State governors told not to meddle ‘in any political thicket’
A few hours after Friday night’s bloody military coup failed in Turkey, the failure of a peaceful and far less dramatic unconstitutional coup staged by India’s Bharatiya Janata Party in the state of Arunachal Pradesh was also confirmed.
Located high in the Himalayas, Arunachal is specially sensitive because it is on the border with China, which claims it as its territory, yet the BJP under prime minister Narendra Modi and party president Amit Shah has been encouraging the destabilisation of its state assembly politics since the end of last year.
The army in India (unlike in neighbouring Pakistan and Bangladesh) doesn’t do coups, but central governments do – mostly those run in the past by the Congress Party that staged them for decades in order to oust state-level administrations belonging to rivals.
In place of army officers, it is a state’s governor who controversially manages things by deciding that a state assembly is unstable, usually because its members are being tempted (often with substantial amounts of money) to switch parties. The governor then triggers either a change of government, or recommends suspension of democracy with Delhi taking charge under what is known as president’s rule.
Last week the supreme court blocked the BJP’s ambitions in Arunachal, paving the way yesterday for the restoration of a Congress majority of assembly members. Earlier this year the court blocked the BJP.s similar ambitions in Uttarakhand, which borders Nepal.
During a meeting in Delhi chaired by Modi, chief ministers of various states yesterday took up the lead give by the supreme court and attacked the government for its interference in state-level affairs. One of them criticised governors’ “adventurism”.
Nitesh Kumar, who runs a government of regional parties in Bihar, called for the governors’ role to be abolished.
The supreme court move was a boost for Congress, though the crises in both states might have been averted if Rahul Gandhi, the Congress vice president, had been less aloof and more active and sensitive to churns in the states’ politics.
More importantly, it is a blow for the prestige of the BJP and Narendra Modi, who wants his prime ministerial authority to be as absolute as possible. That was demonstrated earlier this month with a substantial central government reshuffle that promoted ministers who did his and the prime minister’s office direct bidding, and demoted those that did not and also those who had upset Amit Shah. The same applied to the internationally-regarded governor of the Reserve Bank of India, Raghuram Rajan, who is departing.
The court’s rulings have also come at a sensitive time in relations with the judiciary because the government has been trying to gain a say in the appointment of judges in high courts and the supreme court, rather than leaving it basically to seniority.
Ceremonial but meddling
Constitutionally, a state’s governor has a largely ceremonial role that is broadly similar to India’s president and Britain’s monarch. Central governments usually fill these gubernatorial posts with political supporters, usually grateful pensioned-off politicians, bureaucrats and armed service chiefs. They live grand lives of pomp and ritual in a style directly inherited from the British Raj with a large (but frequently faded) “Raj Bhawan”, estates, and liveried servants. Frequently controversial, they meddle in a state’s politics even though they are not supposed to do so.
The most blatant and destructive current example is in Delhi. Here the lieutenant governor (who has more powers than other state governors) has for two years done what is presumed to be Modi’s bidding by undermining the work of the government run by the Aam Aadmi Party. The AAP, led by Arvind Kejriwal, has unnecessarily riled the lieutenant governor, Najeeb Jung, a former bureaucrat, but an official in such a position should surely rise above such provocation.
Former Congress prime minister Indira Gandhi made most frequent use of governors’ coups, which have been staged more than 100 times since India’s independence in 1947. She was as ambitious as Modi to assert absolute control (though her motives partly stemmed from paranoia, which is not a Modi characteristic).
The sensitive Actual Line of Control, as the India-China border is known in Arunachal, when Chinese troops intruded more than 20km into Indian territory in 2013 – Indian Express photo
The first occasion I remember was in August 1984 when she tried and ultimately failed to eject the southern state of Andhra Pradesh’s colourful ex-film star chief minister N.T.Rama Rao, head of the regional Telegu Desam. Her action led to weeks of political unrest, Hindu-Muslim riots, and army flag-marches aimed at restoring peace. This hit world headlines because it echoed her State of Emergency actions in the mid-1970s. A month earlier, she had got the governor of Jammu and Kashmir to replace the chief minister Farooq Abdullah, albeit with another (more pliable) politician from Abdullah’s state-level National Conference party.
The Arunachal story
President’s rule was imposed in Arunachal in January after two months of political machinations that began when Congress assembly members, encouraged by the BJP, rebelled against the Congress chief minister, Nabam Tuki. The state’s governor was deeply involved in the events. A month later, a state government was installed and proved its majority in the assembly. It was led by one of the Congress rebels and supported by BJP assembly members, who together formed a new People’s Party of Arunachal.
Prem Khandu yesterday handing over assembly members’ letters of support to the Arunachal Pradesh governor, Tathagata Roy – Wire.com photo
Last week, on July 13, the supreme court ruled that the Arunachal governor had acted illegally and unconstitutionally when, under article 356 of the Indian constitution, he interfered in various ways in the state’s politics and successfully advised India’s president in January to dismiss the Congress state government led by Tuki, alleging it was unable to function effectively following the members’ rebellion.
For the first time ever, the court also ordered the reinstatement of Tuki’s dismissed state government. This went further than rulings in earlier decades that stopped president’s rules and sometimes ordered complaints to test their strength on the floor of the assembly.
Yesterday there was a new twist when Tuki resigned, handing over leadership of Congress to Prema Khandu, a colleague, who could pull the Congress’s warring groups together. Khandu, the son of a former chief minister, then took over 44 assembly members to the governor (above) to show that he commanded a majority of the 58-seat assembly, finally ending the coup saga. He is being sworn in today.
Governors’ ground rules
The supreme court also went further on July 13 and, for the first time, laid down ground rules for governors:
“It needs to be asserted as a constitutional determination, that it is not within the realm of the Governor to embroil himself in any political thicket. The Governor must remain aloof from any disagreement, discord, disharmony, discontent or dissension, within individual political parties.
“The activities within a political party, confirming turbulence, or unrest within its ranks, are beyond the concern of the Governor. The Governor must keep clear of any political horse-trading, and even unsavoury political manipulations, irrespective of the degree of their ethical repulsiveness. Who should or should not be a leader of a political party, is a political question, to be dealt with and resolved privately by the political party itself. The Governor cannot, make such issues, a matter of his concern.”
Quaint language there to be sure, but a significant warning shot to Modi, and to future prime ministers, to stop ordering pliant governors to organise coups.
Another indication of growing American links is a bank credit card for Cuba (left), with both countries’ flags, that is being issued by Florida-based Stonegate Bank for US citizens to use for withdrawing cash. We carried British pounds and a few US dollars that were easily exchanged in banks – my Indian government press card was, amazingly, accepted as proof of identity when I wasn’t carrying my passport. Some hotels (we were told only the military-owned ones) accept European credit cards and there are a few ATM machines.
There’s money to be made from the expected flush of tourism and the insides of old buildings are being torn out and rebuilt. Old Havana, as the cobbled area of the capital is known, has dozens of building sites but, so far, most keep their imposing exteriors (right). 
An equally unexpected but constructive 
Her successor is Prakash Javadekar (right), the minister of state in charge of environment, forests and climate change since 2014. He has been promoted to the cabinet having, with relatively little controversy, boosted infrastructure development by reducing the effectiveness of environmental protection laws and regulations in line with Modi’s wishes.
LONDON: June is usually the month when London auctions of modern Indian art hit the headlines with dramatic million-pound sales, but this year they have been unremarkable and have been overshadowed by the opening at London’s Tate Modern gallery of a fascinating retrospective exhibition, called You Can’t Please All, of figurative works by Bhupen Khakhar (right), a provocative Indian artist who died in 2003.
There have been questions about whether the paintings – done between 13 and 50 years ago – fit the Tate Modern’s ultra contemporary image. Nada Raza, the exhibition’s co-curator with Chris Dercon (till recently the gallery’s director), points out that the Tate Modern shows art from 1900, and argues that the definition of modernism needs to be expanded when it is applied outside the US and Europe because the experience of modern life, and artistic and cultural responses, can be vastly different. Artists elsewhere resist and change the forms and rules of modern art to reflect their own experiences, often in relation to colonial or imperial powers – and that is what Khakhar did.
Writing about winter, he says: “You are not allowed to smile during this season, which lasts for ten months of the year. If you are sensible, then try to look as grumpy as possible. English people appreciate sulk”.
It has led to relaxation and removal of old restrictions on doing business that will gradually yield benefits, but it has failed so far to deliver much in terms of foreign direct investment (FDI) in manufacturing industry, and there is little evidence of jobs being created.
He has managed to have bills passed in areas like coal mining, insurance, real estate, and bankruptcy, and has adopted the previous government’s highly successful Aadhaar electronic identity scheme that opens up a wide range of facilities, especially for the poor. He has also managed to reduce corruption, though mostly only at the top levels of the central government.
Two days earlier, 
Today’s results will lead to speculation about whether regional leaders such as Banerjee and Jayalalitha will link up with others like Chandrababu Naidu of Andhra Pradesh and Nitish Kumar of Bihar to form a third front, maybe associated with Congress, to try to stop Modi winning the next general election in 2019.
One came after Kashmiri students at a National Institute of Technology (NIT) college in Srinagar in the politically sensitive Kashmir valley defiantly celebrated the West Indies defeating India on March 31 in a T-20 cricket World Cup semi-final. That triggered pro-India protests by the college’s students from other parts of the country who were then attacked with lathi (long bamboo stick) charges by Kashmir police. In the days that followed, the college became a fortress guarded by para-military forces (above).
Such is the fragile situation in the apparently idyllic surroundings of the Kashmir valley, where tourists last week dodged the rain to enjoy boat rides on Srinagar’s Dal Lake, and travelled 50kms to the 2,650m (8,530ft) high Himalayan ski resort of Gulmarg to be pulled by local ski-wallahs on toboggans and ride to 4,200m on a cable car called the Gondola (below).
“The status quo has gone on a long time, with a lot of vested interests having been developed: the army, the police, the paramilitary, the bureaucracy, and politicians of every hue. Even separatists….obstinately cling on to the rebel identity because they are unable to grow” he says, pinpointing the different groups (he should have included the media) that enjoy consequential wealth, prestige, business opportunities and life-style in Kashmir (as they do in such situations elsewhere in the world).
Riding the Elephant 
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