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On emerging political alternatives

India is going through its worst political crisis as a state and as a nation. The present period is marked by misgovernance, nepotism and anarchy, with the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government under the leadership of the Congress being a mute spectator to the wanton attacks on the Hindi-speaking populace in Mumbai, and placating the feudal desires and values of Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh. On the foreign policy front the government has displayed similar tendencies, w hich have resulted in an erosion of our autonomy and facilitated the increase of U.S. influence and hegemony in South Asia.

The UPA has merely joined the bandwagon with groups making unjust and unconstitutional demands, in the hope that it will fetch political dividends through unfair means. This is clear from the actions of the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party government in Maharashtra, where arsonists and parochial groups were given a free run for around two weeks and subsequently a safe passage. Meanwhile, the Samajwadi Party, which stood for the rights of the Hindi-speaking people, was unduly bracketed with the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS).

These developments raise serious questions about internal security, governance and constitutional norms concerning the rights of citizens to take up employment and to settle down in any part of the country. The linguistic reorganisation of the States has not put any restrictions on the movement of people across the country. The only exceptions relate to the frontier regions, special zones and areas under terrorist attack.

The Congress-led Central government, along with the Bahujan Samaj Party government led by Ms Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh, is presenting a vested agenda to remain in power at all costs. The two are overlooking each other’s track record of omissions and commissions. This is evident in the hand-in-glove treatment practised by the Congress in the wake of Ms Mayawati’s actions against police personnel recruited during the Samajwadi Party-led government. Ms Mayawati’s actions indicate a feudal mindset. She is bent on creating a chaotic model of governance wherein governance and public policies are getting highly personalised. Both the bureaucracy and the state machinery are at the service of her autocratic attitude and both are scouting to cater to her political and personal agendas.

The Congress desperately wants to improve on its negligible presence in Uttar Pradesh by pandering to the political and personal demands of Ms Mayawati, ignoring the disastrous implications such moves hold for governance and security. It has permitted the rise of a caste bogey in order to settle political scores, and has turned a Nelson’s eye to the large-scale corruption and nepotism practised by the BSP government in the name of social justice and the rights of the marginalised sections.

While foodgrain productivity is already on the decline and the Green Revolution areas are facing serious bottlenecks to growth and productivity, it is the financially weak farmers who are at the receiving end of both nature’s fury and the government’s apathy. The spate of farmer suicides, which go on unabated, has forced Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to admit to the magnitude of the agrarian crisis. Despite the government’s projections, the fact remains that the majority of farmers are keen to abandon agriculture and move to urban centres looking for jobs, however menial they may be. In the cities they are confined to the slums. To add to their agony, their very presence is resented by the same government, which perceives them as eyesores to the infrastructure development projects in the cities. Ironically, rural infrastructure is in a pathetic state: the roads are in bad shape, there are frequent power cuts, the unavailability of drinking water is widespread, and sanitation is poor.

But this does not seem to be on the list of concerns of Minister for Agriculture Sharad Pawar, who is busy with his pet project of selling the sport of cricket and the players to the largest bidder. His project has certainly added to the coffers of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). Meanwhile, in the countryside our farmers look with muted anger for some respite and hope from the UPA government to fight ever-increasing indebtedness, endemic hunger, extensive under-nutrition, illiteracy, abject poverty and deprivation.

Mr. Pawar has the luxury of refusing to acknowledge the harsh realities that confront the farmers, by means of his attempts to vulgarise and commercialise the game of cricket. He has clearly displayed his indifference to the agrarian crisis by trying to create a make-believe world for the common masses, while ignoring the pitiable plight of the marginalised sections and poor farmers in the rural areas, who are not only vulnerable but are heading towards a catastrophic situation. One survey said Mr. Pawar has travelled around 1,00,035 km for the promotion of cricket. But he has hardly undertaken any significant visit to address the problems of farmers in Akola in Vidharbha. Mr. Pawar can do a great service to the nation, the way he has stood for the cause of ‘cricket’, by being magnanimous enough to quit as Minister for Agriculture. The UPA government can appoint him as Minister for Sports to manage “cricket and its commerce.”

It has been proved that the swelling stock markets, the strengthening of the rupee and increasing foreign institutional investment will hardly touch the lives of our farmers — the people who feed us. Nearly 150,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide during the period 1997-2005, while one in two Indian rural children under the age of three goes hungry. According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), India is home to the largest share of the world’s undernourished population, and more than 200 million Indian children, women and men eat less than the daily minimum calorie requirement for a human being. Evidence suggests that over the 1990s concentration of land ownership increased, with many more households becoming landless and dependent on casual agricultural labour (45 per cent of households).

Moreover, since the late 1990s, it has been reported that at least 60,000 workers have lost their jobs as the international price of tea has fallen. Millions of others face wage cuts, more insecure contracts and rising malnutrition that include cases of starvation. Alarmingly, they form the majority of the country’s population. Such deprivation means a deep divide, causing economic and social disturbances and loss of peace. But the UPA government seems to be unconcerned about the sufferings of farmers, their pain and miseries. It is happy counting the rising Sensex points.

There is an urgent need to integrate rural India with the overall economic growth of our country. The shine of corporate India can never cover up the poverty and struggle of rural India. The investments of foreign institutions cannot replace the indebtedness of the small farmer who has taken one more loan from the village moneylender after mortgaging his small piece of land.

The United National Progressive Alliance (UNPA) has tried to draw the attention of the UPA government to the clear and present danger of ignoring the agrarian crisis. This crisis is a national calamity in the making, given the apathetic attitude of the Congress leadership and its spin doctors. The UNPA has staged rallies across the country to mobilise the farmers and the common people to air their voice to make the government accountable and respond to their problems.

Recently a UNPA rally generated an enormous response across the nation, and it got a shot in the arm with support from the leadership of its traditional allies on the Left, which joined the rally to address the farmers’ problems in one voice. This has a significant impact in terms of attempts to establish a non-Congress and non-BJP secular and socialist alternative to strengthen the crumbling edifice of democracy and governance under the regime headed by the Congress.

Similarly, on the foreign policy front the UPA-led government seems to pursue lopsided objectives with its growing submission to the unjust pressures of the Bush regime. It has severely damaged the national consensus on foreign policy by its blind obsession with the India-U.S. nuclear deal. The opposition parties are being kept in the dark about the implications of the deal for national security and the level of autonomy of India’s foreign policy. What is more ironical is that the Congress is issuing statements repeatedly that the nuclear deal will be approved by the UPA government, notwithstanding the fact that the UPA government does not represent the majority view on this issue in both Houses of Parliament. Is the government planning to disregard Parliament and get the deal approved by subverting the will of the majority?

The present hobnobbing with the United States has not only blatantly damaged the national consensus on foreign policy but has given rise to legitimate fears about the unilateralism of the U.S. in dictating terms to the Indian state. In the bargain, we also seem to have lost interest in managing good relations with our neighbours and traditional friends. Our response to the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline is ambiguous. India has maintained a stoic silence on the U.S. imperial games in Iraq, notwithstanding the fact that India has an important role to play in the present world order.

In this context, the rise of the UNPA is complemented by a variety of factors. Its credibility comes from the quest of its leaders who represent various States across the political landscape to have a common platform to promote a secular and pro-farmer socio-political order. They have unanimity in terms of the empowerment of the marginalised sections and farmers, and a quest to have an autonomous foreign policy — which are being relegated by the Congress government by the lopsided models of economic development.

(The writer is a Member of Parliament and the spokesperson for the Samajwadi Party and the United National Progressive Alliance.)

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