an astute politician? What has stunned the people of this nation is his persuasive force behind convincing Sonia that this time enough was enough and the government better initiate the deal and sink itself rather than accepting an embarrassing defeat again, at the hands of Left and a loss of face internationally. This too when conditions couldn't have been worse for the ruling coalition to confront early polls. What brought out this change in him ? Was it the last four years of constant arm-twisting and pressure tactics by the Left? He pulled the trigger and there was no turning back. He has not only amazed the nation but even the political heavy weights in UPA who used to look down upon him till now. None of the UPA leaders have dared to oppose an enraged PM and his daring attempt to dump the Left and find other allies even when it could have cost him his government.

The historic and most dramatic vote-of-trust motion till date, which resulted in favor of the PM has proved that he has ruled the roost. He has emerged the real winner, the real king. It was pleasure to see his dejected and subservient face turn into one that commands the respect the righteous and highly qualified PhD–PM deserves. A label of a 'king-maker' , a 'tough leader’, a ‘powerful politician' would be a feather in his crown, that history would find hard to ignore.

Well done Mr. Prime Minister !

Nuke deal has nuked the reds

In September of 2006 when the Left had succeeded in blocking the government from pursuing the Nuclear deal, the realization of being powerful and influential at national level, was at its peak in the Left camp. Prakash Karat's success in stalling the deal that put India in a strategic alliance with the USA, had catapulted him to the top of the most powerful politburo members in the Left front. Even veteran comrades like Jyoti Basu and Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee were asked to shun their pro-nuclear-deal opinions. Media almost labeled Karat as the new ‘most powerful politician’ in the country.

In June 2008, when the UPA’s willingness for N-Deal surfaced again, a ‘Red’ alert was issued as expected. Same tough stand from the Reds – of holding government ransom to their withdrawal threat, anticipating similar success. But this time their calculations went terribly wrong. Congress and UPA not only dumped the Left but also managed to pull Mulayam Singh’s Samajwadi Party from UNPA's camp into its own. Left’s dream of a non-BJP, non-Congress third front was shattered. An already troubled Mulayam Singh, who was trying to find an ally to put up against his nemesis - Mayawati, quickly chose Congress’ carrot over Karat. Left was left dumb-founded.

Left's objection was based on a rusted ideology which supports an alignment with China rather than the US. This is in reality a wish of very few intellectuals in the Left camp for whom serving Chinese interests under the hood of communism stands above national interest. It’s unfair to force this outdated view even onto one's own party, let alone the entire nation that favors strategic alignment with the USA. Hurt by being discarded by UPA, Left withdrew its support and announced that it has 'dumped' the UPA. The reality is that the reds were the ones who mercilessly dumped. Left claimed that the deal was anti-Muslim. What kind of ridiculous assessment is that? If catering to the energy security of the country is anti-Muslim then so is the billions of dollars of trade that India does with the US. Its sheer commerce. What has religion to do with it? This nonsense claim was quickly refuted by 'Maulana' Mulayam and even by various Muslim bodies across the country.

Following this unexpected blow, the moral in the Left Camp has diminished. Prakash Karat’s outdated ideology has left the comrades red-faced and embarrassed. While Manmohan Singh, Sonia, Mulayam, Amar – all displayed their political acumen and harmless opportunism (as of pre-trust vote), comrades like Prakash Karat, AB Bardhan, D Raja, Sitaram Yechuri – all have shown that they seriously lack the political brains needed for the less-than-perfect but realistic modus operandi of politics in a country as complex as India. 2004 elections gave them a never-before kind of opportunity to have a strong presence (59 MPs) at national level. If they claim that their ideology brings social equality, then why did not they actually share the responsibility of governance? Instead they stuck to their irresponsible behavior by staying out of the government and continuously embracing negativism, opposing development, reforms, privatization, foreign investments and all those policies that talked about progress. Left has so many learned leaders, but they just don’t seem to learn that India is embracing globalization and capitalism at a tantalizing speed and if they don’t adapt themselves to this new India, they will soon become history. Well, nation would love to see Left becoming history. The exodus of comrades from the government has turned to be a blessing and actually pushed the sensex up a little. With elections still 8-9 months away, UPA plans to complete several of the reforms that it couldn’t complete without Left’s consent. The Reds just got nuked.

Prakash Karat has made the nation proud by orchestrating Left’s political demise. CNN-IBN’s National affairs editor labeled the rigid Left as the ‘new untouchables’ in politics. While Congress and UPA kept their cool, Left has been made to look like a fool. The communists' authority in their ruling states should also take a beating the way Karat's authority has. Left has lost its face. Prakash Karat, who was basking in the glory of being called ‘the most powerful politician’ - something he never deserved, has now become an object of ridicule - something he aptly deserves. The expulsion of a veteran politician and a right-of-left thinker, Somnath Chatterjee has added to his list of sins. This step has weakened the party even more. This is surely going to create a rift in CPM. Karat is the one who should be expelled from the party for forcing his Stalinist-style, cold-war era kind of control over a party that is itching for a change of face. Somnath Chatterjee was offered heart-felt support from across the breadth and width of political spectrum after his unfair expulsion from CPM. Nobody would care a damn for Karat's expulsion. It’s time to send such ideological hardliners to permanent political exile.