LK Advani, who finds himself discarded by the party he built, knows a thing or two about Gujarat and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). A refugee from Sindh, his constituency is Gandhinagar, Gujarat’s capital, whose voters sent him to the Lok Sabha much before they gave power to the BJP.

Advani knows the Gujarati voter and how the BJP was built in Gujarat — not through the genius of its current chief minister, Narendra Modi. The BJP took Gujarat over decades, starting with the BJP’s earlier avatar, the Jana Sangh, which got less than two per cent of the vote when it began contesting on the Hindutva platform in the 1960s.

The party built its constituency in the state with immense patience and by adding on a few percentage points in the popular vote through the 1970s and the 1980s. It was Advani’s Ayodhya gambit that finally won Gujarat over to the BJP. Gujaratis responded to the communalism of Advani’s message as no other state did and the Congress has not won an election in that state, or come close to winning it, after the Babri Masjid was pulled down.

The last time the Congress won a majority in Gujarat was, in fact, in 1985. So, it will be difficult to convince Advani that Modi is the magic ingredient for his party in that state. Advani also knows a thing or two about charisma built through a divisive and communal appeal. It was his own stock in trade till he decided, a few years ago, to moderate his image.

This knowledge is what got Advani upset at the coronation of Modi as the leader of the BJP for the 2014 general elections. Advani doesn’t buy the idea that Modi is indispensable and he might argue against the idea that Modi is even important. He was seething over the fact that people were seeing merit where, in his opinion, it did not exist or existed because of men other than Modi.

But he must pay for his own mistakes. It was, of course, Advani who saved Modi from being sacked when Atal Bihari Vajpayee wanted him to step down for his awful managing of the riots of 2002. And through all the years that Modi built his image at the cost of others in the BJP, Advani was silent. Modi finessed out first the old guard of his party in Gujarat. Men who built the BJP, like former chief minister Keshubhai Patel and undefeated six-term Surat MP Kashiram Rana, were forced to quit the party. Not because they had suddenly become secular but because Modi was threatened by them. They went to Advani, but he had no time for them. Modi then took over most of the powers of the cabinet, at one point holding the ministries of finance, home, industries, energy, mines and minerals, ports, Narmada and a few others. No other minister was even vaguely important. Advani did nothing to curb Modi’s power then, either. Modi took on, and defeated, even the RSS, by pushing away the man it had stationed in Gujarat to keep a watch on the party. This man, Sanjay Joshi, was humiliated after a sex scandal and remains on the margins. Advani did nothing.

And so, when Modi came after Advani’s job, having created his image through demagoguery in exactly the same way Advani did, there was nobody to save poor Advani.

In my opinion, it serves him right. No good comes out of divisive politics in the subcontinent. Advani took pride in building an ideological party but the problem with ideology is that a purer version of it always threatens the establishment. That is what has happened. Modi’s fresh Hindutva is more appealing for those who like that sort of thing than Advani’s faded version.

But how effective has been Advani’s short-lived mutiny? I think it will be more effective than it is thought to be. Even though Advani withdrew his resignation a day after he sent it in, the act will live on. It has already been given life by the uneasiness with Modi expressed by the BJP’s most important ally, the Janata Dal in Bihar. And every time Modi will now come out in public, he will face the question: but what about Mr Advani’s concerns?

The old man’s revenge isn’t over in that sense.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 16^th, 2013.

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I’m delighted the Congress lost all six by-elections in Gujarat last week.

The six seats, two for the Lok Sabha and four for the state assembly, now with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), were all earlier held by the Congress. Chief Minister Narendra Modi succeeded in blanking out the Gandhis and their underlings, who were only days ago, crowing about how their win in Karnataka heralded some sort of Congress revival.

Had the Congress won the by-elections in Gujarat, this would have been chalked down to the family genius and a decline in Modi’s charisma. The failure of the party to stand for anything, the real reason for its decimation, would have been covered up again.

Under Sonia Gandhi, the Congress has slowly surrendered the entire secular space in Gujarat to whoever wants it. The Congress in Gujarat does not stand for the values it claims in the rest of the country.

This process began when Sonia Gandhi hired Shankarsinh Vaghela only months after she became Congress president. Vaghela, a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh man, who had fought against other BJP leaders in Gujarat, was sulking with his party because it had not made him chief minister. He had not suddenly become secular when the Congress decided to make him its face in Gujarat.

Ever since then, and this was 15 years ago, the Congress strategy in the state has been not to insist on full-dress secularism but to ignore what was going on there and just bide time till power came automatically to it.

Everything it has done in Gujarat politically since has unfolded from this belief, capped by the remarkable manifesto that it put out late last year. The Congress did not even refer to the conviction of a minister in Modi’s cabinet for rioting and murder because it did not want attention to be drawn to the riots again. The thinking is that when such matters are referred to, the voter shows his angry Hindu side and then sides with the BJP.

The reason Sonia Gandhi accepts this is that she has been convinced by her political secretary Ahmed Patel, a Gujarati from Bharuch, that his state had become totally communal and there was no point in resisting the mindset of Gujaratis.

The results are before us. The Congress has not won a majority in Gujarat for 28 years (the last time was in 1985). Its tearing down of the Babri Masjid and two riots, one in 1992 and the other a decade later, gave the BJP the momentum that has kept it in power there longer than in any other state.

And this is unlikely to change in the total absence of the Congress from the field. What is present in Gujarat today is not the Congress of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. It is a party that, to be fair, is not anti-Muslim as the BJP is, but, depending on how one sees it, is either pragmatic or lacking in principle.

Sonia Gandhi thinks she is being pragmatic, but the fact is that too much pragmatism can produce a lack of principle and this has happened in Gujarat.

In any case, the giving up on secularism has proved, as the by-elections show once again, to be a failed strategy. Waiting for power to arrive at your doorstep on its own is stupid.

The Congress position in Gujarat is also an immoral and dishonest one because it is different from what the Congress serves up in the rest of the country.

At a time when the BJP is positioning Modi as leader of its campaign (though I don’t think he will be prime ministerial nominee), the Congress will need to counter him in Gujarat with something. Today, Modi is allowed to talk about other issues because the Congress does not challenge his record on communalism in Gujarat.

The brand of Congress in Gujarat, as an inclusive party that does not compromise with the vulgar anti-Muslim posture of the BJP, will need to be built once again.

It stands for nothing today.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 9^th, 2013.

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In my school in Surat, boys were split between the Kapil Dev loyalists (on top after he led India to the 1983 World Cup win) and the Sunil Gavaskar loyalists.

I preferred Gavaskar though I was a bowler. He was a writer and that interested me. He was articulate in print (his dull, stammering style of commentary was still in the future) and his first two books, Sunny Days and Runs ‘N Ruins, were first rate.

Kapil was inarticulate and frankly, not of the quality that Gavaskar was. I watched the opener master the West Indies attack when fast-bowling meant something different than it does today. Of all his qualities, Gavaskar’s stand out one was his courage. There were other batsmen with as much talent as him — the Chappell brothers, Viv and Barry Richards, Graeme Pollock, Geoffrey Boycott, Clive Lloyd and Pakistan’s Zaheer Abbas and Javed Miandad.

But none of them, whether through lack of opportunity (in the case of the South Africans and Viv Richards and Lloyd) or determination, have as good a record against the world’s greatest bowling attack as Gavaskar did.

In their careers, played at more or less the same time, Miandad averaged 29 against the West Indies and Zaheer Abbas only 18. I suspect Sachin Tendulkar would not have done well either, against the battery of Andy Roberts, Joel Garner, Michael Holding, Malcolm Marshall, Colin Croft, Wayne Daniel and Patrick Patterson. Gavaskar, without a helmet, averaged 65 against the most feared attack in history and took 13 centuries off them.

Over the years, especially after he retired, I knew that my hero was not perfect. There was the episode, 13 or so years ago, of cash found in his locker at Bombay Gymkhana. The newspaper I was then editing initially went slow on the story because its chairman was Gavaskar’s friend.

But his courage was intact. In his writing, he took on the hallowed Lord’s and the powerful Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). After the Indian Premier League (IPL) began, the Mumbai Mirror reported that Gavaskar and Ravi Shastri were on contract with the BCCI. They were being paid INR36 million a year, and this money was separate from their commentary and column writing contracts. So what are they being paid for? Kunal Pradhan, who originally reported the story, wrote this comment for the Economic Times, explaining the deal:

“In simple terms, the contracts mean that what you hear from Gavaskar and Shastri on TV and in their newspaper columns may not always be their own opinion, but often what the BCCI wants them to say. In the garb of professional media men, they act as spokesmen of the BCCI, protecting its interests on contentious issues such as the Decision Review System, and by highlighting umpiring mistakes that go against the Indian team while brushing aside those that go against the opposition.”

One of them, I think it was Shastri, defended this contract by saying it helped them see both sides. Does their behaviour validate this? Let’s have a look.

A couple of weeks ago, a scandal erupted in the IPL, the tournament that makes the BCCI the world’s richest cricketing body. Gavaskar’s response to player corruption and fixing in the IPL was to say: “I don’t understand how you can blame an organisation for what some individuals do. The BCCI does not have control over these players 24 hours in a day and for 365 days. It is just like any other organisation, there will be some bad people and you cannot blame that organisation. Everybody is going very harshly at the IPL just because three players out of a possible 270 have been caught so far, indulging in illegal activities.”

A few days later, the BCCI president’s son-in-law was named as one of those involved. At such a time, Gavaskar chose to write his column on the pressing matter of the intemperate language used by Australian player David Warner.

Gavaskar’s silence is shameful. He has become an embarrassment to his fans of decades and as I said, I am one of them. I am sorry to feel this, but I should have been with the Kapil Dev wallahs instead.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 2^nd, 2013.

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A recent movie made by two Pakistanis, Bassam Tariq and Omar Mullick, has made me revisit a subject about which I have written often. The film called These Birds Walk is about a man many regard as the greatest living Pakistani, Abdul Sattar Edhi. Not many outside the subcontinent know of Edhi. One reason is that he has wrongly been denied the Peace Nobel. In that, he resembles another South Asian.

No Nobel Prize for Peace was given in 1948. This was because the Nobel Committee was so embarrassed by its repeated ignoring of Gandhi, who was killed on January 30 of that year, that it chose to observe his passing in silence. It remains the most striking omission in the history of the prize. Much later, in 1999, the organisation published the background of why it continually rejected the man who transformed Hinduism, liberated India, inspired Martin Luther King to liberate Americans from their bigotry and is now called the apostle of peace.

In 1937, Gandhi was first nominated for the prize by the Norwegian parliament and Ole Colbjornsen of the Labour Party. “He is undoubtedly a good, noble and ascetic person,” the committee assessing him was told by an expert. On the other hand, he was “too much of an Indian nationalist”. On that ground, the prize that year was given to Viscount Cecil of Chelwood. History remembers him as the man famous for wanting all nations to speak the common language called Esperanto.

Gandhi was nominated again in 1938, 1939 and 1947. Each time, someone else was chosen. In 1948, Gandhi was nominated for the last time, this time by independent India. Even the London Times felt moved to admit that if Partition had not produced even more bloodshed than it did, “Gandhi’s teachings should get a substantial part of the credit”. But yet again, the Nobel Committee felt Gandhi was not deserving. The truth is that till 1960, only Europeans and Americans were deserving enough to win the award. Coloured people were coloured in their nationalism as much as in their skin. After Martin Luther King won the award in 1964, in his Nobel Lecture he said of Gandhi: “He struggled only with the weapons of truth, soul force, non-injury and courage.”

When he was martyred, Gandhi was considered for a posthumous prize, which would have been unique, because the Nobel is only given to the living. But just leaving the prize go un-awarded was thought a better way of acknowledging him. And in 1999, as we have seen, the committee felt moved enough by guilt to publish an explanation of its omission.

Knowing this background, it is difficult to understand why Abdul Sattar Edhi has not been given the Nobel Prize for Peace. In terms of impact, personal credibility and devotion, his services to humanity are unmatched. He began as a man, who sought to give the dead a respectable burial, but then began also to heal the living. Edhi currently houses 6,000 destitute people. He has saved 20,000 abandoned babies, raised 50,000 orphans and trained 40,000 nurses. These are staggering numbers and it’s puzzling and sad that the Nobel Committee has ignored him this long. Even if it gives him the award this year, it must ask itself why it took it till he was 85 to recognise his gift. And this, when it has continued its bizarre choices. Who could have thought that Henry Kissinger would win a peace prize? Or Yasser Arafat? What contributions to peace has Al Gore made, or for that matter, Barack Obama?

Edhi has much in common with Gandhi. Both are Gujarati and fellow Kathiawadis. Both are eccentric individuals produced by Gujarat’s superb mercantile community. Gandhi was a Bania and Edhi is a Memon, converted from the Lohana caste of merchants. Both felt their primary responsibility was social work. Both made this work their life — Gandhi for 60 years, till a fanatic took him away from us, and Edhi for even longer. Both lived in austerity and both were uncompromisingly secular. Both were ignored by the Nobel Committee, to its shame.

One of them is dead and cannot be given the award. The other, however, is alive. The Nobel Committee will have to again explain its omission if Abdul Sattar Edhi is not recognised by it this October for the hero he is. Awarding it to Edhi will raise the value of the Nobel Peace Prize. Pakistan and India must lobby strongly in his favour.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 26^th, 2013.

I wrote in a previous column about India’s growth flattening out. Despite having a poor per capita gross domestic product — about one-thirtieth of what it is in advanced nations — India’s growth has collapsed to an ordinary five or six per cent when not supported by foreign inflows. This is down from its peak of nine per cent-plus, which it achieved for four years under Manmohan Singh, and which is now looking unlikely for the near future.

Some think, in my opinion wrongly, that this problem can be addressed purely by more reforms. The more India opens itself to foreign money, the more transparent its systems of government are, the more efficient and less corrupt its bureaucracy, the better for its economy. That is the logic. None of this is exceptionable, though all of it assumes that the high growth path is something for which only the government is responsible.

I think we should also look elsewhere to seek an answer to why we cannot grow. I did not write about why this was so in my earlier piece because this brings us into the realm of culture. Economists have little regard for this sort of thing and their work assumes that the environment is everything.

There are almost no studies (Harish Damodaran’s is one) on India’s mercantile culture and the baniya ethic. Though it is often said that India’s entrepreneurial base is big, the evidence is that it is caste based and small. Among Muslims, it is even smaller, and that explains to me the sorry state of Bangladesh’s and Pakistan’s economy.

The second aspect of India’s economy is the lack of mobility. Being middle class in India is essentially a lottery of birth.

This is, of course, true of most nations and most cultures. Europe has an aristocracy, most obviously in England with its landed rich.

But in few places, is it as pronounced as in India. Here, fate doesn’t land us either in wealth or in the middle class. It sends us directly into a hell with almost no access to escape. The state has no resources to help you get out.

Even if you believe the government’s figures, a third of India is poor. The fact is that the government’s numbers are based on calorie consumption for immediate sustenance and food. Indians who earn Rs23 a day in villages and Rs29 a day in cities are not poor. A monthly income of Rs674 in villages and Rs860 in cities is thought to be sufficient. This compares with Rs22,000 a month in the United States.

In that sense, the poverty line of India is cruel. It is merciless and doesn’t allow the majority of Indians any money for shelter or access to education or health care or sanitation or anything else that civilised nations would consider as essential as food.

You could not have access to and money for any of those things listed above and still be considered not poor in India. You could have no money to travel anywhere for work or education and not be considered poor in India.

The argument people who draw this line have is that if it were raised to a more humane standard, perhaps 70 per cent of Indians would be regarded poor. But what is wrong with admitting that?

Peter Ong, a friend of mine from Australia, who consulted a newspaper in Mumbai, would often notice the poor of the city. “What’s her future?” he would ask of some urchin on the road as we drove past. At first, I was defensive and would mumble something about how it was all changing in India. But that was not the right answer. The child had no hope and would spend her life and die in poverty of a truly frightening kind.

Almost none of the work done historically by the church in Europe on poverty and education is done by religion in India. Our wealthy have little interest in philanthropy, though Azim Premji and Nandan Nilekani can lead us to think this is changing.

And the truth is that the Indian media is totally disinterested in poverty. This is because the reader has no interest in this — and as someone who has edited newspapers in three languages for many years, I can speak with some authority. To assume that, in such a place, politicians can legislate us back into the high-growth orbit is, to my mind, delusional.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 19^th, 2013.

The Congress recently won elections in Karnataka, and the side story was the deflation of Gujarat’s chief minister, Narendra Modi. He campaigned in the state (and received raucous crowds as usual) but his party was hammered. This is seen, correctly, as his inability to influence national elections.

To me, however, the side story is different. It is a story of Sonia and Rahul Gandhi’s shaming. The two campaigned aggressively in a state where their party was scheduled to win according to every opinion poll. In comparison, only a few months ago, they were all but absent from Gujarat, a state where they were headed for defeat.

Whatever else one may think of Modi and his managing of Gujarat, it is true that he is brave and commits himself. He would surely have known that his speeches would not sway an election in South India, but he came and he attacked the Congress. It was a selfless act for his party and a statement on his unchanging beliefs. This cannot be said of the Gandhis on the evidence of these two elections. They displayed opportunism and a fear of defeat that is bordering on cowardice. Let me give an example.

In the 2002 elections in Gujarat, as pointed out by The Hindu, the Congress had two manifestos. It had one in English, about secularism and “the soul of India”. It had another in Gujarati, where this was not referred to. The paper explained why this was the case:

“The Gujarati version of the manifesto has no space for secularism, the ideas of nationhood or even for denunciations of the Congress’ chief opponent that the English one has. This seems to suggest that the Congress has accepted the BJP’s formulation that concern for India’s secular Constitution is restricted to a rump of English speakers, some, no doubt, among its party members. What is terrifying about this ham-handed piece of political cynicism is the assumption that the English speaking/English reading class can be silenced with words. And, that the Congress’ claim to inheriting the legacy of independence can be sustained through a linguistically targeted text. It would be facile to suggest that the Congress and the BJP are the same creature. But, while the BJP actively pursues an ideological agenda, the Congress has reduced its own to context-free slogans. If those whose hopes are riding on a Congress victory expect justice, and through it, the restitution of the constitutionally guaranteed rights, life and liberty, then they will be disappointed. For, there is nothing in the Congress’ record to suggest that once in power, it will make such a course of action a priority.”

In December’s election, the English manifesto had also removed the obligatory references that were present 10 years ago. I was surprised at going through the manifesto to see that even the conviction of a minister was ignored. Only months before, Maya Kodnani, Modi’s minister for women and child welfare, was convicted for organising the murder of 98 Gujaratis, including three dozen women and children.

Why would the Congress choose to abstain from pointing this out? On television debates, I was told by Congress spokespersons that it was because “everyone knows it”. That was a lie. The fact is that the Congressmen of the state convinced Sonia that there was no gain in pushing a secular line in Gujarat. Most Gujaratis are communal and will reject the message — is the logic — so let’s move on from that. This was bought as pragmatism The Gandhis should have chucked the idea of winning in Gujarat and stood on a matter of principle. They have lost three elections in Gujarat anyway, so why sacrifice principle and ideology on such a poor gamble? The truth is that the line dividing pragmatism from opportunism can be fine and the Congress has crossed it.

Who will fight for pluralism in India if not the party of Gandhi and Nehru? They would be ashamed of the Congress today, and particularly of the opportunistic behaviour of Sonia and Rahul Gandhi.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 12^th, 2013.

How much principle should one have in politics in India? The high-minded and moral party is usually punished by the voter for acting on principle. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) refuses to reconcile with the Lingayat leader BS Yeddyurappa in Karnataka. The Congress refuses to reconcile with Jaganmohan Reddy in Andhra Pradesh.

In both instances, an ambitious man charged with serious corruption wanted to become chief minister. Both Yeddyurappa and Jaganmohan blackmailed their parties and broke them when they stood on principle and refused to give them power. And in both instances, the voter has disagreed with principle. The BJP lost a recent local body election after its vote was split by Yeddyurappa’s party and the Congress, too, lost after its votes were split by Jaganmohan’s party. In both instances, the defeat came after a significant chunk of the caste vote left with the leader.

The Indian voter picks his party confessionally, and will side with his caste. Corruption, governance, anti-incumbency and other such epithets are superficial for the most part and applied on top to justify what is essentially a success of community agglomeration by the party.

The voter doesn’t care about corruption and demonstrably corrupt people can return to power in India. The history of elections in Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar shows us this quite clearly and to look for other justifications is to be blind to reality.

The other aspect is to what extent issues matter in an election. We in the media would like to believe that it is policies, ideologies and governance that are the deciding factors. To recognise how removed the voter can be from all this, let’s look at two of India’s most cultured and literate states.

Next year’s general election in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal will exclude the two parties competing for government, the Congress and the BJP. Neither party will have many, and perhaps even any, seats from here.

These are two of India’s largest states and in both, it is totally irrelevant to the voter whether the Congress or the BJP rules from Delhi and whether or not Narendra Modi or an Italian woman becomes prime minister. Tamilians will vote for parties that are formed on the basis of linguistic and regional chauvinism and are caste based. In our largest state, Uttar Pradesh, which has more people than Germany, Britain and France put together, the two main parties will not be running to form the government in Delhi either. Here again, the Congress and the BJP will be more or less irrelevant. It will be Mulayam Singh’s Samajwadi Party and Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party that will pick up seats in parliament depending solely on how good their caste combination is.

Naturally, parties in India are supremely aware of this and their politics are conducted so as to have as wide a caste base as possible. Even the Hindutva party is actually a party of only select Hindus.

If one goes through the list of Punjab’s legislators, it is clear that the partnership between the Akali Dal and the BJP has a logic rooted in community and caste. The Akalis bring the Sikh vote and the BJP brings the Hindus. In fact, except for one Sikh MLA (cricketer Navjot Singh Sidhu’s wife), all the other BJP state legislators from Punjab are Hindus, so far as I could spot, and almost without exception, from the upper castes.

Similarly, in Bihar, the partnership between the Janata Dal and the BJP succeeds because of a caste logic and I have written about this here before. Though this voters’ clinging to their caste come rain or shine is accepted for the most part, the parties, at times, take a position against corruption, whether because of media pressure or their conscience. The RSS has a genuine moral problem with corruption and that explains the exit of Yeddyurappa. The Congress also, it appears, did the moral thing rather than the pragmatic thing when it decided to take a beating instead of letting Jaganmohan become chief minister.

It is strange to say this, given how much bad press they get, but often, it is the politician who is more moral than the voter in India.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 28^th, 2013.

How will India’s high growth continue? Its run as the world’s second fastest growing economy has already ended, and chances of it returning to that position don’t seem good.

The Congress, under Manmohan Singh, has failed to deliver consistently high growth and the numbers are now clear.

In the last nine years, Singh’s team and their policies made India grow nine per cent-plus in four years and eight per cent-plus in two years. But last year, growth was 6.2 per cent, and it is slowing down further. This year, it is expected to be five per cent, the lowest since the BJP-led alliance left power in 2004.

At about two trillion dollars, India’s economy was the tenth largest in the world last year, and it will become the eighth largest this year, ahead of Russia and Italy. But this rise in the rankings is not by itself significant.

The important aspect about India’s economy is, of course, that per capita GDP is very low.

It is only $1,500 per Indian or thereabouts, which is one-thirtieth of what it is in developed nations. We are not a middle-income nation, are a long way from becoming one and the majority of Indians are, in fact, very poor and will remain very poor for decades.

But even on this low base, our growth collapses from nine per cent to five per cent when the global economy softens. Why? It was the easy money coming in from the West, economists like Ruchir Sharma say, that lifted the Indian economy for many years of the last decade. When this dried up, we immediately sank to six per cent growth, first in 2008, and now for two consecutive years. This is remarkable and it shows that the internal thrust for high growth is missing, for the most part, in India.

So, what should be done to bring high growth back? Singh says some reforms will help but it isn’t clear to me whether the next Lok Sabha will be more capable than this one in passing reform. Also, it doesn’t seem to me that just some more reform will by itself add the missing four percentage points of growth. Some new thinking and a new strategy may be needed that addresses the lack of internal economic dynamism rather than only attracting easy money, which by most accounts isn’t coming back any time soon.

Who is going to guide the Indian economy out of these doldrums of stagnant growth?

Singh has said that he cannot rule it in or out that he will again be the Congress candidate for prime minister in 2014. I think there’s little chance that he will offer himself for the job (he will be 82 next year). He has left it ambiguous out of maturity, purely to ensure that the focus would not immediately move to Rahul Gandhi.

And there’s little chance also that the Congress will consider Singh even if he were willing.

The fact is that though he has had a reasonably good innings so far, his credibility on the economy is currently low. He has kept saying in the past couple of years that high growth will return but he has been wrong and he doesn’t seem to know when or how it will return.

We need someone who can tell us what the internal issues are and how to revive what Singh has called the “animal spirits” of entrepreneurship.

To my mind, and this is to be fair to whoever runs the economy, this is not a political or legislative problem, but a broader social and cultural one. However, it is essential that political solutions are thrown at it to see whether there is a reasonably quick fix to bring us back into high growth trajectory.

Singh has had his chance and done as well as might be expected given his handicaps. Now, it’s time for him to wind down. After 2014, when he steps aside, someone new must take charge of what is a serious problem that needs a fresh approach.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 21^st, 2013. 

This month, Surat was judged India’s best city. The parameters for this included, according to a report in The Times of India, “mobility, water supply network, cleanliness, public amenities, pollution control, greenery, safety and easy processes of getting work done at the corporation.”

Pune stood second in the “quality of life” category, while Ahmedabad was placed third. This was the result of a survey, and we must discount surveys as not being an effective tool to measure quality.

However, I must add my two bits here because I am delighted with the results. To me, Surat is the most interesting city in India. It would be so even if it weren’t the place I called home for most of my life.

It was a city before Bombay and New Delhi and Madras and Calcutta and Bangalore existed. It wasn’t designed by outsiders and it had an urban culture developed by its citizens, much of which it retains today.

Surat was already a big city when, in 1608, the British first landed in India. They came hoping to trade and were given a licence to set up a warehouse (called ‘factory’) by a drug-addled Jahangir. From here, they began the adventure that climaxed two centuries later with their taking Delhi from the Marathas.

Writer Khaled Ahmed says that Surat’s importance came from it being India’s only west-facing port. It was the place from where the Mughals — who did not control the land route — and their harem departed for Hajj. But it was also always the most important city for the empire outside the capital because of its traders’ ability to generate customs revenue and bring in gold. After the English Restoration, Bombay came to the possession of Charles II as dowry and this little transaction transformed India and world history. The British held on to this little corner with zeal and would not be dislodged. The teetotaller Aurangzeb disliked Europeans but had to defer to British power because their ships controlled the passage to Makkah.

The decline of Surat as a port happened at the same time as the rise of Bombay. Some believe this was because the river Tapti silted over, its banks no longer able to berth large ships. Though the Bombay harbour was superior, however, the city was, at that point, only a collection of villages. There were no proper mercantile castes to manage British trade. And so, the British encouraged the migration of Surat’s merchants — Hindu, Muslim and Parsi — to the city, creating what is still India’s only proper urban space, South Bombay.

As Bombay rose, Surat declined, but for a short period. Regeneration is built into its genetic code. Its capacity for producing fine business minds is undiminished (Ratan Tata was born here). It is Gujarat’s only city of proper diversity, where the lower classes have street space. It is for this reason the one city where a decent meal may be easily found for those who eat meat, in what is otherwise an oppressively vegetarian state.

The Surti in caricature is for other Gujaratis, a person who enjoys the good things of life. I can testify that this caricature is true.

Ahmedabad and Baroda are India’s two most communally violent cities. Given this, it is quite remarkable that Surat should be so different from them, inclusive and for most of its history, peaceful. Why is this so? I have my theories of caste and religious inclusion, but these are not the result of academic investigation. In another country, such a city, rich with history and culture, would have been ethnographed and biographed dozens of times. Scholars and journalists would have examined its character and its contributions to transforming South Asia.

Unfortunately, that is not our way. Anyway, no point whining about that here. I left Surat in 1994 because there is little work available there unless you want to be part of a business. It has, like Ahmedabad, no significant white collar middle class even today. English is not the first language of its middle class. Those excited by this survey should have a look at these cities to know all aspects of Gujarat’s mercantile culture and the urban spaces it produces.

Personally speaking, I do not think either Surat or Ahmedabad or indeed Pune are better to live and work in than Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai or Bangalore. However, I can without embarrassment or exaggeration call Surat India’s most interesting city.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 14^th, 2013.

A decade ago, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) assumed it would win the elections on the back of India Shining and called early elections. India Shining was the campaign executed brilliantly by Nirvik Singh of Grey Worldwide. It told Indians that they were a Great Power and a middle-income nation.

The problem, of course, was that we were neither. And the other thing was that the shining aspect was mainly in the BJP’s head. In the three years before the campaign, India’s GDP had grown 4.4 per cent (2000-01), six per cent (2001-02) and 3.8 per cent (2002-03). Hardly the sort of record that should have made voters ecstatic about the party.

India Shining was a hit advertising campaign that didn’t have a product to sell.

But Pramod Mahajan (the BJP’s smartest next generation leader before Narendra Modi) was convinced that the time had arrived for a positive, nationalist election campaign. He was wrong.

In 2009, the Congress could have campaigned on India Shining because they actually had the achievement. In the four years before the election, India grew 9.5 per cent (2005-06), 9.6 per cent (2006-07), 9.3 per cent (2007-08) and 6.7 per cent (2008-09).

But despite this, the Congress chose not to campaign on India Shining. It projected itself as the party of the poor and campaigned on the strength of legislation, such as the right to work scheme, which assured the poor 100 days of work, the Right to Information, which addressed ordinary corruption, and so on.

Some analysts, like Swaminathan Aiyar, believe that it wasn’t this campaign advertising itself as the party of the common man, but the economic growth that actually won the Congress the 2009 election.

It is so difficult to gather data on voting patterns in India that we cannot say if this is necessarily true. In my opinion, the Congress itself has two ways of looking at it. The Sonia Gandhi-led traditionalists believe that it was mainly the laws aimed at the poor that won the day. The Manmohan Singh-led modernists believe that it was mainly the economic growth with some elements of the laws for the poor.

The BJP now faces a Gujarat Shining moment. Should it run a positive campaign around Modi’s fine economic achievements? That becomes inevitable in the event of his becoming candidate for prime minister. I have written before in this space that I do not think he will become prime ministerial candidate, and I still believe this. But let us assume that with his recent elevation into the BJP’s central parliamentary board, he will, at least, become the focus of the party’s campaign.

Many in the BJP, like actress Smriti Irani, do not tire of telling us that Modi is the only man ever in Indian history to use development as the issue, as he did in Gujarat’s elections. Will his joining the party’s national team bring this positiveness to the 2014 campaign? It will be interesting to see because the experience of India Shining will be fresh for many others in the BJP.

The important fact here is that the key asset Modi brings to the party in New Delhi is the urban youth and the middle class voter. It cannot be denied that for large numbers of these, he is an attractive figure, whom they want to see leading India. For them, talk of high economic growth and efficient government is more important than the social sector schemes that the Congress focuses on, which concern the rural and semi-urban poor.

It seems quite certain that the Congress campaign will again focus on its delivery to this section of Indians. These include things like direct cash transfers for food and fertiliser instead of subsidies, and the Right to Education, under which private schools are being forced to reserve seats for the poor. Even if it had wanted to, the Congress cannot campaign on its economic performance because this time, it has not been great, for whatever reason.

This means the space is available for the BJP to project itself, under Modi, as the party of the middle class and also the party of economic development and growth.

Will they grasp it? Or will the ghost of India Shining spook the BJP’s headquarters?

Published in The Express Tribune, April 7^th, 2013.