Posted by: John Elliott | January 2, 2009

Sheila Dikshit gets it wrong – and now plans a “Flexi-BRT” muddle

Sheila Dikshit has surely got it wrong. What a pity, right at the beginning of her record-breaking third term as Delhi’s chief minister after a resounding victory in the state assembly polls, she took a ride along Delhi’s appallingly inefficient Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) System and declared it a success.

But she drove along it at midday when the traffic is light and there are few jams – I also went along the system on Christmas Eve and also found no problems. According to newspaper reports, she also broke the rules by driving down the bus lane, with all traffic lights turned to green.

Bogota's efficient BRT with wide 3-lane roads and passenger overbridges

Bogota's efficient BRT with wide 3-lane roads and passenger overbridges

But the idea of such a system is that it should function well at peak hours when traffic builds up. At such times, the BRT has been a clear disaster ever since it opened with crippling traffic jams, chaos, many accidents and deaths. Buses of course have generally speeded down their designated lanes, but have not proved successful in persuading people to switch from cars.

Apart from bus passengers, the main people who seem to have gained are the contractors and, presumably, officials in the Delhi government or one of the municipal agencies who must have got the kickbacks on the contracts.

(I have always wondered who the officials are who benefit from the frequently useless road equipment that it is regularly installed along the city’s roads – rubber flaps and mini-pylons marking lanes that quickly get snapped off by passing traffic, useless reflectors along central-reservation kerbs, roadside railings that are not needed, and now new street signs in Lutyens Delhi (and maybe elsewhere) that are twice as big as they need be).

The problem with the BRT is that the initial Ambedkar Nagar-Moolchand stretch was ill thought out and was the result, I suspect, of the battle that one of its advisers, Prof Dinesh Mohan of the Indian Institute of Technology, waged against the highly successful Delhi Metro train system.

He has persistently argued that the Metro is a waste of money because there are not enough trains and passengers, and pushed the BRT instead. The BRT was then rushed and introduced without a detailed study, as officials are now admitting publicly.

It was started on a stretch – from south of the Oberoi Hotel to the outer ring road – that was not even wide enough for existing traffic, and was inevitably far too narrow when regular traffic was restricted to two lanes. That view was endorsed by a parliamentary standard committee  a few days before Dikshit endorsed the project after her ceremonial drive.

I can also vouch for it being too narrow and appallingly designed, having this summer seen a highly efficient BRT in Bogotá, the capital of Colombia, where I was visiting on holiday. There the roads are very wide and there are pedestrian bridges for bus passengers to cross the traffic lanes. The project is efficiently run by private sector contractors who built it and are responsible for collecting the fares and running the stations and bus services.

Nothing so well ordered has happened in Delhi, even though some officials visited Bogotá to study the system (on a presumably expenses paid trip). Here the roads are too narrow, there are no over bridges, and there is a total lack of safety – even Delhi officials are now admitting that three lanes in each direction for traffic are essential.

Now it is being reported that the system is to be extended, but with variations – what officials are reported to be calling “Flexi-BRT”. In some locations, the bus corridor will move from the centre of the highway to the left, and sometimes there will be a break and all the traffic will move together. That is surely a recipe for chaos at the junctions of the different layouts.

Having lived in India for many years, I admire how this country thrives on turning muddle and adversity into success. But what will happen when that muddle is designed, and is not the result of  happenstance? Presumably, even greater muddle.

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Posted in Delhi, Delhi BRT, Delhi Metro, India transport | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by: John Elliott | December 31, 2008

Happy New Year – some possible 2009 events……..

………….and may 2009 not be as bad as seems likely!

 

Here are ten thoughts on what might, or might not, happen during the year:

Wouldn’t it be good for South Asia if…………

1. Omar Abdullah, the new 38-year old chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, is allowed to bring a fresh approach to Kashmir. Rahul Gandhi, son and heir to Congress Party leader Sonia Gandhi, who knows Abdullah well, can help by persuading the old guard in his party to work with J&K’s youngest-ever chief minister, instead of trying to upstage him and block his initiatives. India needs to start giving Kashmir the greater autonomy that it has demanded for years. This is part of Abdullah’s election platform and should be actively supported by Rahul Gandhi and Congress.

2. Rahul Gandhi becomes India’s deputy prime minister if Congress leads a new coalition government after the April-May general election. Manmohan Singh could continue as prime minister for perhaps two years and then hand over to Gandhi. As readers of this blog will know, I am no fan of dynasties, and believe they do more harm than good to democratic transparency and development. But Rahul Gandhi is going to take over the Congress leadership one day, so the sooner the better because Sonia Gandhi is not a political leader and Rahul could be – his first test could come on how he gets Congress to handle the Kashmir issue.

3. Sheikh Hasina, Bangladesh’s newly elected prime minister (also a former prime minister and previously held on murder and corruption charges), manages to rise above her past political failings and lead the country into a new era of political stability and economic development. That means that her leading political opponent, Khaleda Zia, should put an end to the tit-for-tat politics that she and Sheikh Hasina have indulged in for years, and allow the government to govern.

4. Sri Lanka emerges from the current war between its Sinhalese-led government and the Tamil Tigers with a lasting peace deal that enables Tamil activists to feel they have won something in terms of regional autonomy.

And some 2009 forecasts …….

………….on Pakistan and Afghanistan

5. Pakistan will be have another  military coup, rationalising the current chaotic leadership of the country.

6. Barack Obama will, as America’s new president, declare Pakistan a terrorist state.

7. America and Britain will tragically continue to waste young soldiers’ lives in their futile Afghanistan army campaigns which serve no useful purpose.

…………and economies in crisis

8.  The world’s economy will fail to recover, and it will gradually be realised that the current crisis could affect how people live for a generation or more. There is a lot more bad news to come on bank and company closures, especially in the US and Europe – and China has yet fully to feel the collapse of world-wide demand for its products. Then countries like the US and Britain will have to pay the price for their governments’  banking and other company bail-outs.

9.  India, which continues to be primarily an inward looking economy, will fare less badly than most others, though it will find economic growth declining more than currently forecast – and there will be more unexpected spin-offs like the governance lesson currently being learned too late by Satyam, the software company.

10.  Gordon Brown, Britain’s prime minister, will resist temptations to call a general election later in the year, when he could claim that he and his Labour Party are what the UK needs to be steered through its dire economic crisis. He’d be on shaky ground because he presided as finance minister over the boom that he famously declared would not turn into “a bust”. Brown’s New Year wish must be that predictions of Britain becoming an Iceland-style economic bankrupt are proved wrong.

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Posted in India, India corporate governance, India economy, India general election, India Pakistan, India software, Manmohan Singh, Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, Pakistan politics, Rahul Gandhi, Sri Lanka, UK economy | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by: John Elliott | December 27, 2008

Pakistan’s army is in charge – and forcing a crisis

The most worrying trend in Delhi, as India-Pakistan tensions escalate, is a growing belief that the Mumbai attacks were not just condoned, but were actually commissioned by Pakistan’s army – not just by the usual suspect, the ISI (Pakistan’s CIA).

Reading the newspapers, and talking to well informed friends and contacts on the Christmas party circuit in Delhi in the past few days, I have been amazed by how many people are arguing this. These are not conspiracy theorists but people who, through their past or present careers, are closely linked with India’s foreign affairs and security circles.

Three of the reasons behind the theory were set out in yesterday morning’s (Dec 26) Indian Express which asserted that the Mumbai attacks had been “sanctioned” at the “highest levels” of the Pakistan army.

The reasons, which have appeared in varying forms in other papers in the past few days, were: to make the West (ie the US) realise it can’t take for granted Pakistan army’s presence (fighting the Taliban) on the Afghan border; to reinstate the army’s institutional credibility following President (General) Pervez Musharraf’s exit from the scene; and to reassert the army’s supremacy over the civilian government on security issues.

There is another more devious theory. It is that the army is tired of losing battles on its western border with Afghanistan, and would like an excuse to shift its battalions to the eastern Indian border, leaving the lawless Afghan border to the Taliban and the Americans to slog it out.

Linked with that is a view that President-elect Barack Obama must learn that the Pakistan army does not like having to fight the Taliban (which it helped create) on America’s behalf, so should soften his approach when he becomes president. Obama should also not put pressure on Pakistan’s civilian government.

It is now clear that the army – led by its new chief, General Ashfaq Kayani  – is running Pakistan’s civilian government. It has long been evident that President Asif Ali Zardari is more of a joker than even a cipher – and that, one year after his wife, Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated last December 27, has no real power.

Now Nawaz Sharif, the former prime minister, is following the army’s line by denying that anyone from Pakistan was involved in the Mumbai attacks, having initially taken the opposite view.

This surely illustrates why it is best to have a general at the top of Pakistan’s government. The current  muddle about who is in charge was partly created by the west, which encouraged the ousting of Musharraf from his post of army chief.  One day western governments – led by the US and UK – which bleat endlessly about the need for a democratic government in Pakistan, will realise that the army is always in charge so it is much better to have it out in the open occupying the presidency.

Some of my Delhi-based foreign correspondent colleagues gloated as they reported Musharraf’s decline as if he was some evil monster. He may have done all sorts of things wrong – most national leaders do – and grossly misled outgoing-US president George W. Bush (not a difficult thing to do), but at least India and the west knew who to deal with. Now they don’t.

The army has over-ruled the civil government’s wish for peace with India. What should have been an inquiry into who was responsible for the Mumbai attack, with terrorist camps in Pakistan being closed down, has been turned into a dire India-Pakistan crisis.

The world has become more concerned about the risk of a war between the two nuclear powers than about dealing with the Mumbai terrosts, which is exactly what the Pakistan army wanted.

India is partly to blame for this because some of its muddled messages over the past month have appeared to be threatening to attack Pakistan if action was not taken against terrorists based there. That enabled the Pakistan army to whip up nationalist opinion and pursue the strategy outlined above.

I stick to my view of December 23 that India will not attack Pakistan – but, alongside that, it now seems that the chances of Pakistan-based terrorists being dealt with by Pakistan are now slim. And when the next terrorist attack takes place, I believe India might well respond. Then the Pakistan army will, according to current Delhi informed opinion, have achieved its aim.

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Posted in India Pakistan, India terrorism, Mumbai, Pakistan politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by: John Elliott | December 24, 2008

Merry Christmas !

 

Merry Christmas  

 

Christmas Tree in Istanbul - photo Reuters/Osman Orsal

Christmas Tree in Istanbul - photo Reuters/Osman Orsal

 

 

 to all of you who have logged in to this blog in the past year, both on Fortune.com and here  

 

 

 

 

Have a great holiday and come back again soon

 

 

 

cheers

John

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Posted in India | Tags: ,

Posted by: John Elliott | December 23, 2008

India won’t attack now, but it could next time – quickly!

India’s Mail Today newspaper this morning splashes across its front page the headline “War Panic in Pak as India Talks Tough”, and reports that Pakistan “scrambled its fighter jets over nearly all major Pakistani cities” yesterday. 

 

Yet I have met no-one who thinks India will attack terrorist camps – or any other sites – in Pakistan, despite the noise that has been building up between the two countries since the Mumbai terrorist attacks last month.

 

Many people are of course wondering whether India will strike– and worrying that it might – but they can’t quite see it happening. I am sure India won’t, not this time anyway.

 

Why am I so sure? Because of the consequences. Pakistan would strike back. India would be blamed as the aggressor. Nuclear war fears would escalate, foreigners would evacuate, and the missiles would have done little or no real damage to the capabilities of Pakistan-based terrorists.

 

Furthermore, the strikes would not be a vote winner in next March-April’s Indian general election because a majority of voters would not thank the Congress-led government for putting their lives and the already-declining economy in jeopardy – possibly with lives being lost in a Pakistan counter-attack.

 

There is an alternative view that the country would applaud the government’s courage, but I doubt it. This is not the same situation as George W. Bush hitting at Afghanistan after 9/11 or Maggy Thatcher invading the Falkland islands in 1982. Both these actions were vote winners because troops were sent to the other side of the world and there was no chance of return attacks on the US or UK – apart from possible terrorist strikes in the US which could be blamed on the aggressors, not Bush.

 

India on the other hand would be hitting at its neighbour and recrimination would be instant, with all the down sides I’ve just mentioned.

 

So, in practical terms, is it silly of India – backed by the US – to be indulging in implicit threats of attacks on Pakistan, demanding “action” by Pakistan “or else” ?

 

Possibly so, though it has no option with the general election looming. Even though I believe there are few votes in a strike, Congress would certainly lose votes if it was seen to be soft on Pakistan and therefore on terror. That would open doors for voters to flood to the potentially tougher Bharatiya Janata Party and maybe even its strongman Narendra Modi. 

 

But the fact that it is bluff  is exposed by the way India’s message and threats vary day by day, while Pakistan fails to curb the freedom of leading terrorists despite international pressure to do so.

 

The Times of India, illustrates India’s soft approach this morning with a headline saying says “Patience Wearing Thin – Pranab Tells Envoys Will Have to Deal With Pak On Our Own”. That refers to foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee, who spoke yesterday to 122 Indian ambassadors called to India for briefings. (They have come for a meeting planned for months but finally arranged a week or so ago as part, it appears, of the current war of words with Pakistan)

 

Kanwal Sibal, an unusually outspoken former Indian foreign secretary, wrote in the Mail Today last week that the government’s “feeble response” was “baffling”, prompting the editors to put up a headline saying “Irresolution Masked as Restraint” – (click here and go to page 10).

 

Recognising that limited military action might not be favoured, he argued for “politically meaningful measures” centred around breaking off all ties with Pakistan. This he suggested would strengthen India’s diplomatic hand and saved it from relying on others such as the US.

 

So what is likely to happen now? Possibly what Sibal suggests, plus a ratchetting up of the confrontation, with troops moving near both sides of the border – which would frighten the world about a potential conflict in the same way as happened in 2001-02 when there was a confrontation.

 

Then tempers will cool and life will slowly return to normal – till next time.

 

Is there an alternative to this perennial play acting? Possibly, if India dared do it and resisted the temptation to warn the world in advance.

 

After the current crisis has passed, it could position missiles aimed at two or three known significant terrorist targets in Pakistan (well away from military establishments and urban areas,) and fire them – without any warnings or threats – as soon as evidence points next time to terrorists coming from Pakistan. It would have to decide the level of terrorist activity that would trigger such a response and leave the firing decision to three top ministers.

 

As the missiles went, India would telephone Pakistan and the US and say there would be no more attacks, and would also go on world television within minutes and repeat the message.

 

That might, just, move the goal posts and change the balance of the diplomatic games– and it would be a vote winner because the US and other countries would surely stop Pakistan responding.

 

High risk, of course. Any other ideas?

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Posted in India elections, India Pakistan, India terrorism, Mumbai | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by: John Elliott | December 17, 2008

Markets kick Satyam into line – but India’s reputation for corporate governance is hit

Rarely can investors have forced a company to conform with international business ethics so swiftly and effectively.

Yesterday evening (India time), after local stock markets closed, Satyam Computer Services, one of India’s leading software companies, announced it was spending $1.6bn of Satyam’s surplus cash to buy out two Maytas real estate and construction companies controlled by the Raju family that founded and controlled Satyam.

Late yesterday (US time), it cancelled the deal after being hit both by the New York stock market that marked its price down 55%, and by vitriolic attacks from investors and analysts.

Such are the effects of globalization, especially in a downturn when investors look harder at deals that might be glossed over in a boom market. Satyam’s corporate governance has been questioned before but rarely has an Indian company been brought into line so rapidly and publicly.

The deal, which does not seem to have been discussed with shareholders outside the Raju circle,  was challenged in this morning’s Indian business papers. The Business Standard said Hyderabad-based Satyam was “under fire”, and Mint asked quizzically “Will Maytas help Satyam turn around?”.

The markets were harsher, and Satyam’s shares (American Depository Receipts) lost 55% in New York amid a chorus of criticisms from foreign institutional investors that own a majority in the company. (The ADRs recovered half that loss after the deal was cancelled).

“This clearly raises questions about what kind of corporate governance you have in other Indian companies. That could hurt foreign investment”, Reuters reported Sachin Jain, a Jefferies & Co analyst, as saying.

Satyam reacted rapidly and cancelled the deal, less than 12 hours after it was announced. “In deference to the views expressed by many investors, we have decided to call off these acquisitions,” Ramalinga Raju, Satyam’s founder chairman, said in a statement.

Satyam had announced it planned to enter the depressed construction industry, where the Raju family has had interests for some time, by buying privately held Maytas Properties for $1.3bn and 51% of Maytas Infra for $300m. Ramalinga Raju and his associates own 36% in Maytas Infra and 35% in Maytas Properties.

Raju, who was chairman of NASSCOM, India’s prestigious software industry federation, in 2006-07,  claimed that the Maytas companies would help “de-risk”  Satyam against a downturn in the software business.

But as Reuters reported, analysts questioned the motives of Satyam’s top executives and pointed to a potential conflict of interest because they hold stakes in both companies.

Clearly the deals made little sense when technology outsourcing companies are preserving cash to help weather the global economic slowdown, and when the construction and real estate businesses are harder hit than IT.

“The company has lost investor confidence. Rescinding the offer does not restore that confidence,” said Janney Montgomery Scott analyst Joe Foresi. “The credibility of Satyam’s board of directors and its management is at rock bottom,” said Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry.

There’s a lesson here for many other Indian companies – foreign investors are no longer the over-excited and unquestioning buyers that they used to be.

And a message for India’s old-style business families: Put questionable deals on the back burner – they may be legal but the markets won’t like them.

See three later reports on this blog:
https://ridingtheelephant.wordpress.com/2009/01/19/satyam-will-not-trigger-changes-in-indias-companies%e2%80%99-dna-and-culture/
and
https://ridingtheelephant.wordpress.com/2009/01/12/satyam-rebuilding-begins-but-indian-corporate-fraud-runs-deep/
and
https://ridingtheelephant.wordpress.com/2009/01/07/satyam%e2%80%99s-raju-lifts-the-lid-on-indian-corporate-fraud/
and an earlier one:
https://ridingtheelephant.wordpress.com/2008/09/22/%e2%80%9cfamily-silver%e2%80%9d-at-risk-on-hyderabad-metro-project/

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Posted in India, India corporate governance, India corruption, India software, India stock market | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by: John Elliott | December 14, 2008

25th anniversary of Maruti Suzuki car that transformed India’s motor industry

It will never be as famous as the Model “T” Ford, nor the Volkswagen Beetle, but the little Maruti Suzuki 8OOcc car that was first sold 25 years ago today is the most significant vehicle ever produced in India.

The Ambassador is of course India’s most iconic saloon, but it is a symbol of the manufacturing industry’s failings, whereas the Maruti has been the catalyst for India’s modern and internationally competitive auto industry.

Today is the 25th anniversary of Indira Gandhi, then the prime minister, releasing the first ten 8OOcc cars to their customers at Maruti-Suzuki’s Gurgaon factory on the outskirts of Delhi in 1983 – where she was shown (below) the factory plan by V. Krishnamurthy, the company chairman.

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I was there, as The Financial Times’ new south Asia correspondent, and the next day reported Osamu Suzuki, chairman of the Japanese company, saying: “It is difficult to have a good operation in India”. He added that it would be achieved “providing the Indians do not expect to make too many of their components too quickly”.

Demonstrating the new start that Maruti marked, the imported management style decreed “the recruitment of shop floor workers with an average age of 20 who have never worked anywhere before, wear grey overalls, do physical exercises every morning and prompt time-keeping”.

It’s obviously worked because a total of 2.7m of the 800’s have been produced and it is still being sold – for Rs215,000 ($4,500), having been launched in 1983 for Rs52,500 ( then about $5,000).

I remember people in Delhi wondering how they would fit a driver into such a small car along with their families (they did!), and complaining about how it nipped in and out of  the traffic around stodgier vehicles (similar to earlier complaints in Britain about the iconic Austin-Morris Mini)

the Maruti 800

the Maruti 800

“The 800 made India a country that is now on wheels”, R.C.Bhargava, who was managing director years in the 1980s and 1990s and is now the chairman, told me today.

Originally an  Indian government-Suzuki 50-50 joint venture, the company is now Suzuki controlled and is producing 750,000 cars of all shapes and sizes. It is the clear market leader with a 40% market share.

Bhargava worked on the launch with Krishnamurthy, the founder-chairman who had been a top bureaucrat and now, in his 80s, heads the government’s National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council. [In March 2010, Bhargava produced a book on the company’s history The Maruti Story]

Krishnamurthy was told by Indira Gandhi to revive the bankrupt Maruti car venture that had been started by her late son Sanjay Gandhi, and produce a “people’s car”.

She didn’t get what she wanted because the 800 became a car for  the middle classes and  was followed by larger models. But she did get a hugely successful joint venture with Suzuki which began to unlock India’s hidden manufacturing strengths that had been bottled up by post-independence economic policies.

O.Suzuki’s remark about not making many components quickly in India stemmed from the fact that there were virtually no component suppliers that could begin to make acceptable parts. There were also no concepts of quality or production control. Maruti changed all that, sparking a revolution that is now spreading across India’s manufacturing industry, which is why today’s anniversary is so important.

“Maruti brought to India the concepts of tight cost control and process engineering,” Gautam Thapar, chairman of Avantha (BILT, Crompton Greaves etc), told me for a Fortune magazine article two years ago.  “It brought the first wave of modern component technology with the concept of Indian entrepreneurs and Japanese companies together supplying Maruti as an anchor client”.

Baba Kalyani, chairman of Bharat Forge, the world’s second-largest forging company,  agreed: “It brought in a completely new breed of component manufacturing with modern products and processes. A new culture started”.

Not only were there no adequate component suppliers in 1983, but there was no concept of partnerships between a manufacturer and its suppliers. “A supplier was treated almost like a servant,” said Bhargava

Maruti changed that with a supplier development program, taking 25% equity stakes in some companies from Japan and elsewhere. Clusters developed in three locations, one of them around Maruti’s factory in Gurgaon on the outskirts of Delhi. Workers and suppliers were sent to Japan to learn management and production techniques and this interchange continues today – Maruti design engineers worked in Japan on the Swift that was launched in 2005.

Maruti has never had the recognition it deserves as the catalyst for India’s modern motor industry, nor for its wider impact on manufacturing. Krishnamurthy and his team created something of far more lasting importance than other more famous names – you see the result on Indian roads every day.

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Posted in India, India industry, India manufacturing, Maruti, Nehru-Gandhi dynasty | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by: John Elliott | December 12, 2008

Chidambaram takes the first steps to improve security

The government yesterday began to give some of the lead that India needs following the Mumbai terrorist attack of two weeks ago. Speaking in parliament, home minister Palaniappan Chidambaram and foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee spoke impressively about what India needs to do internally to strengthen security and externally to deal with terrorism organisations based in Pakistan.

They were backed up by prime minister Manmohan Singh – and by his one-day heir apparent, Rahul Gandhi, who made the important point that security services should spend less time providing flamboyant (my word) services for VVIPs and more time looking after ordinary people.

Announcing that India has asked Pakistan to hand over 40 people it believes have been behind militant attacks, Mukherjee ruled out military action against its neighbour as a solution when he asked why India was not attacking Pakistan. “That is no solution,” he said.

That may look like a climb-down from some of his earlier remarks, but it is the reality – the risks of attacks escalating into a potentially horrific confrontation between two nuclear powers make it almost unthinkable that India would send rockets across the border to hit terrorist camps. Such an attack would increase the likelihood of attacks in retribution and would only wipe out people actually in the camps, not the many located elsewhere.

In any case, with the US and United Nations putting pressure on Pakistan to rein in terrorist organisations, and with Pakistan beginning to respond, there is less need for India to scare the world with threats against its neighbour.

Looking ahead, Chidambaram mapped out a range of security measures, including a new National Investigation Agency, plus strengthened intelligence gathering and security troop training and deployment, and advanced technical equipment.

He wants to present legislation setting up the agency to parliament next week. First however he has to win support from individual states such as Uttar Pradesh, whose chief ministers like to be able to control and influence police activity in their states and do not want a national organisation interfering in their highly politicised (and therefore inadequate) police forces. More justifiably, they also want to be able to resist interference from what might one day be a domineering central government.

Chidambaram was careful not to be too specifically critical of the appalling performance by security agencies because he needs their co-operation. He said that India’s basic intelligence structure seemed sound, but there was a need to make intelligence gathering and sharing “more effective and result oriented”.

So far so good. Now comes the much more difficult job of pushing changes in structures, attitudes and working practices down the line. We can only wish Chidambaram well!

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Posted in India, India Pakistan, India police, India security, India terrorism, Manmohan Singh, Rahul Gandhi | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by: John Elliott | December 9, 2008

State elections prove Indian democracy works

If anyone doubts that India’s democracy works – and many foreign critics do – yesterday’s assembly election results from five states surely proves them wrong. Voters in three states kept governments (and assembly members) who had done well, while those that had not performed were thrown out.

In Delhi, Congress won comfortably, led by Sheila Dikshit who has made history by being chief minister for three terms – assuming Sonia Gandhi approves her name, which she must do (she kept Dikshit waiting ten days before confirming her last time). Dikshit has performed well in a horribly difficult post, and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) put up a poor candidate to oppose her. The BJP also traded too heavily – with a blood-spattered advertisement carrying the words “Fight Terror: Vote BJP” – on anti-national government sentiment that followed the Mumbai terrorism.

I don’t think this negates the significance of Narendra Modi, the controversial BJP chief minister of Gujarat, being picked in a Mumbai opinion poll last week as the best national leader after the terrorist attacks (see my last post). The BJP’s Delhi candidate was weak and elderly, and its message was too negative, whereas Modi gives constructive leadership and hope to his supporters.

Congress also won in Rajasthan, where the aristocratic BJP chief minister Vasundhara Raje, failed to run an effective government and connect with the people. This result was also significant in terms of terrorism because Jaipur, the state’s capital, was hit by a series of bomb blasts in May.

And in Madhya Pradesh, a mild-mannered BJP chief minister, who has a good developmental record, defeated the bitterly divided Congress Party.

The results challenge one of the most over-stated generalisations (and simplistic lazy media reporting) of Indian politics – that elections are usually dominated by an “anti-incumbency” wave that throws out sitting governments. What these elections have shown is what in fact usually happens – good governments and political leaders win and bad ones lose. The expectation that anti-incumbency will dominate election results is based the depressing assumption that most governments in India are bad.

The Congress Party, which leads India’s coalition government, did much better than expected, especially after being criticised heavily for the Mumbai attacks. The problem now is that many of its leaders may mis-interpret the polls and feel less impelled to sharpen up their act. That would be a mis-reading of the polls, which rewarded performers and threw out those who failed.

Meanwhile Mayawati, the Dalit (low caste) leader of the Uttar Pradesh-based Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), increased her minority stakes in some states. This will encourage her ambition to make the BSP a national party, catering for all castes, alongside Congress and the BJP.

Some politicians are good!

The NDTV 24/7 tv channel ended one of its news programmes last night with presenters laughing about a remark by a politician that “some politicians are good”. They were trying to explain how there had been high turnouts in the elections, despite the anti-politician mood that followed the Mumbai attacks.

It was a nice sign off line – especially when one of the politicians on the programme laughed that he “wasn’t sure” when asked to endorse the remark.

The emphasis of course was on the word “some”, which always means “not many” when said with a certain inflection.

Rahul Gandhi “getting into his stride”

One of the least noticed quotes of the day came from Digvijay Singh, a veteran Congress Party general secretary, when he was asked what contribution Rahul Gandhi, Congress’s anointed prime-minister-in-waiting sometime-in-the-future, had made to electioneering when his mother, Sonia Gandhi, had been kept away by ill health. Singh acknowledged that Rahul had made a contribution and then, as the camera turned away from him, smiled mischievously and said “he is getting into his stride”.

Lessons for the general election

No-one can sensibly draw conclusions from these results about how the general election, due by next March or April, will turn out. Nationally, Congress will have a problem because of the economic down-turn and security worries. But the BJP will need to put up constructive policies to cash in on those failings. Regional parties, which ultimately could decide who leads the next coalition government, also need to note that success breeds success.

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Posted in India, India democracy, India elections, India politicians, Indian states | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by: John Elliott | December 5, 2008

Mumbai votes for Narendra Modi as national leader

 

Narendra Modi

Narendra Modi

An opinion poll published this morning by Mumbai’s DNA daily newspaper shows a majority of respondents in the city favouring Narendra Modi, the controversial Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief minister of Gujarat, as most likely “to provide the kind of leadership required to bring about real change” following last week’s terror attacks in the city. (To find the DNA survey report  – see pic below – click here and search Archive for Dec 5)

Nationally  Sonia Gandhi, the leader of the Congress Party and of the governing coalition,  came out tops with 23% of the vote, closely followed by prime minister Manmohan Singh with 22%, L.K.Advani, the BJP’s national leader at 18%, and Modi with just 14%.

mumbai-vote-for-nmodiBut the result was reversed in Mumbai. There Modi led with a dramatic 47% while Advani, Singh, and Gandhi got 10-13% each.

 This is significant because it shows the views of the educated middle class of the city that has been hit most often by terror attacks in recent years, culminating in last week’s commando-style invasion of the Taj and Oberoi hotels, a Jewish centre, and other targets.

As I suggested in a post on December 3, there is a demand across the country for new strong leadership. If the current national leaders do not perform, it is quite possible that the country will turn to the BJP in next year’s general election. Many will then want Modi – a powerful orator and capable administrator – to provide a nationalist hard-line lead.

Such a development would of course be opposed across the political spectrum – including by some BJP leaders – because of Modi’s arch Hindu-nationalist leanings and his record over Gujarat’s Godhra massacre six years ago. He would therefore have great difficulty stitching together a coalition with regional parties .

But the Mumbai vote, in an opinion poll conducted for DNA by IMRS Advisory, a market research firm, cannot be ignored. It is a warning to more moderate leaders to change or risk being swept aside.

• I was on America’s National Public Radio on December 3 answering questions about the events of the past week – you can find it on http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97750541

 

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Posted in India, India general election, India terrorism, Maharashtra, Manmohan Singh, Mumbai | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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