BJP's ugly leadership crisis Praful Bidwai It is utterly nauseating that the leaders of some of India's biggest business houses have stooped to orchestrating a campaign to make Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Milosevic Modi India's Prime Minister.
Barely two months ago, a galaxy of businessmen had made Mr Modi industry's poster-boy at the opening of the Vibrant Gujarat Global Investors' Summit held in Mumbai.
They included the Ambani brothers, Shashi Ruia, Adi and Jamshyd Godrej, Niranjan Hiranandani, Nimesh Kampani and Vinod Mittal.
As the Summit's fourth edition ended in Ahmedabad, Mr Ratan Tata led corporate honchos in lavishing praise upon Mr Modi: "[T]oday there is no state like Gujarat.
Under Mr Modi's leadership, Gujarat is head and shoulders above any [other] state." A state normally takes 90 to 180 days to clear a new plant but, gushed Mr Tata, the Nano car project got its "approval in just two days." One might wonder about the rationality of any approval within a period which isn't enough even to evaluate a project's fiscal, land-use or environmental implications.
However, that didn't prevent Mr Tata from famously hugging Mr Modi, or Msssrs Anil Ambani and Sunil Mittal from declaring him India's "future leader" and the ideal candidate for Prime Minister who would run the nation like a CEO, just as he runs Gujarat.
It merits noting that Mr Ambani is extremely close to the Samajwadi Party.
The campaign to sell Mr Modi as "the Man India (read, Indian business) Awaits"-the slogan first used by industrialists in 1998 to promote Mr Vajpayee-has nothing to do with Gujarat's development record, as we see.
Rather, it's explained by three factors.
Indian businessmen, faced with a domestic and global economic slowdown, feel insecure as never before, and crave for order, authoritarianism, protection via blatantly partisan bailouts and brazenly pro-business policies of the variety Mr Modi is notorious for.
Second, captains of industry are dazzled by the Modi-Tata Nano model of government-business collusion and want a similar bonanza for themselves.
That model means subsidies on a Rs 2,000-crore investment totalling Rs 30,000 crores over 20 years, including a Rs 9,750-crore loan at 0.1% interest, exemption from 15% VAT for 20 years, stamp-duty waiver and subsidised land.
The subsidies work out to an astounding 60% of the car's promised price of Rs 1 lakh! This is not capitalism, but predatory risk-averse feudal jagirdari.
Third, there has been a massive degeneration in the culture of Indian business in the past few decades, especially since neoliberal policies were launched in 1991.
Businessmen are pampered as never before and exploit their political connections to profiteer and loot the exchequer in criminal ways, as Satyam and other recent scams illustrate.
In candid self-reflection, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, president of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, says that liberalisation hasn't produced "a new type" of entrepreneur with "good corporate governance and honesty." "Actually, the reverse is true.
increased opportunities and a significant effect of political influence .
on the creation of wealth [has] created more greed and far too many corporates.
walking the narrow line between right and wrong and very often straying into the wrong.
This is the ugly side of liberalisation, made possible by weak enforcement of deliberately ambiguous public policy and regulation".
So greedy and profit-obsessed is our Big Business that it has no compunction in whitewashing the butchery of 2000 Muslims over which Mr Modi presided in 2002 and in sanctifying his communal authoritarianism and contempt for the rule of law.
What of Mr Modi's claims about Gujarat's stellar development and translation of investment promises into projects? Gujarat attracts investment not because of its dynamism or policies but due to a historical accident-business invested there early on and it has a fairly developed infrastructure.
But now, it lags behind Orissa and Andhra in investment.
Contrary to Mr Modi's claim that 61% of investment MoUs were implemented between 2003 and 2007, Gujarat's Industries Commissioner has revealed that only 21% were translated into projects.
Gujarat's industries, including the showcase diamond-polishing business, aren't doing well.
Diamond workers are committing suicide and their children are dropping out of school.
In the past 11 months, over 60,000 small and medium enterprises have shut down.
Gujarat's macro-economic indicators are unflattering.
It has a higher per capita debt-ratio than UP or Bihar.
Agrarian distress has driven hundreds of Gujarat farmers to suicide.
As its official Human Development Report (2004) points out, "Gujarat has reached only 48 percent of the goals set for human development".
It lags behind thanks to "several distortions in [its] growth path", including agricultural stagnation.
Its gains in literacy, education, health, nutrition, welfare and social security are much lower than its GDP growth.
Recent "deceleration in [its] achievements", it says, is cause for "serious concern." Gujarat's human development ranks have fallen in recent years.
Although it's Number 4 among all states in per capita income, it has fallen to Number 6 in education, Number 9 in health, and Number 12 in participation.
According to the National Family Health Survey, child malnutrition incidence in Gujarat is 47%, or slightly higher than the national average.
Its proportion of stunted children under 3 years is also a high 42%.
Only 45% of Gujarati children between 12 and 23 months are fully vaccinated, and 80% of those between 6 and 35 months are anaemic.
Gujarat is marked by a steady decline in most learning indicators.
Only 59.6% of its rural children (Class 3-5) can read Class 1-level text (all-India average, 66.6).
Only 43.1% could do subtraction (national average, 54.9).
Gujarat similarly lags behind the national average in the percentage of children who can recognise numbers, tell the time or do currency tasks.
Gujarat's indices of patriarchy are frightening.
The sex-ratio is an abysmal 487:1000 in the 0-4 age-group and 571 in the 5-9 group (national averages, 515 and 632 respectively).
Gujarat's health indices have since dropped relative to other states and are barely higher than Orissa's, HDR co-author Darshini Mahadevia told me.
In social sector spending as a proportion of total public expenditure, Gujarat ranks a lowly 19 among India's 21 major states.
According to environmentalist Rohit Prajapati and economist Trupti Shah, some 5 million livelihoods have been lost in Gujarat owing to water-related, mining and industrial projects.
The corresponds to a very high 10% of the population.
Gujarat has India's highest number of pollution "hot spots", including Ankleshwar, Vapi, Nandesari and Vatva.
Groundwater is contaminated in 74 out of its 184 tehsils with salinity, chlorides, heavy metals, and persistent organic pollutants.
The industries that have flourished the most in Gujarat are all highly hazardous: poisonous chemicals-Vapi is the world's fourth most toxic hub-, textile dyeing, shipbreaking, and diamond polishing.
In Gujarat, labour rights are virtually nonexistent.
On minimum wages, it ranks eighth among Indian states.
This, then, is the story of Mr Modi's "dynamic leadership".
Big Business's clamour to make him the Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial nominee badly rattled Mr LK Advani.
Mr Modi had to clarify that Mr Advani would be the candidate.
But the controversy has only strengthened Mr Modi's claim to be Mr Advani's political successor-the undisputed Number Two in the BJP, to whom all second-generation leaders must pay obeisance.
Even this clarification hasn't fully settled the leadership issue in the BJP.
Former Vice President of India Bhairon Singh Shekhawat has announced that he wants to contest the next Lok Sabha election-in violation of the convention that the holders of constitutional office should not return to competitive politics.
Mr Shekhawat has let it be known that being 5 years older than Mr Advani, he considers himself his senior and is willing to lead the BJP.
Even if Mr Shekhawat stands down, the disquiet his move has generated together with the "Modi-for-PM" demand is bound to affect the BJP's morale.
As will the resignation of Mr Kalyan Singh, which deprives the party of its pre-eminent OBC leader in the Hindi heartland.
This is liable to hit BJP in the 11 Lok Sabha constituencies of Uttar Pradesh in which Mr Singh's Lodh caste matters politically.
The BJP, which was extremely upbeat less than a year ago, finds itself on the defensive after the Assembly election defeats in Rajasthan and Delhi.
The National Democratic Alliance, which once boasted of 24 member-parties, is now down to just 7 members, 3 of them small or unreliable.
The BJP's most important ally, the Janata Dal (United), has distanced itself from it on issues of communalism, the Hindutva terror network centred on Pragya Singh and Lt Col Prasad Shrikant Purohit, and the new National Investigation Agency Act and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Amendment Act, which makes a mockery of human rights.
The BJP's crisis of strategy is compounded by the fact that the RSS has tightened its grip on its organisation just when the party thinks it must give the appearance of moderation and inclusiveness, rather than Hindutva extremism.
This is the right moment for the secular parties to take on the BJP-if only they could muster the will and the strategy.