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| March 20, 2000 | ||
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and Prehistory The RSS should ask itself why it is out of tune with new India
The RSS is at once an avowedly cultural and in practice political body. This is dualism at its most disingenuous. It is there for all to see when the RSS patently interferes in the working of the Government. It wants to veto appointments -- the last-minute deletion of Jaswant Singh's name from the Union cabinet in March 1998 being the most infamous example -- and manipulate policy. Its economic frontal bodies are, at best, promoting a swadeshi autarky that went out of fashion with Enver Hoxha's Albania. At worst, and which is sometimes more than likely, they are spokespersons for business lobbies. To promote specific aims but cloak them in moral rhetoric is not a stratagem that can work every day. It certainly didn't in Gujarat. The RSS knows why. The question is: what will it do about it? Ransom Garu For
a man who is supposed to know his mind, N. Chandrababu Naidu has been
amazingly vacillatory in his reaction to the budget. He initially welcomed
it as "positive in approach" and in a matter of hours sought a
reversal of cuts in food and fertiliser subsidies. For Naidu and his
fellow chief ministers, there are two That Naidu says one thing at business conferences and does another in the state secretariat is not a new story. His election victory in October 1999 was facilitated in some measure by populist welfare schemes -- which added to the state's fiscal deficit of Rs 8,000 crore. Naidu has promised his people a grand future but delivered very little. As he sells dreams to his voters, he expects the Centre to pick up the marketing bill. His approach was no different in the previous Lok Sabha. Each time the government faced a crucial vote in the House, Naidu would fly down from Hyderabad and start haggling. There has to be some limit to running with the hare and hunting with the hounds -- even for somebody who would as easily do business with comrade Harkishen Singh Surjeet as with President Bill Clinton. |
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In
recalling its order allowing state servants to join the RSS, the Gujarat
Government may have bailed out its partner at the Centre. It has done
nothing to bridge the distance between the Sangh Parivar and its
substantial opponents. While the antagonistic reaction of political rivals
of the BJP was expected, even laypeople found the idea of the RSS mingling
with the bureaucracy disagreeable. Indeed, if anything the episode has
reinforced stereotypes about the RSS -- a body devoted to recondite
debate, not given to democracy and transparency and rigid to the point of
extremes. The RSS often tells sections of society -- religious minorities,
Macaulay's children and other special-interest groups -- to "join the
national mainstream". It needs to ask itself if, in method and
mindset, the RSS itself can claim to conform to contemporary India. The
RSS' nationalism, sense of duty and love for India are unquestionable. It
has to realise though that it cannot query the patriotism of fellow
Indians either. The hour of shibboleths is over, the debate about, say,
Partition is history. India has moved on. Why hasn't the RSS?
options
-- pass on the burden to consumers or absorb the price rise in enhanced,
state-level subsidies. Naidu, keen to avoid muddying his account books,
wants the Union finance min-ister to simply take back the proposal.
Earlier in the month, he displayed similar fecklessness in virtually
disallowing a rationalisation of petroleum prices. His motivation then, as
now, was the upcoming municipal and panchayat poll in Andhra Pradesh. In
the process Naidu finds himself in the company of kulaks, luddites and
sundry other protectionist and statist lobbies. Far from being the
conscience keeper of the NDA, he is emerging as its most astute
blackmailer.