Jairam Ramesh mentions 5 issues on which he wants debates to take place: Here are the things he should consider before complaining

 The following article was written for OpIndia. Pasting it here for reference: 

The General Secretary of Indian National Congress, newly appointed as in-charge of Communication, Jairam Ramesh did a podcast with the Editor of ANI, Smita Prakash. He was upset that while he is ready to debate on topics related to economics, constitution and politics, the media is focussed on the cost of the T-Shirt that Rahul Gandhi wears, who he meets etc. Jairam Ramesh forgot that the debate around the cost of dresses was started by Rahul Gandhi himself, but we are not getting into that debate in this article.

At around the 48:00 minute in this video, in quick succession, Jairam Ramesh mentioned 5 points on which he wanted debates to happen, but was upset that those don’t happen. So, I thought it would be good to discuss his 5 points in a detailed article.

1.Political centralisation is results in states getting weaker.

Every time Congress party says something like this, my mind immediately goes to the below picture from the Invest Karnataka Summit from the year 2016.

On stage you can see a long list of Union Cabinet ministers along with the Chief Minister of Karnataka. What’s so great about the picture you may ask? The union ministers all represent the BJP and the Karnataka Chief minister represents the Congress party. So what? You may wonder! Below is a picture from the Vibrant Gujarat Summit in the year 2013.

You do not see a single Union Cabinet minister, because it was the UPA that was in power at the centre and therefore they used to make sure that Union ministers are not at summits organised by the BJP led governments in the state!

The 2016 Karnataka picture is not an exception. Accompanied by a host of his colleagues, India’s Finance Minister spoke at West Bengal Investor Summit in 2015; and inaugurated the Make in Odisha conclave in 2016 – both ruled by staunch opponents of the BJP. All these participations are in addition to an equivalent participation in BJP-ruled states too.

But here’s what is worse – in 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi requested the Chief Ministers of Gujarat, Maharashtra and Karnataka to join him on his China tour. Karnataka Chief Minister, Siddaramaiah (from the Congress party) refused to travel with the PM for political reasons. It is the Congress party that played petty politics at the risk of investments to the state of Karnataka (incidentally the home state of Jairam Ramesh!) and today wants a debate on “Political centralisation is results in states getting weaker”!

It is not just the participation at the investment summits that can be highlighted about the Narendra Modi governments efforts to make all states stronger. At a media summit, the then Punjab Chief Minister, Amarinder Singh was asked - “Is it easy working with the center?”. Pat comes the reply from Captain Amarinder Singh – “I have no problems. I am getting full co-operation”. 

You may snark and say Amarinder Singh now joined the BJP. But then at the same summit in the same panel was Chief Minister H.D.Kumaraswamy who reiterated the same sentiment – “I have no problems working with the center”. We have had KCR himself and his son KTR also praise the Modi government for assisting the state of Telangana, several times. As recently as 2 days back, the Rajasthan’s Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot praised the Union minister Prahalad Joshi for helping them with the coal crisis.

You may still be a cynic and say that all these folks are political opportunists who will ally with the BJP or are angry with the Congress party. And for that argument, I give you this - Kerala Chief Minister, Pinarayi Vijayan. Despite all that clamor of social media during the Kerala floods, he has publicly said “it shows how supportive the Centre has been towards Kerala”. Certainly, you cannot accuse the Communists of helping the BJP!

All these statements of the Chief Ministers are a far cry from how it used to be during the UPA. Sample this – in the year 2011, the Congress Chief Minister of Maharashtra accused the Congress led UPA central government of not giving enough funds to Maharashtra!

The GST Council is on the best examples of involving all states in the decision-making process of the states. A total of 47 meetings have been held so far, and except for one meeting, all decisions in all these meetings were taken unanimously. Can you even begin to imagine the scale of this effort?

Today, states get 10% more money than what they used to get pre-2015 from Central revenues. Today, all states get proportionate share in 100s of infrastructure projects (ranging from roads to rail to airports to bridges to tunnels and so on!). Today, MPs cutting across party lines appreciate the PM of clearing long pending projects in their areas. Would all of this have been possible with a vengeful Congress government at the helm of affairs? Do all of these examples really mean that the states are getting weaker?

 

 

2.Constitutional bodies getting weaker.

Someone says Constitutional bodies are getting weaker and my mind immediately goes to this letter written by the then Chief Election Commissioner to the President of India, accusing the Election Commissioner Navin Chawla of leaking information to the Congress party. Or to the fact that another former CEC, M.S.Gill, joined the Congress party immediately after his retirement and soon became a minister in a Congress led government.

Speaking of Constitutional bodies, the Productivity of the 15th Lok Sabha has been the worst in the last 50 years! Imagine, the worst ever! Sonia Gandhi’s UPA was in power during this term and in fact were in their 2^nd term. The 16^th Lok Sabha (2014 to 2019) worked 20% more hours than the 15^th LS, but more importantly, the “proportion of time spent by 16th Lok Sabha on legislation (32%) is higher than other Lok Sabhas”. 32% higher than the other Lok Sabhas! And the Congress makes an argument that Constitutional bodies are getting weaker?

Speaking of Constitutional bodies, many of the far-reaching recommendations of the 14^th and 15^th Finance Commissions were accepted in totality, thus strengthening both the centre and the states. In fact, the Modi government strengthened the Finance Commissions themselves by laying out fresh guidelines that make use of latest information and technology to help recommend the best course of action for the country!

Speaking of Constitutional bodies, we have witnessed how the office of the Prime Minister of India has been abjectly surrendered during the rule of Sonia Gandhi’s UPA (examples galore).

3.Constitution being ignored.

History is replete with examples of how the Congress party “ignored” the Constitution! The 100 times it dismissed popularly elected state governments; the imposition of Emergency in the country and subsequent amendments to the constitution; and the creation of parallel power structures (such as the all-powerful NAC under Sonia Gandhi), are all prime examples of how the Congress party has actually ignored the Constitution. And yet the newly appointed Communications in-charge of the Congress party actually wants us to believe that the Constitution is being ignored by the BJP!

4.Polarisation is taking place. And is intensifying.

A very simple metric demolishes this argument to pieces. There were nearly 70-80 documented large riots in India when the Congress was in power. There are not even 10 large riots documented in India when the BJP was in power (for 14 years now). The father of polarisation is the Congress party. Congress Chief Ministers have accused Congress MPs of engineering riots to grab their chair – can anything get more worse than this? The Congress is shocked that today many Hindus are vocal about their way of life; their practices and their beliefs. And unable to grasp this awakening, they resort to a silly classification of “polarisation”!

5.Economic Inequality is increasing.

Centuries old cliché that doesn’t hold much relevance to today’s India. Rahul Gandhi’s stress on Ambani and Adani has becoming so boring that even his own state CMs are ignoring his rhetoric now. India has seen a record number of Income Tax filers; a record number of additions to the EPFO portal; a record number of automobile sales; a record number of mobile manufacturing and sales; we can go on and on about how today’s India is working hard to bridge the inequality gap. The Congress is however struck with this broken record of Ambani-Adani.

 

Jairam Ramesh’s diatribe against the media is nothing new. The Congress’s latest strategy seems to be play the victim by saying they aren’t getting enough space to speak. Apart from a few delusional folks in the Congress, there is no one who believes that Congress party doesn’t get enough space! It is high time they realise that both their message and messenger need to change. It is high time they stop blaming people of India for not realising the awesomeness of Rahul Gandhi.

Telangana by-poll: BJP fields strong candidate, TRS employs all its might and how Congress vote bank may decide the gap between TRS and BJP

The following article was written for OpIndia. Pasting it here for reference. 

In the 2018 Assembly elections in Telangana, the TRS party, led by KCR, won a whopping 88/119 seats. Despite winning a landslide, the TRS displayed an unusual urgency in poaching MLAs from the Congress party. The Congress won 19 seats in the 2018 elections, thereby being eligible for the Leader of the Opposition post. One by one, a total of 12 Congress MLAs were poached by the TRS within just a couple of months of winning this landslide. 1 MLA went on to become an MP in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. In this instance, with 2/3rd of the CLP joining the TRS, there was no need to disqualify the legislators.

KCR did NOT need these 12 MLAs for any support in the Assembly. This move, primarily orchestrated to show the supremacy of KTR, the newly anointed working President of the party, also ensured that there will officially be no leader of opposition in the Telangana Assembly. The torchbearers of democracy weren’t bothered by this blatant suppression of the people’s mandate though. But we divert, so let’s get back to the premise of this article. 

Out of the 6 MLAs who have stayed back with the Congress, the MLA from Munugodu constituency, Komatireddy Rajagopal Reddy recently resigned from the Congress party (and as an MLA) and joined the BJP. As expected, a by-poll has become necessary and that is now scheduled for November 3rd. The contest in Munugodu constituency in 2018 was primarily between the Congress party and the TRS. The BJP came a very distant 3rd and lost its deposit too. However, the BJP has picked up in Telangana ever since their debacle in the 2018 election.

In a record, The BJP won 4 Lok Sabha seats from Telangana in 2019 (KCR’s daughter was defeated in one of them; KCR’s son was in charge in another!). The BJP went on to defeat the TRS in the all-important GHMC elections (but TRS managed to capture power by allying with MIM post-elections). And then the BJP went on to defeat the TRS in the Dubbaka by-poll (right in the lion’s den!) and in the Huzurabad by-poll. Both these Assembly seats were held by the TRS earlier. 

Munugodu is different in that sense – the seat was held by Congress earlier. This is not the first seat that is going to by-polls where Congress was holding the seat. The then TPCC President, Uttam Kumar Reddy vacated his Huzurnagar assembly seat after getting elected to the Lok Sabha. The TRS won that by-poll. The situation of the Congress party was so bad that they couldn’t win the seat that their own state President won! 

The situation of the Congress party is no different now. In fact, Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo yatra is in going to be in Telangana during the by-poll. If Rahul Gandhi is in Telangana, that means the entire top leadership of the Congress will just be running behind him only, leaving the hapless candidate to fend for herself in Munugodu! We still have 3 weeks to go for the elections and the Congress election campaign is at its peak now. News outlets like The Hindu have already told us that there are “impressive crowds” for Congress meetings – a phrase they never use for BJP even when BJP wins so many elections! With the Congress campaigning bound to taper down from next week onwards, the fight between TRS and BJP will only intensify. 

A clear indication of how strong a fight the BJP is putting up with their candidate, Komatireddy Rajagopal Reddy, is evident from the fact that the TRS has deployed their entire might for this by-poll. KCR has asked 86 of his MLAs to be stationed in the constituency only. This includes all of his ministers. In fact, to show himself as an example of “leading from the front”, KCR himself is in charge of one village in the Munugodu constituency for the by-poll! Just 10 days back, KCR announced the name change of his party from TRS to BRS (Bharat Rashtra Samithi) to reflect his “national” ambitions. That a “national” leader finds it necessary to be in charge of a village in a by-poll, speaks volumes about the nature of the fight ahead! The TRS is clearly rattled by the strength of the BJP. 

The strength of the BJP lies in two factors – first is the candidate himself. Komatireddy Rajagopal Reddy. He is the younger one of the famous “Komatireddy Brothers”! The elder one, Komatireddy Venkat Reddy is an MP from the Congress party (and has been with the Congress for many decades). Rahul Gandhi has been very successful in isolating this powerful Congress family away from the Congress party, adding to his list of sterling achievements! The Komatireddy brothers also own industries that generate direct employment for thousands of families in this area. The goodwill they enjoy and the money power they can deploy if needed are definitely a very good advantage for the BJP.  The second factor for BJP is its increased cadre strength and participation from across the state. The BJP is also putting up their entire might – central ministers will campaign; all state office bearers are stationed in Munugodu to carry out door-to-door campaigning. 

The Congress will still have a vote bank that may end up being the deciding factor in the gap between the TRS and the BJP. An exciting 3 weeks lies ahead for the politics in Telangana. November 6th will definitely alter the course of the political debate in the state. 

Sadanand Dhume and liberal propaganda: Why he is wrong about Indian democracy being in danger and how he refused to answer pertinent questions

 The following article was written for OpIndia. Pasting it here for reference:

Serial commentator Sadanand Dhume, tweeted a thread yesterday, yet again reminding us that democracy is in danger in India. This time, he chose an interesting strategy, that I think warrants a deeper discussion on the contrived thinking of this self-proclaimed liberal gang.

First, Dhume begins by quoting Professor Ashutosh Varshney, who in turn quotes a report of an obscure institute from Sweden called V-Dem. The loop is fascinating – these folks quoting just amongst themselves and telling us that this is the absolute truth! I am reminded of how The Print invented a lie that the Central Vista will cost 20,000 crore; and how The Wire, The Hindu, The Week et.al picked it up; how The Print quoted their own lies in future reports; and how Sonia Gandhi ended up using that lie in one of her letters to the Prime Minister of India!

The graph that Dhume and Varshney are fascinated with, is plotting two indices. One is “Electoral Democracy” and the other is “Liberal Democracy”.  Here is that graph:

 

You can easily two dips in the graph. One during the 1975 to 1977 phase. And the other dip starts right from the year 2014 (What a beautiful coincidence). India was under Emergency from 1975 to 1977. That meant, no elections. That also meant, no dissent and therefore no space for “liberal democracy”. Zero elections and zero dissent allowed during the emergency. Yet, for this period, this wonderful graph says that both “electoral democracy” and “liberal democracy” score a non-zero, positive number on the index!

So, it’s natural to ask what exactly was the methodology used to arrive at this brilliant conclusion that there existed “liberal decmoracy” during the Emergency. Which is exactly what the former CEO of Prasar Bharati, Shashi Shekhar, asked Dhume to explain. Dhume calmly tells us that the onus is not on him to explain. In his own words, “But the onus is on those who think the indices are wrong to argue convincingly…”. This is yet another gameplan that the whole allegedly liberal gang employs. The “onus of proof” is on the reader and not on the writer. And if the reader actually ends up proving the lies of the writer, then the reader is wrong (duh!). This entire gang thrives on two things – 1. lie regularly; and 2. badmouth those who call out their baseless lies regularly!

When Shashi Shekhar persists and asks – “what is the underlying model and what data was used to compute the indices ?”, Dhume very innocently asks – “Which index specifically do you mean, and what information would you like to see that is not available?”

At this stage, I stood up from my seat and gave a standing ovation to Dhume. His entire thread is based on just two indices – “Electoral Democracy” and “Liberal Democracy”. And when asked what is the underlying model for these indices, he so very innocently asks “Which index”? I would really like to gain such guts in life and brazen it out like this! Dhume doesn’t stop there. He goes on to tell us that “V-Dem, on which Varshney’s charts are based, does go into quite a lot of detail on their website.” The easy thing for Dhume to do would have been to just give us the specific link to the website, but why do such hard work when you can brazen out your lack of intelligence?

Now that the we have proved the farce that the graph is, we can move on to discuss the other brilliant arguments in Dhume’s thread. He classifies the Indian population into two categories – One is “Scholars” and the other is the “average Indian”. Dhume certifies that India’s “electoral democracy” does well despite us having a “low per capita income” and this is what the lowly average Indian cares about. The “scholars” ofcourse think that India is doomed. Or maybe Dhume classifies them as “scholars” because they think India is doomed?

Dhume tells us that there is a “decline of institutions like the Supreme Court”. Elsewhere in the thread, he also tells us that “Judges are cowed”. What proof does he offer for this? Nothing. He just says this is “well documented”. Which means that it is the headache of the “average Indian” to go find out this documentation and then just agree with the documentation!

Dhume shares a page in which the author gives us just two examples from the Congress regimes of the past where freedom of expression was challenged. The chapter then mentions that nothing was as worse as how things were between 1998 to 2004; and from 2014 onwards. Again, no proof is offered. Why do you need proof when the “scholars” have told you so?

Dhume attempts to end his 8-tweet thread on a sad note that Indians don’t seem to care about the world thinks about our democracy. Dhume doesn’t realise that he is making the fallacious assumption that some articles in some newspapers amounts to what the “world thinks”. You cannot blame him for thinking so – because this is how the entire gang thinks. The gang believes they are the torchbearers of this sinking world and the hapless citizens simply don’t want to recognize the awesomeness they bring to this world!

You know what is the best part of this entire thread? Dhume adds two more tweets and tells us that “personally I find V-Dem Institute’s methodology confusing.” Why would you form opinions based on confusing methodology and express your opinions/conclusions based on such confusing methodology? There can be only one reason for this – to further an agenda that shows India in poor light and gain attention. This is the only way the alleged liberal gang knows how to thrive! 

The farcical Congress party (s)election ends with the coronation of loyalist, Kharge

 The following article was written for MyInd Makers. Pasting it here for reference:

The only section that was actually interested in the farcical “election” to the post of President of the Indian National Congress, was the English media. Sometimes I got a feeling that even members of the Congress party were not as thrilled and interested as the English media. You may ask - Why is this a farcical “election”? This is farcical, not because the victor was already known, but because of the manner in which the only opponent to the pre-destined victor also had to take “permission” from HER to even contest the election.  

Rahul Gandhi was president of the Congress from December 2017 to June 2019. That’s less than 2 years (for some reason the English media keeps saying he was President for 2 years). He resigned in June 2019 taking responsibility for the disastrous performance in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. His mother took over yet again, this time as “interim President”. A post she held for more than 3 years making it a total of nearly 23 years at the helm of Congress.

It is from these clutches that the Congress party had to get rid of. The worst Lok Sabha performance of the Congress party was under Sonia Gandhi’s presidentship. The second worst was under Rahul Gandhi’s presidentship. Yet, we have this spectacle of THE Family first choosing Ashok Gehlot as their nominee for the post of President. A front-page story on August 24th tells us that Sonia chose Ashok Gehlot to lead the Congress party.

Shashi Tharoor wanted to contest for the post of President of Congress and even for that, he had to actually get permission from HER. The permission was given to Shashi Tharoor on September 19th. And an election date was announced for October 17th.

Now, instead of waiting for the actual election to be over, Sonia Gandhi decides that Ashok Gehlot’s successor in Rajasthan has to be decided. It is natural for everyone to think why such a decision would have to be taken when the election was not over yet. Well, since the family already decided that Ashok Gehlot will win the polls, why delay the inevitable?

Ashok Gehlot had other plans though. He didn’t want to resign from the post of Chief Minister. He tried to convince Rahul Gandhi but wasn’t successful at it. When the Congress leadership sent Ajay Maken and Mallikarjun Kharge to oversee a CLP resolution in Rajasthan, Ashok Gehlot revolted! The MLAs didn’t turn up. This of course naturally upset Sonia Gandhi. Ashok Gehlot went to Delhi and apologised to Sonia Gandhi.

Am sure you have some logical questions to ask now. Wasn’t the family aware of Gehlot’s demands when they chose him as their successor and leaked it to the press? Did they really think Gehlot will simply fall in line? Did they really not want the new Congress President to have a say in who should be the Chief Minister of his home state? Well, my suggestion is to not ask logical questions and simply follow what happened afterward.

With this rebellion, the Family had to choose a stauncher loyalist for a contest. Poor Shashi Tharoor still doesn’t have the confidence of the family so he is simply left fending for himself. Who better to “contest” than the old faithful Digvijay Singh!

I think the family has some revenge they wanted to take against Digvijay Singh also. After telling him on September 29th that he is THE man, Digvijay Singh had to know from the media on September 30th that he is actually NOT the man! The family chose the best loyalist – Mallikarjun Kharge for the post. Digvijay was left in the lurch and he had to issue the below statement to the media (I have no sympathy for Digvijay though!)

Now, it has become a Shashi Tharoor vs Mallikarjun Kharge “contest”. The victor was obviously known. Shashi Tharoor started his “campaign” by sharing the wrong map of India!

Facing stiff competition for assembly elections, KCR's national party will be a 'nonstarter'

The following article was written for MyInd Makers. Pasting it here for reference: 

On October 5th, 2022 (Vijaya Dashimi) the Chief Minister of Telangana announced that he is now changing his party name from Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) to Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS). He has been claiming since early 2018 that he wants to play a larger role on the national political scene.

In addition to the setback in the 2019 Parliament elections; the subsequent losses in 2 bye-elections and the GHMC election made KCR put these plans on the backburner. In early 2021, KCR gave very strong indications that he will be making his son KTR the Chief Minister. Everyone assumed that KCR will move on to fulfil his dream of a national role. However, nothing of such sort happened at that point in time (probably because of a severe backlash from various party leaders). Occasionally we have been treated to the media leaks that he is all set to announce the change in the party’s name but nothing ever happened, until yesterday.

KCR has been steadfast in claiming that there is a need to overhaul the Constitution of India. And in his overzealousness to make his point strong, he has ended up giving bizarre examples. Such as, “We need to increase the average speed of our trucks and trains, therefore we need a new constitution.” It’s not just about how bizarre the argument is, but also the threatening manner in which it was delivered that reinforced KCR’s combative personality.

The bizarreness doesn’t end there. KCR has been steadfast in claiming the central government has no role in laying roads in villages (“Only the state government that can understand the actual need of the villages “). Not just this, he has repeatedly questioned why the central government needs to build hospitals and education institutes also. The big question now we need to ask is – will KCR include these in his manifesto? Will he go out to the people of the country and tell them that he will not build hospitals and education institutes anymore?

KCR started his campaign for a national role by citing that the country needs a non-Congress, non-BJP government at the centre. He has slowly moved to say that the current need of the hour is only a “BJP-mukt Bharat”. Multiple times, he has met Stalin (who is in alliance with Congress); he has met Deve Gowda and Kumaraswamy (who are in alliance with Congress); he has met Sharad Pawar (who is in alliance with the Congress). Even Nitish Kumar is now in alliance with the Congress party. He announced that PK is his best friend at the same time when PK was advising Congress party on how to revive themselves!

He has made repeated trips to multiple states that have a strong non-BJP party either in power or in the opposition. None of these trips has resulted in anything fruitful for KCR or TRS. The latest outing with Bihar CM Nitish Kumar ended up with acute embarrassment to KCR, with the final 2 minutes of the press conference showing us a great glimpse into the confusion that prevails!

In yesterday’s announcement, KCR claimed that he will first focus on neighbouring states such as Karnataka and Maharashtra. This makes some sense because BRS can enter into an alliance with JD(S) and NCP for a couple of border seats and perhaps end up winning them too. He can then use these small victories to project how he is now a national force to reckon with. JD(U), BSP, and the TMC have all won a couple of seats outside their strongholds but have diminished in strength over a period of time because of a lack of focus. Every non-BJP party leader has now fashioned themselves into thinking that their party is the real alternative to the BJP at the national level. KCR went a step further and had flexis across various cities that projected him as a “Desh ki Neta”!

It has been claimed by some in the media that KCR’s strong grip on Hindi will make him a big hit in the Hindi heartland. It has been claimed by TRS that most schemes of Modi today are merely a copy of what KCR has already done in Telangana. He has continuously claimed that he was ridiculed when he set up the TRS in 2001, in the exact same manner that he is being ridiculed now. For some strange reason, he doesn’t seem to understand a basic difference – the TRS had a clear purpose – the formation of a Telangana State. The name change to BRS has no single purpose. And going by his utterances, it looks like the purpose of the BRS is to drastically reduce the powers of the central government. KCR’s “national” party will be a non-starter. He has a bigger problem to resolve first – the rise of the BJP as his main contender for the 2023 Telangana Assembly elections. Everything else can wait.