New sheriff in town

“It’s the economy, stupid.” — James Carville, campaign strategist for Bill Clinton, US Presidential election 1992

India’s general elections 2014 are over, and the vigorous, experienced and sophisticated electoral process has generated a total change in management this time around, placing an entirely new government in office. In American parlance, “there’s a new sheriff in town”, led by a conservative Right-wing political party, generally disparaged as “Hindu nationalist” by commentators in the West, and their Indian acolytes at home.

The party and its leader, the new Prime Minister of India, have been accused of engineering communal riots, pogroms and practicing religious discrimination against minorities, charges which, as expected, have all been vigorously denied. This, of course, is par for play in all political discourse, but in all fairness it must also be noted that a Special Investigation Team, established under orders of the Supreme Court of India to investigate large-scale communal riots in Gujarat in 2002, do not appear to have found any credible evidence of personal culpability or involvement of the present Prime Minister who was the state chief minister at the time.

The recent general elections were contested amidst an atmosphere of unprecedented viciousness, in which high-decibel, no-holds-barred mud-slinging was freely indulged in, which did succeed in polarising and influencing public and societal perceptions to an appreciable extent. At the end of it all, the so-called Right-wing “Hindu nationalists” swept to power in no uncertain terms, under a forceful but controversial chief executive with an earlier record of brisk, no-nonsense governance as chief minister in his parent state. India’s vox populi had pronounced its verdict.

Now that the heat and dust have settled somewhat, it is vitally important to remember that time is at a premium, that people are impatient, and India is a country in a hurry for the promised “good days ahead”. The new administration will have to hit the ground sprinting. The next general elections are due in 2019, distant yet not all that far away if one considers that when the new Prime Minister is scheduled to present his report card as promised. A lot of work needs to be done in the meanwhile.

Change is always easier promised in political speeches than is actually delivered, particularly economic transformation which has its own inherent inertia. To be effective in the context of argumentative India, where perpetually squabbling political parties are obstructive often to the point of sheer cussedness, there is no reason to expect sanity to prevail now that the roles are reversed.

Having successfully achieved the office of the Prime Minister, the present incumbent is being deluged by advice as well as criticism from well-wishers as well as critics. But as a hardened political veteran, one who is presumably armour-plated against the stones, brickbats, slings and arrows of confrontational politics, Mr Modi will undoubtedly bring to bear his own extensive experience and, above all, gut feeling, to resolve the issues he is confronted with. Going by public pronouncements of senior political personalities, defence and national security are expected to be amongst the key focus areas of the new government.

The Cabinet of ministers has been announced, but in a novel and undoubtedly startling development, the two mutually exclusive and often conflicting ministries of finance and defence are apparently to be presided over by the same Cabinet minister. It is not yet clear whether this is an experiment, a temporary holding berth or a permanent arrangement. The sheer physical and intellectual demands of these two jobs are of an unbelievable magnitude, albeit the party has fielded one of its most capable, competent and talented figures for the job.

The job of the finance ministry is to provide resources, the nature of defence is to gulp it down and ask for more. The twain are unlikely to ever meet. One of the first tasks of the new administration will be to try to square this circle between the seemingly irreconcilable demands of guns and butter — the requirements for defence and planning economic regeneration of the country.

Much can be achieved here by force-feeding indigenisation on often reluctant militaries together with coming down heavily on the long-running record of subpar performance by defence research and defence production agencies which has come to be almost fatalistically accepted by the long-suffering users. Firm corrective measures and even punitive action if necessary, may have to be taken to make all stakeholders utilise their considerable potential and perform accordingly. Defence production has to be opened to the indigenous private sector, and imports cut down to the barest essential minimum. The prescriptions are well-known — the new dispensation must make them work.

Tempers and temperatures are creeping slowly downward, though periodic outbursts from opponents continue in the media, entertaining readers and viewers across the nation. Hopefully, the huge margin of victory will be utilised constructively by the party in power in bringing the country forward.

Times are uncertain, and not merely in economic terms. A wildfire of militancy driven by extreme radical ideologies seems to be raging out of control across almost half the circumference of the earth, from the Far East to Western Africa. With Jemaah Islamiya covering South East Asia, Jamaat-e-Islami, Afghan Taliban, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and their numerous clones spread throughout South Asia, Al-Shabaab in Somalia and large parts of eastern Africa, and now Boko Haram hitting the headlines with the mass kidnap of girl students from a boarding school in northern Nigeria.

India seems the only firebreak in this chain of conflagrations, but the outlook is distinctly uncomfortable. The dramatic, almost impetuous, outreach to friends and foes alike, external as well as internal, by the incoming incumbent even before the first day of his tenure had really got under way is a striking example of the type of proactive hands-on political and diplomatic management and diplomacy required to meet such situations.

India’s new initiatives have been generally greeted with appreciative reciprocity by India’s neighbouring countries in Saarc, though with a sullen lack of grace by obdurate political opponents within the country. The latter must understand that this will not do.

The writer is a former Chief of Army Staff and a former member of Parliament