HatTrick Mamata

Pandemonium in the Rajya Sabha over Lokpal Bill

Bengal’s mercurial chief minister Mamata Bannerjee has scored a hat trick of sorts – she has stalled three major measures which her senior ally - the Congress had sought to bring in this year.

But this time round, it may be Congress which may be cheering the self goal she scored through her lieutenants in Delhi by stalling the Lokpal legislation in the upper house of Parliament.

First, was the Teesta pact with Bangladesh, which she scuttled by disagreeing with a very basic and simple sharing of river waters in order, so say Congress leaders, to arm twist the centre into giving more funds to her cash strapped state government.

Her brash and extremely un-diplomatic act at the penultimate hour, left Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and India as a whole, red faced on the Prime Minister’s maiden visit to Dhaka.

The Teesta river which starts out as a mountain rivulet in Sikim flows down as a broad river through North Bengal to enter Bangladesh as a tributary feeding into the mighty Brahmaputra.

The deal promised water sharing on an equitable 50:50 basis at Gajoldoba barrage near Siliguri in West Bengal. With the deal falling through, despite Singh’s other gifts for Bangladesh – duty free garment exports, border enclave swaps which gave Bangladesh large tracts of Indian land etc. - India was painted a fickle friend.

Her second, was to force the ruling alliance to place in cold storage Commerce Minister Anand Sharma’s move to bring foreign direct investment in retail. She left a loophole in her protest against the move, by uttering something about doing what was good for farmers. Again a signal, Congress Mandarins say, that she wanted more funds.

In a sense, the Congress was not really unhappy with her tantrums that time as it gave them an opportunity to cold store a necessary but unpopular move which would have hit millions of mom and pop stores ahead of  key assembly elections to Uttar Pradesh state, India’s most populous province.

The move to open up to the Walmarts and Tescos of the world would surely have been used by opposition parties such as the pro-trader Bharatiya Janata Party and regional outfit Bahujan Samaj Party to accuse the ruling alliance of selling out to transnationals and turning the issue into an election trump card.

The Congress rather cleverly used this stalling as a chance to tell farmer-voters of how mindless opposition had nixed a chance to bring a legislation which could have helped them sell produce at better prices.

This time round Mamata’s party, after making noises of unhappiness with the Lokpal bill ended up supporting it in the Lok Sabha or the lower house of India’s Parliament by not seeking divisions on amendments moved by it.

Later, on her express instructions, Trinamool Congress MPs in the Upper house or Rajya Sabha made it clear that they would seek a vote on their key amendment to the bill which seeks to set up an independent Ombudsman.

The bill suffers many defects, but as one Central Minister said at least it was being enacted and later Parliaments would have the luxury of improving upon it. Trinamool’s amendment in the name of defending federalism, sought to keep out a clause which would have allowed states to set up their own Ombudsmen to be called Lokayuktas.

Trinamool’s stand, encouraged a clutch of parties such as Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party and Rashtriya Janata Dal, which had earlier in the week walked out in the Lok Sabha or lower house making it easy for the ruling alliance to pass the bill, to decide to stay and vote against the bill.

This meant the ruling coalition did not have the numbers to pass the bill, forcing the Congress to stall for time and take the cover of an ensuing chaos in the house to put everything on the backburner and prepare for another day.

Congress did not specifically blame its ally but rather pleaded helplessness as  some 189 ammendments had been brought by lawmakers from among opposition and allied parties which needed study nd scrutiny.

India's Parliamentary affairs minister Pawan Bansal said he needed more time to respond, arguing “If we want to be true to the cause we need more time to go through the (opposition proposed) ammendments."

But the Congressman on the street is already whispering `Mamata does not want any oversight body to look into the affairs of her government.’ Till now, they had little ammunition to attack her. Her popularity seemed teflon coated and every little thing they said against her seemed petulance on the part of an ignored partner in a stale marriage.

Mamata’s honeymoon period after her landslide victory earlier this year will soon be over. People at large and newspapers in particular will soon start asking more critical questions. Who slept over lack of safety measures at AMRI hospital? Why are farmers unable to get announced support price for their grain?

At the same time, repeated bids to trash the Congress while asking for more money, may see the Congress coming up with more procedural wrangles which reduces the flow of mullah through the federal pipeline.

Turning an uneasy ally into a hidden enemy may not exactly be a great strategy for Trinamool in the long run.  The Communist Party of India (Marxist) learnt that the hard way in the last elections.

See Also:  Anna Checkmated

Anna Checkmated

Anna Hazare before ending his fast

The government seems to have managed to checkmate anti-graft campaigner Anna Hazare using a judicious mixture of whisper campaigns, populist slogans and a halfway house Lokpal bill which sets up an independent Ombudsman panel without giving it control over the country’s premier investigative apparatus.

At the same time the ruling party signalled that it listens to its Prince Charming – Rahul Gandhi, grandson of the charismatic leader Indira Gandhi – but does not necessarily support him as yet, by defeating a parallel bill which sought to give constitutional status to the Ombudsman panel.
The bill after a series of brisk political horse trading over amendments, passed muster in Lok Sabha. The man, the treasury benches should really thank for this feat is this government’s Chankaya – finance minister Pranab Mukherjee.
His deft handling of the politically explosive situation  saw the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party as well as recalciterant allies like the Trinamool Congress joining hands with the Congress to help pass the bill while regional parties like Mayawati’s BSP, Laloo Prasad Yadav’s RJD and Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party `cooperated’ by walking out instead of voting against the bill.
Rahul `baba’ had sought constitutional status for the Lokpal panel, terming it “a game changer”. The young Gandhi is being touted as the leader of Generation X  in Indian politics and the party will certainly be positioning him as the next prime minister for the general elections to be held in 2014. However, when the issue came up for a vote, some 15 Congress MPs went missing as did a dozen crucial allies. With the BJP voting against, the bill collapsed and the Congress Party heaved a sigh of relief. An Ombudsman was bad enough, an Ombudsman with constitutional powers could be a bigger threat to politicians.
As one MP privately told this writer, none of the political parties except for perhaps to an extent the Left parties, really wanted a strong Lokpal panel which could start nit-picking and bringing graft charges unexpectedly against any of them. For forty years, governments had paid lip service to the issue and dilly dallied on bringing the bill.
Yet such was the power of the civil society movement led by former army truck driver Anna Hazare, that the bill to set up a Lokpal had to be brought. Parliament’s sitting extended beyond Christmas by three days and the bill debated upon and voted on.
However, Hazare himself was left weakened and with divided support, because of a clever whisper campaign launched against him. His links with the right wing RSS, his praise for communal riot tainted Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi were carefully highlighted. This saw the rising Muslim middle class which had like their Hindu, Sikh or Christian brethren, supported Hazare in the early days of his movement, veer away from him.
Small `scams’ in which his acolytes were allegedly involved also came out in the press. This saw more doubts among lay supporters surfacing.
Bringing in a minority sub-quota within the Other Backwards Castes quota in civil service jobs which could then be extended to reservation for minorities on the Ombudsman panel was another masterstroke. ( see:  Lokpal, Quotas, Hazare)
It brought support for the ruling alliance even as it divided the opposition political parties and marginalised Hazare’s demands.
When the Lokpal bill was taken up by the lower house (which is also called the house of people and is more powerful) of the Indian Parliament, earlier this week, Hazare sat on fast in Mumbai. However, unlike August, when his fast had attracted anything between 40,000 to 70,000 supporters daily, this time round just 5,000 turned up. The vast grounds were a picture of emptiness.
The house passed the bill which Hazare termed as “useless”, mainly because administrative control of the Central Bureau of Investigation was left with the central government and not passed on to the Lokpal. The Ombudsman panel could ask the premier investigative agency to take up a case or a lead but had no real time control over it.   
But by now, few if any were listening to Hazare. As one newspaper said “as far as the people were concerned, the fact that the government agreed to a Lokpal was proof of their success.” Asking for more, to the man on the street, “sounded like seeking the spoils of war” and consequently, Hazare’s lieutenants - Arvind Kejriwal (right to information campaigner) and Kiran Bedi (former award winning policewoman) - came across as people “desperate to promote themselves” by asking for much more than the `aam admi’ (common man) had asked for.

Game to the ruling alliance, Let us now wait for the Set, if there is one.

Lokpal, Quotas and Hazare

Congress has all its life, before India became independent, fought against quotas based on religion. The argument was, once you have such quotas, you segment national life and condemn minorities to a Ghetto existence.

However, ever since the Justice Sachar Committee came out with a report which said the obvious – that most Muslims living in India, who are converts from the poorest strata in Indian society -remained poor and had few jobs in civil service, the thinking has changed.

Now, the same Congress wants to bring in a  job reservation for Minorities, who in the Indian context mean mostly Muslims, and is vacillating back and forth on demands for a minority quota in the Lokpal (Ombudsman) panel. Sounds good. Secular India taking care of its minorities.  Sounds good electorally too. At least for some years, the Congress could reap some `grateful’ minority votes.

The Yadav leaders of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh who have been seeing their votebank which at one time included members of the minorities, slipping from their grasp, have launched an  attack in Parliament on the just introduced Lopal Bill, asking for a minority quota on the Lokpal panel. The Lokpal bill seeks to set up an Ombudsman body which will keep a check on public servants from the prime minister down, and seek to investigate and prosecute any involved in bribery or other forms of corruption. 

The Congress is of course gleefully watching from the sidelines. If a quota on the panel is really passed by the Parliament, it could help reinforce Congress’s claim that its the greatest protector of minority rights. If it is not passed, then the opposition BJP can be blamed for being anti-minority and scuttling the issue.

In any case, Anna Hazare, the civil rights activist and former army-man fighting for a tough Lokpal bill, may have to travel into the wilderness as the agenda is now changing from how tough or weak the bill will be, to whether its sensitive towards India’s minorities and backwards.

The Left parties – CPI and CPM – who never really fully supported Hazare despite flirting with him, have picked up this chance to demand quotas for women, scheduled castes and tribes on the panel.

The problem for Hazare and his ilk is that they mostly represent upper class, upper caste Indians. The demands which are shifting the ground from under this bill are demands for giving representation to those who are considered on the margins of India’s society.

Till now, Indian Muslims like many other Indians felt that a formal structure like the Lokpal is needed to fight corruption which has been eating into India’s vitals. India had a 3.1 score on a scale of 10 in the global corruption index published by Transparency International. New Zealand with a score of 9.5 out of 10 is supposed to be the most honest country and Somalia with just 1 is supposed to be the most corrupt in this index.  

However, demands for quotas which some politicians have been raising for some time in different contexts, would obviously take precedence in the mindspace of many within the community, helping divide the by and large middle class movement to bring in a Lokpal.

Especially as the battle over what kind of a Lokpal will be brought forth really precedes the formalisation of a job quota for minority poor. India has a long held policy of positive discrimination which reserves jobs in civil services, state run corporations and educational institutes besides seats in colleges for marginalised sections of society. The Congress is seriously considering bringing forth rules which would give economically backward Muslims a sub-quota within the 27 per cent Backward Castes quota. A figure of 6 per cent is being bandied about. Though this may come down if other politically powerful backward castes object.

Post Script: Since posting this blog, the Indian cabinet has passed a 4.5 per cent quota for minorities within the overall backward castes quota in government jobs, state run educational institutes etc. It means out of every 100 jobs in government, 4 will be reserved for  the economically weak among minorities from all religions other than Hindus (who form the majority) whose communities are listed in the Indian Government's list of backwards. The main gain, if any, from this quota should accrue to Muslims families who have been traditionally weavers, leatherworkers, ironsmiths, armourers etc.. However, whether the beneficaries would be truly economically and socially backward minority families, is something which only time will tell.