Sinha versus Modi

Chances are BJP members will scuttle the Modi debate by gunning for Yashwant Sinha at Goa

There is no doubt Narendra Modi is a big factor in the anti-BJP mood, says my mother, a staunch BJP loyalist.

But the real damage, she avers, much like ex-Delhi CMs Madan Lal Khurana and Sahib Singh Verma do, has been done by Yashwant Sinha who has alienated the middle classes.

Arre, he mortgaged our gold, she reminded me, when Chandra Shekhar was prime minister. How could Vajpayee bring him back, she asks, meaning what else can you expect from one who’s stooped so low as to mortgage the family gold — that, in her book, is worse than even selling the family silver, the other charge against Sinha!

Being (or at least trying to be!) the ideal son, I didn’t think it appropriate to point out the inaccuracies in her pronouncements — India was bankrupt, and had no forex to buy anything, what option did Sinha have?

The problem, however, is that it’s not just my mother, or yours, who’s of this opinion. You can bet your last rupee that, anxious to keep the Modi issue under control, the BJP members gathered at Goa right now are going to gun for Sinha, and try to pin the blame for the recent electoral reversals on him.

I don’t plan to get into whether Modi is guilty of encouraging the killing of Muslims in his state, or whether Gujarat is so heavily communalised that Modi was helpless.

People who understand India’s history of communalism and that of combatting such problems, and of how the entire coastal belt has got so communalised with the massive increase in smuggling and gun-running from the Middle East, are better equipped than I am to deal with such thorny issues.

But stories of transfers of officials who’ve ensured there’s been no deaths in their areas, do show Modi wasn’t quite so innocent or helpless.

And it’s easy to see, in a situation where the government is either guilty of taking sides or of not being in control, the economy will suffer badly.

No one’s talking openly, but who’d want to invest in Gujarat today? General Motors, whose Halol plant was attacked, is keeping quiet for fear of reprisals.

Precisely the same fear that has ensured the FICCI-CIIs have kept quiet as well, and haven’t organised any relief funds for victims either.

But let’s get back to Sinha, and how he alienated the voters.

Let’s argue the counter first. If increased sops, like promises of free power and water for irrigation, help woo voters, why didn’t Parkash Singh Badal sweep the Punjab Assembly poll, instead of being routed?

After all, his populism almost single-handedly destroyed Punjab’s treasury in the last five years.

And why have the BJP’s fortunes declined every single year since they came to power — after all, Sinha’s rolled back almost every major initiative he’s taken to cut subsidies over the past few years.

Surely the BJP will admit its defeat in Uttar Pradesh has a lot to do with the collapse in governance thanks to the Lalji Tandon-Kalraj Mishra factionalism.

And that it wasn’t just Sinha who slipped up on the onion front and led to its defeat in Delhi.

Besides, what has Sinha really taken away in the budget?

About Rs 13,000 crore of subsidies on LPG and kerosene, you’d say, but incorrectly. For one, even after the cut, the subsidy on LPG remains at 20 per cent and that on kerosene 33.

Second, who actually gets this? In the case of kerosene, any oil firm will tell you, around half gets used to adulterate diesel, to take advantage of the fact that diesel is far more expensive.

So cutting the kerosene subsidy has actually hit smugglers and adulterators who, in any case, are so few, even if they don’t vote BJP it doesn’t really matter.

On the issue of the interest cut on small savings, I must confess, I’m ambivalent. It is true, with inflation at an all-time low, the real interest rates on small savings are probably too high.

And also that unless these rates are brought down, overall interest rates will be too high and will discourage investments that are so vital for growth and fresh jobs.

But the middle-class angst, which is largely justifiable, is that there are few savings options left for them.

The stock markets have witnessed one major scam each year in the last decade, UTI’s imploded, and even public sector banks and financial institutions have either collapsed or look very shaky.

But why blame Sinha alone? The bailout and rape of financial institutions have been done at everyone’s behest — ask Prime Minister Vajpayee to narrate the events that led to P. Subramanyam getting the UTI job.

Sure, Sinha’s responsible for SEBI’s lapses, but Arun Jaitley’s accountable, for instance, for the Department of Company Affairs never being able to catch promoters who’ve stripped their companies. The investigative agencies have consistently failed, and courts have delivered justice so late it didn’t matter. State governments allowed co-operative banks to rip off people despite being warned by the RBI.

And a recent all-India survey, for the Public Affairs Centre, shows that despite the state governments spending over Rs 100,000 crore in 1998-99 on public services like water, ration shops, education and health, less than a seventh of the population was happy with the quality of service. The list goes on.

Ponder on this, dear MPs and other worthies at Goa. To paraphrase the old Churchillian phrase, never before have so few done so little for so many.

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