Hey Advani is still the PM candidate and suddenly BJP is BJP Plus and Hindutva is out. Interesting but very predictable. Mid term polls??

My thoughts in the chronological order of questions asked ...

I don’t think Sh Advani ji is a PM candidate, PM Job has changed considerably over period of years. Media is hyper active and targeted, one need to be very delivery and strategy oriented, international economic politics is the key driver and with all that you need to manage coalition partners. I don’t think he has that kind of energy left needed for the job. Mr Narendra Modi doesn’t fit the bill. I’m sure US will send enough dollars to derail his candidacy.In my opinion Mrs Sushma Swaraj still has the best chance to make it

I think BJP moving to BJP plus is a marketing gimmick more of campaign term for channelizing cadres to the common goal  , they have realized that religious politics has no space and current generation of voters really don’t care  , I think India faces larger issue of economic divide which cuts against the caste politics . The root cause of caste politics and reservation was economic backwardness and then adaption to main stream but current scenario as you may have seen with Maruti episode it cuts across the board.

Mid-term election may be a possibility but it’s a hard guess when? It will happen on one good day when one of the UPA coalition partner realizes that its sooner the better. Meantime everyone is back on the drawing board to figure out. I think BJP realizes this situation very well and their national convention had that message and clarity. I saw news that BSP may withdraw the support on Oct 9^th but I still think UPA will manage to get them back. Is BJP ready for mid-term polls answer is No? They have no new allies BJD, AIDMK, TMC are on the edge to join and JD(U) is on the edge to leave . Nov state polls will be a good indicator. Also NDA allies need a clear message and direction from BJP about the PM candidate and BJP is still not communicative. NDA allies need to know the PM man in order to position themselves to fight so called secular forces like UPA. . We will know this more clearly in next couple of months till drastic events happens

Congress to elect Sonia again as its President ? Is she the only candidate ?

Sonia Gandhi's unopposed election as Congress president not points to a woeful paucity of leadership material, it also underlines the disturbing presence of feudal characteristics which cannot be welcomed in a democracy, says Amulya Ganguli.


Sonia Gandhi's coronation as the Congress president for the fourth time in succession cannot be a matter of satisfaction either for her or her party. Not only does it point to a woeful paucity of leadership material in the organisation, it also underlines the disturbing presence of feudal characteristics which cannot be welcomed in a democracy.

Yet, it is clear that the party is caught in a trap. It has acquired such a cloying culture of sycophancy over the years that there is no question of anyone standing against her as the nonentity, Jitendra Prasad, did in the year 2000.

The Congress's predicament is all the greater because the 64-year-old Sonia is still young for a politician. At a time of increasing longevity, she can expect to be at the helm for a long time. But such a prolonged tenure can become increasingly embarrassing in a democracy. A lifelong presidency brings no credit to a party, especially one as old and venerable as the Congress.

Sonia's problem is that even if she yields place to someone else, the latter will still be regarded as her factotum. The only other person who will not be seen as totally subservient if he is made the president is Rahul Gandhi . But since he is apparently being groomed to replace Manmohan Singh as the prime minister in 2014, the Congress's one-man-one-post rule excludes him.

There was no alternative, however, for her when she took charge of the party in 1998. Only a Nehru-Gandhi could have saved it from the way it was losing all credibility under Sitaram Kesri, one of the most unprepossessing of persons in a party known for its charismatic leaders. There is little doubt she fulfilled the expectations of her party men as well as supporters, for the very next general election saw the Congress back in power.

Although virtually no one had foreseen such a development when the National Democratic Alliance under Atal Bihari Vajpayee was not faring too badly, the Congress's return showed that large sections of the electorate had retained their faith in the party's accommodative policies and the secular credentials of its first family. The feeling among the marginalised and the minorities apparently was that with a Nehru-Gandhi at the top, all would be well. As such, all the motivated propaganda of the saffron crowd about her foreign origin made no impact.

Then, her master stroke of nominating Manmohan Singh as the prime minister killed two birds with one stone. While taking the sting out of the saffron camp's malicious campaign, it added the middle and upper class votes to the Congress's traditional kitty comprising the underprivileged and the minorities. So far, so good. But the pitfall of her success was that the Congress became even more of a one-person party than ever before.

Even in Indira Gandhi's time, there were a few who could hold their own despite her commanding position. Before she split the party for the second time in 1978, there were leaders like Y B Chavan, Swaran Singh, Jagjivan Ram , Siddhartha Ray, H N Bahuguna and others with her. Only after 1978 did the Congress become a party fully tied to her apron-strings. But, now, under Sonia, this unwholesome identification with a single individual looks like becoming a permanent feature.

What is odd, however, is that the Congress is not entirely devoid of talent at present. Nor can all of them be regarded as pushovers. Manmohan Singh, for instance, held his own during the controversy over the nuclear deal although Sonia was clearly not in its favour although Rahul was. P Chidambaram, too, is pursuing his hardline policies against the Maoists although the pinpricks from Digvijay Singh , Mani Shankar Aiyar and others suggest there is a section within the party which is against it. Unless this group was sure that Sonia was not against their stance, they would not have dared to continue carping at the home minister.

However, none of them -- Manmohan Singh, Chidambaram, Pranab Mukherjee, Digvijay Singh -- has enough of a political base or popular support to be a chief who can hold the party together. The Congress has evolved in such a curious way that only a Nehru-Gandhi can keep it from disintegrating. It fell into this trap because of Lal Bahadur Shastri's untimely death. Had he lived, he would have been able to prove that there could be life for the party after Jawaharlal Nehru's death.

The fear evident in the phrase 'after Nehru, what?' which was in vogue in towards the end of Nehru's life would have been proved unfounded. Equally, the comparison of the first prime minister with a banyan tree because nothing grew under it would have also been proved untrue. But as fate would have it, only one and a half years after Nehru's death, his daughter became prime minister and made the party and the country become accustomed to always having a Nehru-Gandhi at the top.

The failure of the Congress's opponents also strengthened the perceived indispensability of the dynasty. The party's adversaries could not even utilise the family's disastrous folly of the Emergency of 1975-77 and enabled it to return in 1980 because of their political ineptitude. Then, the Janata Party botched its chances in 1989-90 with its Mandal misadventure, and the Bharatiya Janata Party failed to survive in office for more than one term because of what Vajpayee suspected was Narendra Modi's role during the Gujarat riots.

So, it was back to the Congress again. But it wasn't only the Congress which was favoured but, specifically, the dynasty because throughout the period when the BJP was in power, the popularity polls showed Sonia as second to Vajpayee by not many points.

Sonia, of course, is far less regal than her mother-in-law. But, then, the Congress today is weaker than what it was under Indira in 1971-72 and under Rajiv before the Bofors scandal. Besides, she cannot claim any major achievement on her part except for leading the party back to power after the interregnum of 1996-2004.

Her politics is also seemingly in a formative stage with an unappealing focus on remaining in power even if it means submitting to the Left's anti-American bias on the nuclear deal in UPA-I and the Mandal group's preference for including caste in the census data in UPA-II.

Mercifully, the nuclear deal went through because of Manmohan Singh's and Rahul's insistence. But the unforeseen political and social consequences of including caste in the census operations may prove to be her biggest blunder.

The other blunder may be the result of her left-of-centre instincts, which she has probably acquired from Indira's 'fake' socialism. Hence, the packing of the National Advisory Council with Maoist sympathisers. One can only hope that she hasn't acquired her mother-in-law's authoritarian instincts as well. Since Sonia is expected to remain as the Congress president in the foreseeable future, an occasion may arise either to prove or disprove this fear.

Bengal has lost its taste for the Left

Written off as recently as four years ago as a political featherweight, a euphoric Trinamool Congress has described Bengal’s civic poll results as “historic”. Some may explain the phenomenal outcome as a prelude to the ‘final march’ towards the real historic turnabout in next year’s assembly elections.

Bengal has restlessly awaited change for more than a decade. Its people have watched the largest Communist Party in India metamorphose from a radical entity to the ‘establishment’, which cared for little other than reproducing itself in power every five years. Through that ceaseless process of reproduction of power the party nurtured a monolithic establishment, which ruled through a careful mixture of clientilism and patronage.

In the aftermath of defeat in the Lok Sabha elections, CPM leaders launched a rectification drive to ‘purge’ the party of bourgeois lifestyles and corruption. But what the party has not and never will turn its attention to is the basic and flawed principle of a ‘party society’ wherein the Communist government now controls every aspect of socio-political existence in Bengal.

The discourse of paribartan or change dominant in Bengal today, often tends to circle around the eccentric and unpredictable personality of Mamata Banerjee. Will Bengal, which has, for 33 years, voted for the bhadralok Marxists at times willingly and grudgingly at others, repose confidence in a subaltern politician like Banerjee?
They may not have four years ago, before Singur-Nandigram wrenched out in the open the anger and frustration gnawing at the people of Bengal. This resistance was not simply a beginning but also a culmination of the process of decline that had set in at least a decade earlier.

It is convenient for some to project Singur-Nandigram as aberrations, ‘mistakes’ the party is now set to rectify. But the arrogance of a political culture that fed that resistance is too deeply ingrained to be addressed by exercises in rectification.

Notwithstanding disparaging remarks about Banerjee, the fact remains that people have voted not just against a CPM they no longer trust, but also for Trinamool Congress, which has emerged as a formidable opposition. Underlying the complexities of Bengal politics, its decades of unbroken hegemonic rule virtually by one party, feelings of betrayal and anger run deep. For now, the urge to punish is strong enough to help the volatile Trinamool Congress; though even before it has taken the reins, the party has imbibed some of the worst aspects of competitive political violence, now a hallmark of Bengal politics.

The CPM has admitted that ‘some sections’ in Bengal have turned their backs on the party. The truth is that it’s not just some sections. Large sections of peasants, tribals, workers and intellectuals — once staunchly loyal to the party — have moved away. Right now, Bengal’s intellectuals are engaged in a passionate debate over paribartan and their role in effecting transformation. Some intellectuals, despite their Left leanings, are now firmly aligned with the Trinamool Congress. Others, who have chosen to guard their independent status, are also openly advocating change.

The disenchantment and realignment of such large sections should have worried the CPM long before the ground started to heave. Left-wing artistes such as Kousik Sen, Saonli Mitra and Bratya Basu turned ‘renegade’ following cultural coercion. Recently, ration riots spread across rural Bengal and the public distribution system was found to be in total disarray. Lalgarh was born in a cradle of such continued deprivation. Health services across cities and villages went to seed long ago. Political violence — not merely ideological friction of the kind Bengal was intimate with before 1977, but murders and revenge killings on a daily basis as part of political life — has escalated under the Left Front government.

The poor who had hoped to find in the Left Front a government of their own are left wondering about their misplaced and betrayed faith. Party leaders now say they have to renew their bond with the people. But the rhetoric of commitment has lost the power to heal, if only because no party or government in the country has had so much time to prove itself and make good its commitment to the electorate.

The CPM ascended to power riding high on the expectations of precisely those sections that are now against it. Betrayal by a party which once pledged radicalism but turned out to be ‘one among the many’, even when it presided over a solid organization and stable administrative machinery, is difficult to forgive.

At the moment, the return of the Left in West Bengal seems like the longings of a poet who has lost the power to summon words.

Mumbai ka naya King Kaun ?

Mr N Modi Next BJP Chief ?

SS will consider him for BJP boss but only if he tones down autocracy, reports Chandran Iyer from ground zero of hindutva, rss hq in Nagpur

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is likely to ask Gujarat CM and Hindutva stalwart Narendra Modi to head the BJP after current party president Rajnath Singh ends his term in December.

The buzz at the RSS national headquarters here is that Mohan Bhagwat, RSS supremo, is extremely keen to have hardliner Modi occupy political centerstage at the national level.

But, there is an important postscript.

Chintan baithak: The RSS considers Narendra Modi to be more committed to its Hindutva ideology than L K Advani or Atal Behari Vajpayee

Promoting Modi

Dilip Deodhar, a senior RSS watcher, who has written more than 30 books on the party pointed out, "Bhagwat may have told Modi that the RSS wants him to lead the BJP.

But on the spectacular condition that he amends his autocratic style of functioning, which Bhagwat feels is not in keeping with the RSS' style.

Modi has also been told to be more accessible to party workers." In fact, say RSS watchers, Modi has been told that the 2014 parliamentary elections for the party, could be held under his leadership, provided he changes his style of functioning.

In his home state, it is legend that Modi rarely meets his MLAs or cadres, yet always makes time for businessmen and investors.

A senior RSS activist pointed out that despite the condemnation for Modi by secularists, his credentials as the man who remodelled Gujarat cannot be denied.

"Modi also has a good equation with Bhagwat and the RSS considers him to be committed to the Hindutva ideology unlike Advani and Vajpayee with whom it has never had smooth equations," said the activist.

The only option

Said Deodhar, "Everyone in the RSS knows that sooner or later Modi will replace Advani, but nobody will speak officially as Bhagwat has asked everyone cadres and senior functionaries to be circumspect while talking to the media."

Deodhar added that had BJP leader Pramod Mahajan been alive, Modi wouldn't have stood a chance for the top post. "But now, the only person that Bhagwat says is fit enough for the role, is Modi."

A senior activist pointed to another overwhelming proof of the RSS' intimacy with Modi the choice of Ahmedabad for a RSS convention.

A three-day high level meeting of RSS intellectuals is being organised in Ahmedabad from September 18 in which 21 prominent RSS leaders will present papers to outline vision India 2025.

Old horse

RSS sources in Nagpur reiterated there was nobody who could match Modi's magnetism, especially Leader of Opposition, L K Advani.

M G Vaidya, RSS ideologue and former spokesperson admitted, "Advani has become a liability because of his age and it is in the interest of the party that he step aside and make way for younger leaders." But he refused to spell out who could replace Advani.

Another RSS source added that Advani knew the RSS was unhappy with him, yet he refused to step down.

A veteran RSS leader said the erstwhile RSS chief K S Sudarshan used to openly criticise former PM Atal Behari Vajpayee.

The former PM always maintained a studied silence and as a result he became larger than life and diminished Sudarshan's standing. This is something which the RSS does not want to do at this point of time

Shed obsession with Pakistan, think of India's global role: Tharoor

I think its the right time we just think of global politics . For years we just had Pakistan on our agenda and that has made Pakistan such a important country . We should be working overtime to strengthen ourselves by infusing development in NE states and control naxalites movements . There was an article in China media on de-stabilizing India by breaking India . I think we should start thinking again of Hindustan again

Our prime goal should be to handle China , Pakistan is past and how hard we work for normalizing relationship they will continue their support to terrorism as that's what they have been telling their people . No politician in Pakistan can take the risk of not talking Kashmir . Its the best time we should be completely ignoring Pakistan from our media , Parliament etc and they will feel ignored and let back door politics win by funding for development activities in Afghanistan, taking strict measures of 1960 Water Treaty , support to Baluchistan groups etc

The road to Kabul

The dusty street, crammed with tiny shops selling everything from tyres and tubes to toothpaste, is chaotic at noon. Noisy generators
spew diesel smoke on shoppers who compete with cars, bikes and dogs for space on the road. A board saying 'Afghani Restaurant' in Farsi looks inviting. Unlike outside, the café is spacious, the ambience is typically Afghani - samovars on shelves, takhts covered with Persian carpets, seekh kebabs and naan on the tables, waiters shouting in Dari, people talking in Pashto and the steely gaze of Ahmed Shah Masood surveying everything from a hand-woven painting on the wooden wall. "He was the tiger of Afghanistan," says Wais, the café manager, recalling the Afghan leader who was blown up by al-Qaida on September 10, 2001.

Wais calls himself a Kabuliwala. But the restaurant is located in a lane in Delhi's Lajpat Nagar, not on a street in Kabul. Wais, who has been living in India since 2002, feels "completely at home here". Ever since Tagore created the character and Balraj Sahni brought him to life on the silver screen over four decades ago, the Kabulliwallah has been part of the Indian imagination. The tough Afghan, who would die for honour and kill for pride, has been a folk hero: Sher Khan of Zanjeer who shed his blood for friendship; the rich Afghan who would lend money to the needy; and the brave Afghans who gave the colonial British a bloody nose, not once but thrice when they tried to invade their country in the 19th century.

This week, as Afghanistan votes in its second presidential election since 9/11, the Kabuliwalas - around 10,000 in Delhi - are anxiously waiting for the result that will probably determine whether or not they will go home any time soon. "More than 400 Afghans arrive here every week, mostly for business and a peaceful life," says an official of the Foreigners Regional Registration Office. "There is no fee for the Indian visa and it's too easy to get it in Kabul," says the official, sounding concerned.

But foreign policy experts dismiss such concerns. Almost all of them agree that Afghanistan is too important for India to worry about a few thousand Afghan refugees. "Historically, we have enjoyed good relations with Afgha-nistan and in the present context of Obama's Af-Pak policy, the country is very important for us, not just to neutralize Pakistan's influence but also for stability in the region," says Professor Uma Singh, who teaches South Asian politics at JNU in Delhi.

This is why India has been paying a lot of attention to Afghanistan since 2001, when the Taliban and their Pakistani handlers were kicked out of Kabul. Since then, India has offered $1.2 billion for Afghanistan's reconstruction, opened five consulates in the country, provided planes to Ariana airlines, established hospitals and schools and planned to take bilateral trade to $700 million by 2010. "We have a long-term interest in Afghanistan. A friendly Afghanistan will help peace in the region, including Kashmir. It will also help us counter Pakistan's influence in Kabul and give us access to energy-rich Central Asia. We have a lot at stake in this election," says a ministry of external affairs official.

Since everything in this part of the world boils down to the India-Pakistan rivalry, analysts like Fahmida Ashraf, a scholar at the Institute of Strategic Studies, Islamabad, see Indian foreign policy goals in Afghanistan as a way of "attaining a hegemonic position in the region and emerging as a global power".

"Indian efforts have been to infiltrate all sectors in Afghanistan, to make them dependent on Indian support, thus making Afghanistan a launching pad for its influence in the Central Asia," says Ashraf.

But Indian officials dismiss such views. "We want to see democracy flourishing in Afghanistan. The bad memories of Taliban rule – the Kandahar hijacking and support to Indian separatists - are still fresh in our minds." Though they won't accept it publicly, Indian leaders and officials would want to see the incumbent president, Hamid Karzai, win a second term. India trusts the Shimla-educated leader who has made common cause with India on the issue of "cross-border terrorism".

For Kabuliwalas like Wais, the August 20 election may decide their personal fate, but for India there is much more
at stake.