Why NDA lost in 2004?

The Congress-UPA has just won 26.7% of popular vote people's mandate while BJP-NDA has won 22.16% only. Congress became the most voted party in this elections with a vote share that was 5% more than BJP. While UPA won 145 seats (gain of 31 seats), NDA won only 138 seats(loss of 44 seats). Although it is not a clear victory for Congress-UPA, it is a clear defeat for BJP-NDA. Here are the core reasons for the BJP-NDA's defeat. 

• NDA projected the election as the battle between Vajapayee and Sonia, and Sonia won and Vajapayee lost.
• NDA fell because of their own weight, own sins and Vajpayee's visionless leadership. 
• Old men are supposed to lose their marbles and AB Vajpayee seems to have lost the same. 
• Media singing songs of Vajpayee's greatness harmed NDA. 
• The media created a hype that Vajpayee is the greatest Indian leader, who could do no wrong and people didn't find any substance in that.
• NDA created an illusion that Vajpayee is the greatest PM, but people of India saw this old man, who never said a word or gave any opinion on any issue and remained silent through out his prime ministership and never took any crucial decision or reigned any of his colleague or Parivar people.
• People saw Vajpayee was old, forgetful and incompetent to solve India's problems while in Sonia Gandhi they saw a fresh face with purpose.
• The middle-class lost their hard-earned money in the UTI scandal.
• Large rural population's welfare has been over looked. 
• Unemployment and anti-poor stance. 
• Over-indulgence on trivial Hindutva issue.
• NDA reduced interest rates and impacted the voters honest savings. 
• The Tehelka reporters who exposed corruption were harassed.
• Concentrating to impress world nations and criminal negligence of the people's problems.
• Inaction on Gujarat CM Modi for not catching either Godhra train massacre culprits or Gujarat communal riots culprits that killed 2000 Muslims.
• After the horrendous massacre, Muslims were expecting that the Gujarat CM Narendra Modi will be put to trial, but instead he was awarded 127/182 seats (2/3rd majority) in mid term polls immediately after the riots with a gain of 10 seats.
• Gross miscalculation of NDA and their misreading of the 'pulse ' of the people.
• Impressive orations, debates and arguments like in court rooms than performance.
• BJP went overboard with the “India Shining” campaign which offended the rural & urban poor. Sonia Gandhi used the opportunity to mock at this campaign by pointing out India’s poverty.
• Anti-incumbancy factor.
• NDA allies too fared very badly - TDP(5/42) in AP & AIADMK(0/39) in Tamilnadu suffered humiliating defeats.
• BJP criticised congress and Sukhram.  Congress expelled Sukhram and in the next election Sukhram becomes an ally of BJP. BJP ought to be more ethical.
• Never in the history India witnessed such a low level malicious campaign by the ruling party. 
• BJP belived that insulting people is Hindu dharma, that's the price they have paid for. That's one of the main aspects in BJP debacle.
• BJPs failure to control Modi and his uncultured tirade against Sonia Gandhi.
• The consistent "Sonia Bashing" by BJP and it's top leaders, the larger than real life images and speeches by the so called second rung leaders of BJP ... Mahajan, Jaitley etc. and Rabble-rousing by Katyar, Modi, Uma bharati etc. have all had negative effects.
• Over-usage of the tasteless word "pseudo-secularism". It was flogged to death. Watching the arrogant BJP men debating on TV in the last two years.
• Corruption as exposed by Tehelka, Petrol-pump, coffin-gate by George Fernandes, etc. had its effect.
• Towards the end of this campaign, the BJP even openly begged Muslims for votes, thereby upsetting lakhs of its conventional supporters.

Elections 2004: BJP pays heavy price for arrogance, haste and strategic blunders

India Today | May 24, 2004 | Prabhu Chawla 

It has become fashion to interpret defeats with figures and statistics. It is very easy to come up with statistics and 'spin' the results any way you want but the reality is that the voting population preferred the Congress and their allies much more to the BJP and its allies. If anyone feels that it was not a mandate for Congress since they did not get majority of votes, it is just a joke. It might have been local issues that have brought the Congress to power and the people had no clue that they were sending Vajpayee packing who never deserved such a drubbing. Indian mentality will not allow appreciate a sacrifice and we always attribute some ulterior motive to every one. Even Mahatma Gandhi had serious critics at his time. No one wants to acknowledge Sonia Gandhi's sacrifice. If Sonia Gandhi wanted to become prime minister, nobody could have stopped her even if it was for one month and go down in history. If any one tries to find out for reasons why BJP should have won in 2004, he would have been amused with none. Vajpayee's inaction against Modi-Gujarat riots and ignoring poor and peasants are the primary causes for NDA's debacle in 2004. Today in 2018 similar situations are prevailing that is causing jitters among BJP, Modi & co., who are clueless how to come overcome this mess they created for themselves.

Manmohan Singh is the biggest success in PM's office!

Statistics can often be stranger than fiction.

• How shall we define ‘political success’? By the fact of ‘re-election to the office’.
• The ‘biggest’ political success can be defined as re-election to office by the ‘largest increase in mandate’.

If a politician gets re-elected with the largest increase in his mandate, that should, incontrovertibly, allow him to claim the mantle of 'being the most successful'.

Who can claim to be India’s most successful prime minister?

1. Jawaharlal Nehru - Although he got re-elected more than once, he did not appreciably increase his (already awesome) mandate over his respective previous tenures.
2. Indira Gandhi - She got re-elected after she cut short her tenure in 1971, but added only 36% (from 259 in 1967 to 352 seats) to her previous mandate.
3. Atal Bihari Vajpayee - He got re-elected in 1999, but the BJP’s numbers in parliament hardly budged.
4. Manmohan Singh - He got re-elected in 2009 by increasing his previous mandate of 2004 by a gravity-defying 45% (from 141 to 206 seats).

Manmohan Singh, widely described as India’s weakest prime minister, but who, on cold quantitative statistics, can justifiably claim to be the biggest success in that office! 

The spectacular Lok Sabha polls of 2009

• Congress swept urban areas. (7 out of 7 in Delhi and 5 out the 5 it contested in Mumbai)
• With 21 seats, Congress was the second-largest party in Uttar Pradesh after SP(23) and ahead of BSP(20) and more than double of BJP’s tally of 10. 
• Both the contending alliances, UPA and BJP, had declared prime ministerial candidates – Manmohan Singh and LK Advani .
• The communists collapsed from 59 seats to 24.
• Obvious analyses for the Congress’ amazing re-election in 2009 was (i) the three continuous years of 9% -plus GDP growth, (ii) farm loan waiver just before the voting and (iii) people simply loved Manmohan Singh’s act of political defiance over the Indo-U.S. Nuclear Deal. They saw in him a status quo defying politician who could herald change on a massive scale.
• Very few understood, or cared, about the nuclear nuance. What they latched on to was Singh’s ability to stand up to blackmail in the pursuit of modernity and change.
• In July 2008 left coalition partners saw red over the Indo-U.S. Nuclear Agreement, and withdrew support in parliament, pushing the government into a minority. He sought a vote of confidence in parliament for his minority government. Some deft political management saw the Congress get new allies on board supported the government. When the vote was counted Singh had won 275-256. His beaming face and exultant V wave became Singh’s political signature for the 2009 polls; across the country, he was feted as ‘Singh is King’.
• Congress misread its mandate and harked back to the stasis of garibi hatao (poverty) politics, handing a neat walk-over to Narendra Modi in 2014, who instinctively understood the political message of 2009 better than the victors themselves.

We will vote you in, provided you can deliver real and discontinuous change to us. We were promised this in 2009, and again in 2014. But we were let down by both Manmohan Singh and Narendra Modi. So for 2019, please go to your drawing boards and figure it out!

Read the source article

The State is back with a loud bang

 

 

PSU Boards being filled with BJP workers

 

 

• The decision to nominate BJP workers as non-official directors makes a mockery of the party’s 1998 manifesto and the government’s own guidelines issued in 2015.
• In an interview, Modi repeated his favourite maxim, “minimum government, maximum governance.” He went on to state, “in a developing economy, state enterprises do have a role in some sectors. They have to be managed professionally and efficiently. We have given them operational freedom and brought in talent from the private sector as well to facilitate this.”
• Modi's decision that ONGC acquire 80% stake in debt trapped GSPC, by investing Rs.7,738 crore badly hurt its finances and its credibility. The decision is apparently imposed on the company by those whose primary objective was to bail out GSPC and obfuscate its shortcomings. A nominee director on the board of ONGC would have found it difficult to resist the extraneous pressure.
• A year after Modi’s interview with the WSJ, his government took the patently retrograde step of nominating BJP spokespersons and party workers as non-official directors of eleven odd CPSEs, many of which are ‘Maharatna’ and ‘Navaratna’ companies, which are expected to have a great deal of functional autonomy and be managed by professionals with experience.
• These include ONGC (Sambit Patra), Engineers India Ltd (Shazia Ilmi), Cotton Corporation of India Ltd (Rajika Kacheria), Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (Asifa Khan), Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (Surama Padhy), Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (Tamilisai Sounderarajan), State Trading Corporation (Bharatsinh Prabhatsinh Parmar), Export Credit Guarantee Corporation Ltd (S. Malathi Rani), Andrew Yule & Company Ltd (Sipra Goon), National Handloom Development Corporation Ltd (Shikha Roy) and National Aluminium Company Ltd (K.G. Sinha).
• The credentials of each one of these persons are prima facie unimpeachable. But the question is to what extent will they be able to add value to the management of the CPSEs?
• Companies Act Section 166 requires the government to nominate any person who fulfills the criteria. While it no doubt provides a great deal of discretion, such a discretion cannot evidently be arbitrary and injudicious. The discretion so provided in the Companies Act enables the government to nominate persons who have sufficient domain knowledge relevant to the operations of a given CPSE.
• In its 1998 manifesto, the BJP, led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, committed itself to managing the public sector “professionally”, “with least interference by government”.
• The department of public enterprises (DPE) advised all ministries that “non-official directors are to be drawn from the public men (sic), technocrats, management experts and consultants, and professional managers in industry and trade with a high degree of proven ability.” Further guidelines stipulate that persons nominated as non-official directors of CPSEs should be “professionals of repute having more than 15 years of relevant domain experience in fields relevant to the company’s area of operation”, “persons of eminence with proven track record from industry, business or agriculture or management.”
• The decision taken now by Modi government to nominate BJP workers as non-official directors clearly makes a mockery of the BJP’s own manifesto of 1998 and the guidelines issued more recently by the NDA government itself.
• Lord Denning, the greatest English judge of modern times, said, “there is nothing wrong with a director being nominated by a shareholder to represent his interests, so long as the director is left free to exercise his best judgment in the interests of the company which he serves. But if he is put upon terms that he is bound to act in the affairs of the company in accordance with the directions of his patron, it is beyond doubt unlawful.”
• It was reported that the present government had tried to appoint a BJP worker as a member of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and it would have gone ahead with that move but for a PIL filed before the apex court.
• If Modi is earnest about reforming the CPSEs, he should walk the talk by distancing the government and his party from them. CPSEs needs professional management, competition and public accountability to perform its crucial role to play in nation building for decades to come and this kind of tinkering with their management is bound to hurt the economy.

Slogans such as “Minimum Government, Maximum Governance” and “Reform, Perform and Transform” are laudable, easy to articulate but difficult to translate into tangible action. Intentions underlying such slogans are more important than the spoken words. Intentions will mean nothing, unless they get translated into genuine action. As the gap between words and deeds widens, the credibility of sloganeering will get eroded. It is very clear that BJP's hidden agenda is neither well being of the nation nor its people but saffronisation of India.

Modi's thinking big has style and no substance.

• For Modi, “thinking big” is essentially about showcasing “our strengths” [like bullet train] and not necessarily bringing any benefit to the people.
• Modi's another big idea is building a Statue of Unity to commemorate Sardar Patel, India’s first Deputy Prime Minister, and fixing its height at 186 metres, twice as tall as the Statue of Liberty (United States), exposing fascination for spectacle that the politician, termed widely “as the most powerful after Indira Gandhi”, nourishes within his political self.
• Modi’s penchant for thinking big has a chilling similarity with Mussolini’s Fascist Italy is that in the Mussolini regime, politics starts to be less concerned with the act of governing people in an efficient way, for instance, in solving their economic problems. Instead, it is focused more on the spectacle of power, on the visual and impressive display of symbols, myths and rituals. In terms of everyday life this anesthetization of political power takes the shape of a domination of form of visual appearance, effects over the content. It also means that politics ceases to be measured by political criteria. Politics itself assumes the form of an artistic act; to govern means to Mussolini to create a new Nation and a new Empire and Mussolini views himself as the creative soul of the nation, the propeller of new ways of living. 
• Modi and other leaders of the BJP had repeatedly promised, through the 2014 Lok Sabha election campaign and even after the formation of the government, that the farmers’ income across the country would be doubled by 2022. Three years into that promise, while FM Jaitley said it was for State governments to initiate measures to double the farmers’ income, Modi has exhorted cooperative societies to come up with their own facilitation.
• Modi regime has been repeatedly claiming that India’s economic situation is good and that it has the potential to improve despite global recession. But Jaitley had to admit that the economy had decelerated to the slowest pace in three years and that there was a need for more concentrated and specific efforts to revive growth. The demonetisation by Modi in Nov 2016 which aggravated economic deceleration, was strongly denied by government but were eventually forced to admit it.
• RSS has taken note of the repeated reverses suffered by the Modi government.The RSS leadership warned the BJP to be wary of a repeat of the 2004 electoral defeat suffered by AB Vajpayee who faced the 2004 elections with  “India Shining” campaign only to be humbled by a practically leaderless but united opposition. The BJP leadership, including party president and Modi’s close associate Amit Shah, has taken the RSS warning seriously.
• First, they would fall back on their time tested ploy of communalising society and polarising communities in the name of religion. Now that Modi and his Ministry are increasingly displaying their inability to live up to their development vision, they would revive the Ayodhya Ram Mandir agitation for this. 
• The second response would be by appropriating gains made by other governments as their own through clever propaganda and media management. Even as Chief Minister, Modi had shown his mastery over this stratagem when he took credit for the Amul dairy, set up originally in 1946, and nurtured under several regimes, including the Congress but then Modi’s propaganda and media management is what prevailed in the end.
• Arun Shourie terms the Modi Ministry essentially as an event management company where everything is turned into a spectacle for one individual and a clutch of political courtiers.
• The opinion that the ruling BJP in Gujarat needs a booster to face elections in 2018 and that is why Modi inaugurated the Sardar Sarovar dam and initiated the work on the bullet train. But field reports suggest that the BJP continues to be on a strong wicket in the State because of the absence of a cohesive opposition and a popular leader in the Congress.
• New spectacles on display in Sep 2017 are aimed at reinforcing the omnipotence of the big leader. That task is of utmost importance given the warnings emanating from different quarters of the country and the RSS.

Essentially Modi's propaganda machine produced results in 2014 based on anti-incumbency factor faced by Congress/UPA. But in 2019 elections Modi's propaganda machine without any other support might not be able to repeat 2014. On the contrary, one more mistake by Modi, similar to failed demonetization or badly implemented mangled GST and some improvement by Rahul Gandhi & Congress could spell doom for BJP & Modi. Another 18 months to go, Modi leader of a dud team, will surely do one or two or even more blunders because one can't expect Modi doing nothing as he gets wonderful ideas on and often. Modi won't realize that he will do least harm to BJP and himself, if does nothing till 2019 elections.

మోడీ దుష్పరిపాలన: భారతదేశము సర్వనాశనము

Yashwant Sinha is a senior leader in BJP

He was Ex- IAS officer and was AB Vajpayee's Finance Minister between 1998-2002

His son Jayant Sinha is Minister of State for Civil Aviation in Modi's cabinet at present

Even though Yashwant Sinha holds grudges against Modi, but whatever he said is largely truth and a truthful person can't be despised. Building economy is painfully slow process but destruction is rapid. Modi's autocratic tendencies and Jaitley's incompetence have landed the nation, which was otherwise going on smoothly despite its known age old ills like corruption, black money etc, into this imbroglio and recovering may take its own sweet time and in the process poor and peasants will pay huge price. Unemployed youth will suffer loss of good career, life in disarray and many could end up in illegal and anti-social activities. Modi & Jaitley duo must exit otherwise BJP would be shunted out in 2019 general elections.

CBI raids NDTV

CBI raids the residences and offices of Radhika and Prannoy Roy on June 5, 2017,
whose channel, NDTV, has been openly critical of PM Narendra Modi.

• According to CBI, it was responding to a complaint regarding an alleged loss to ICICI Bank on the repayment of an old loan to the Roys. Both ICICI Bank and NDTV are private entities.
• NDTV swiftly published a letter from ICICI Bank, dated from 2009, which stated that the loan had been repaid in full.
• The relevant complaint did not come from the allegedly wronged party.
• NDTV has been an critic of PM Modi’s politics and his brand of Hindu nationalism.
• The CBI raid is an act of intimidation against NDTV, as well as against all media outlets that remain critical of Hindu-nationalist politics and the government’s policies.
• The takeover of NTV has, 17 years since that throttled all independent media in Putin’s Russia. CNN, described it as: Pass laws that constrict the space available for independent media. Set legal traps, citing anti-terrorist legislation. Send the tax police to carry out endless inspections of a recalcitrant broadcaster or their business associates, denying that political views have anything to do with the investigation. Don’t kill them, just maim them. Try to squeeze them into irrelevance.
• Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president, has followed a similar recipe. Over his 14 years in power, numerous independent media organisations have either been shut down or coercively passed into pro-Erdogan hands. In one case, in 2007, government authorities seized the independent daily Sabah, citing an omission in the documents for a previous change of ownership several years ago. The paper was then sold to a consortium led by Erdogan’s son-in-law. Today, it is an unofficial government mouthpiece. Erdogan's crackdown on independent media, has weakened them to the point where now he has an alarmingly free hand.
• Modi has cosied up to both Putin and Erdogan. The similarities are the outspoken nationalism, the centralisation of power within their respective parties and governments, the abhorrence of independent scrutiny. Where India departs from present-day Russia and Turkey is in the relative strength and independence of its democratic institutions, which serve to check the government’s autocratic impulses. 
• India risks following the Turkish trajectory where media is being controlled by owners ready to bend to government pressure, whether by inclination or compulsion. 
• Proprietors of many major media organisations have significant interests in other sectors like real estate or resource extraction, where official support is essential. The government’s leverage is also bolstered by its share of media advertising revenues from the public sector. BJP-led governments intimidating media outlets by the tax authorities or security and investigative agencies have become prominent.
• In 2001, under the government of AB Vajpayee, tax officials targeted financial backers of Tehelka that  published videos of officials and politicians taking bribes from reporters posing as salesmen of defence equipment. At least two investors and a journalist were jailed. 
• The tax officials also went after Outlook, following a report from the magazine about the undue influence of powerful private companies on the Vajpayee administration’s economic policies. More raids occurred over the next six months. 
• So far, India has been resilient in protecting press freedom because whenever governments have attempted to exert control, there has been a strong collective response from the media, civil society, judiciary and political opposition. 
• But the devolution of press freedom in Russia and Turkey, where strong leaders have rallied support in the name of nationalism, should warn us of early signs to intimidate and eventually control media. The present targeting of NDTV is no less of a provocation and deserves a strong reaction.

My View:

Even if the ICICI bank suffered a loss while closing NDTV loan account settlement in 2009, they never wrote a letter to CBI. But CBI, the country’s premier investigative agency attempting to probe a credit issue between two private parties, now with the heavy-handedness is height of misuse of agencies by BJP. In the past, every government used tax officials and investigative agencies to tame down opposition and opposing media, but present day BJP's scale of misuse is unprecedented. Media houses are experiencing 'Emergency' like atmosphere. And our democracy is in peril!

PM Modi 'ejects' Gandhi in Khadi Udyog (KVIC) calendar & diary

In a surprise development, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has ejected Father of the Nation Mahatma Gandhi in the 2017 wall calendars and table diaries published by the Khadi Village Industries Commission (KVIC), official sources said here on Thursday.

Stunned employees of KVIC headquarters staged “a silent, soul-cleansing” protest. KVIC Chairman said this was “not unusual” and there have been deviations in the past. They were pained at this systematic easing out of Mahatma Gandhi’s ideas, philosophy and ideals by the government. In fact, in 2016 the staff unions in KVIC had raised the calendar matter strongly with the management and were assured that it would not be repeated in future. However, this year it’s a total washout.

Meanwhile, the news was received with consternation and went viral on various social media networks with a vast majority sharply critical of the KVIC move.

The man who wears Rs.10 lakh suit sitting in front of 'charkha' is joke of the millennium and nothing short of Goebbels propaganda spreading blatant lies. Prime Minister Modi flabbergasting blatant lies not only demeans himself but ejecting Gandhi will be emanating wrong things about our nation in the eyes of the world simply because world knows much more about Gandhi than Indians in India.

If I have seen further than others, 
it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants ... Isaac Newton

My View:
In 1977, External Affairs Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, when he first entered his new office, looked around the walls, and immediately identified a blank spot. ‘This is where Panditji’s portrait used to be. I remember it from my earlier visits to the room. Where has it gone? I want it back’.  This despite the fact that two years before he became Foreign Minister had been spent in a jail placed by Jawaharlal Nehru’s daughter, Indira Gandhi. He had compelling ideological and personal reasons to reject Nehru and his legacy. Yet he asked for his photograph to be reinstated in his office. Vajpayee must have been embarrassed by this brutal casting into the dustbin India’s longest serving Foreign Minister as Nehru held that office for seventeen years displaying his ability to ‘befriend the opponent and enemy’. Modi cannot grow taller than Gandhi & Nehru by making them shorter are disregarding their contributions.

Now where does Modi stand? Had Modi displayed the kind of respect to Gandhi & Nehru they deserve, these over enthusiastic executives would not have displayed this kind of non sense. What kind of Prime Minister we have at present who doesn't even respect Gandhi and Nehru, who are dead 50-70 years ago? I will not be surprised if RSS leaders replace these icons under Modi regime.

Unless we learn to admire & respect our predecessors, despite their short comings, we lose our moral right to be respected by our successors.