Get well soon Aakar Patel

I have for long admired Aakar Patel’s writing. Apart from his articles in various Indian magazines and newspapers such as The Mint, Aakar is also a columnist on Pakistani news sites and magazines such as The News and recently the weekly, The Friday Times. Ironically, it was from his articles in the Pakistani e-news and e-zines that I came to know my own first city Bombay / Mumbai better, got an anthropological education on the mercantile Gujarati community and learnt the close affinity in ethnic terms of two historical figures, MA Jinnah and MK Gandhi. During the 2009 elections, we had his superb article on the gulf in concrete achievement between Manmohan Singh and ‘Iron man’ LK Advani to the latter’s disadvantage. Recently his articles on the Urdu media in South Asia showed the difference in narrative not only between the English and Urdu newspapers but between Urdu dailies.

It was therefore disappointing to read his wildly off the mark hagiographic piece on Sonia Gandhi in a recent Friday Times (Get well soon Sonia Gandhi ).

The article starts well enough. After a few paras discussing Sonia's absence from India for medical treatment in the US, a tongue in cheek section on the educational background of Sonia (to be blunt, non-existent) and of the Gandhis (meagre), Aakar gets into the meat of the article and that is where your jaw begins to drop in disbelief.

He begins by saying, “She has revived Congress, and it is again the great political party of developing nations.”

Whuh?

"... again the great political party of developing nations"

This almost suggests we are back in the glory days of Nehru and Shastri. Even if things were hunky dory, this statement would give us pause. But to say this after all we have seen over the past year,CWG, 2G, cash-for-votes, Radia tapes, Air India aircraft purchases, Reliance, Adarsh society, … is beyond belief. It is no exaggeration to say that in common perception the Congress today seem more a bunch of graft artists in oligarchic cahoots with big biz, caught red handed in the middle of a loot of public resources. It is no comfort to the Indian citizen that the opposition BJP seem to be no better (as for example the Yeddy and Reddy show). 

Aakar goes on to say, “The best thing she has done for India is to hand Manmohan charge of policy.” No, no, no Aakar. There was a time when lulled by the romance of Sonia relinquishing power and believing in the mythology of 'Mr. Market-reform' Manmohan Singh, I also subscribed to this but if there is just one thing the last six months have revealed with its scams and Anna Hazare moments, it is that this division just does not work and indeed, never did work.

If we remove the gauze it is not difficult to understand why.

In Sonia and Manmohan we have two very reticent individuals, neither of whom seems comfortable in wielding power, who have both in varying degrees abdicated governance to the more forceful, whether driven by ideology (the Left in UPA-I), the frankly venal (Maran and Raja in UPA-I and II) or those working their own regional electoral agendas (Lalu in UPA-I and Mamata in UPA-II). All that Sonia's handing over the 'reins' to Dr. Singh achieved was to give a respected and scholarly face to a government where pretty much all the ministers could do as they pleased with little danger of accountability or reprimand.

Given the opacity that shrouds this government's functioning, it is particularly difficult to know exactly how and what Dr. Singh contributes, how he brings his erudition, his experience, his gravitas and whatever else to the table, how he drives the agenda and the government. This government increasingly seems directionless and leaderless. The most common perception is that especially when the chips are down, no one is in charge.We saw this during 26/11, when the 2G scam broke and most recently during the Anna Hazare imbroglio.

Let us consider the recent mismanagement of the Anna Hazare movement as it highlights this 'we-are-all-out-to-lunch' rudderlessness. No one seemed to know who should be fielding this Black Swan from Ralegaon Siddhi. Kapil Sibal and PC batted it around for a while then screwed it up by sending Hazare to Tihar to keep company with Raja. Rahul then picked it up, held it indeterminedly for a while then passed on the hot potato to that old troubleshooter Pranab who finally managed to work a solution in the Nth hour. Dr. Singh gave two soporific speeches but apart from that one did not get any sense of his being in charge. It almost seemed as if he felt that this had nothing to do with the government. This was odd as the handling of the burgeoning Hazare movement was an executive issue and the tackling of their Lokpal demands a legislative issue. In either case, the ball was with various ministries, parliament, the cabinet and the PM.

So no Aakar, one would strongly disagree that the best thing she (Sonia) did was to hand over reins to Dr Manmohan Singh. A recent exhaustive profile of Dr. Manmohan Singh that came in Caravan Magazine further highlights why this was not a good move and in retrospect may not have been in India's best interests.

Aakar then goes on to discuss the children, Priyanka and Rahul and gives his vote of confidence to the latter as PM designate when he says, “Rahul appears to be able to think independently and if this is so, will make a great prime minister, like Manmohan”. How do we know Aakar? Can you point to any thing he has done that highlights his capabilities to be even a minister of state leave alone the Prime Minister of India? Rahul has now been roaming the countryside for a few years now. Around the same time that he launched his yatra he also came out with his first foot-in-the-mouth statement that it was Gandhi family that caused Pakistan to break up in 1971. If his recent actions and statements are anything to go by he does not seem to have matured through his journey without maps in the Indian hinterland. His success in managing Congress electoral fortunes in various states (such as in Bihar in 2009 and 2010) have been indifferent. He continues to make wild statements such as accusing Mayawati of a non-existent carnage in Bhatta Parsaul. And there was his sudden 'George Fernandes during Emergency' like appearance in zero hour in Parliament during the Lokpal debate to give a sanctimonious discourse to parliamentarians about institutional reform.

It deeply worries me (and no doubt many others) that this gauche young man, with zero experience in administration or governance might be at the helm of our affairs in 2014. The only positive I can find in Rahul is that at least no charge of mass murder can be brought on his head. He is not Narendra Modi, who along with the BJP continues to be in blissful denial about the Gujarat carnage in 2002 and his sins of omission and commission during that period.

The choice in front of the Indian voter in 2014 thus may be Hobsonian. Between an unproven, inexperienced person whose only qualification is name recognition and a super-administrator who at the very least, winked at the murder of thousands. Between a party that still behaves as if it can rule India by owning a name and one that seems unable to understand that clubs are no longer trumps and the world has moved on.

In other words Aakar, perhaps it is time we asked harder questions of Sonia, of Dr. Singh and Rahul baba. 

Perhaps like why the Congress party does not have elections for President and other office bearers every year which will throw up leaders who don’t necessarily have the Gandhi surname? Before 1947 the Congress had regular elections and many a Congress leader was groomed through this process. Dadabhai Naoroji, Badruddin Tyabji, Pherozeshah Mehta, Surendranath Banerjea, Lala Lajpat Rai, Chittaranjan Das, Maulana Abdul Karim Azad, Sarojini Naidu, Vallabhbhai Patel, Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, Subhash Chandra Bose, Acharya Kripalani, Pattabhi Sitaramayya and many others. Every year would throw up a new name thus creating a healthy pool of capable people who could lead the party. Moreoever, this democratic churn, year after year, also gave the INC an all Indian texture.

Today the oldest Indian party has had the same president from 1999. Elections are now deemed unnecessary. It is likely that when Sonia hangs up her boots, we will have either Rahul or Priyanka becoming the next President.

 India deserves better Aakar. The time for hagiographies is over