Front Page
BJP president Amit Shah, the most powerful man in India after PM Modi, has written today for the world’s largest English-language daily, The Times of India, after a two-year hiatus. Even without looking at the day’s headlines (all swarming with news about seat-sharing in the upcoming 2019 polls), this is enough to tell us that India is on the doorstep of elections.
Published on the edit page, Shah’s hagiographic piece titled “The Modi I know…” serves as a flattering birthday message to the PM — yes, it’s Modi’s birthday today — but also tells us what one powerful man thinks about another.
In 2016, Sheela Bhatt’s column in The Indian Express unmasked Shah’s vital role in pushing forth the BJP’s Hindutva agenda in a piece titled “The Amit Shah you didn’t know”. But in today’s piece, the Modi Shah “knows” takes all the credit for the BJP’s success:
“This is one sterling quality I have observed in Modi right from the earliest time I got the opportunity to work with him,” he wrote.
“Everyone in the organisation or government, performing any kind of role, would be personally encouraged by him and made to feel special. This quality of recognising the importance of service and more importantly respecting those who put in their effort to serve others, is exemplary,” he added.
Today’s newspapers remind us what Lenin is supposed to have said about power in 1917, even as he was trying to prepare the ground for the Bolshevik Revolution : “I saw power lying on the streets of St Petersburg and I picked it up.” We don’t know if that line is merely a figment of some biographer’s imagination, or the real truth.
Whatever it is, this morning’s news has all the ingredients of a slowly unfolding landscape in which several political parties are trying to demonstrate power.
Among the most interesting is the one about Nitish Kumar of the JD(U) persuading his Man Friday Prashant Kishor to return to the party. Except this time around, PK, as Kishor is fondly called by both friends and enemies alike, isn’t the smartest campaign manager in town, as he was when he helped Nitish sweep the polls in Bihar in 2015.
At the time, the BJP was Enemy Number One. Today, the BJP, Narendra Modi and Amit Shah are Nitish’s best friends. That’s what the alchemy of power does, and PK is no exception.
This time around, however, PK will be advising his chief minister in an entirely new capacity, as his informal number two.
The Times of India quoted him as saying, “I have been wanting to get out of this domain (strategising electioneering) for two years. It could have been after the results of Uttar Pradesh elections, but the failure put the decision on hold…You will not see Prashant Kishor campaigning for any party or individual in 2019.” Well, we’ll have to see about that.
Mayawati also made headlines by saying she was open to alliances with other opposition players, but only if she gets a “respectable seat share”. She’s also feeling no love for the recently released Bhim Army chief Chandrashekhar Azad, whom she rebuked for calling her “bua”: “For political reasons, some people are trying to relate to me. I want to clear that I have no such bua-bhatija (aunt-nephew) or bhai-behan (brother-sister) relationship,” she said.
“If he is indeed a well-wisher, he would have come to me to fight the BJP together, rather than floating his own outfit,” Hindustan Times quoted her as saying.
Meanwhile, the JNUSU polls painted the town red, with the Left coming together to claim 45 per cent of the votes, while the ABVP got 21.1 per cent.
With JNU being one of its last bastions, the Left parties have understood the lessons of power: United we stand. In more normal circumstances, the SFI and the AISA would be daggers drawn, as they were in the late 1970s, when Sitaram Yechury and Prakash Karat fought and won the polls in JNU.
Today, the Left is battered and bleeding. The polls in JNU are one way to tell India that they still count.
Prime Time
Ram temple dispute takes centrestage again ahead of 2019
On Times Now, a discussion was held on BJP MLA Mukut Bihari Verma’s statement that the Ram temple would be constructed in Ayodhya “because the Supreme Court is ours”. Times Now asked whether the BJP will play the Ram Mandir card again before the 2019 elections.
Rajya Sabha member Rakesh Sinha of the BJP said Ram Mandir was a national issue, not a political one.
Political Analyst Devashish Jarariya said, “Even a five-year-old can tell whether the issue is political or non-political.”
Meanwhile, Supreme Court advocate Monika Arora stated that “our judiciary is too strong to be influenced by anybody”.
The question of intolerance
On Republic TV, anchor Arnab Goswami asked whether the outrage of the Right can be termed ‘intolerance’.
Scientist and author Anand Ranganathan pointed out that “either you’re a social Darwinian or you’re not. And both the Left and Right have made grievous mistakes”.
Business Class
Alibaba founder Jack Ma changed the rules of capitalism in communist China. In a profile of Jack, Bloomberg writes, “After working as a teacher, Ma turned to business, starting Alibaba.com in 1999 with 17 co-founders. He wasn’t the most technically savvy entrepreneur, nor would he claim the smartest. But he proved an inspiring leader who could rally his forces to fight foreign intruders or articulate a vision for modernising China’s economy.”
Having lost out to Maruti Suzuki in the utility vehicle space, Mahindra & Mahindra is pulling up its socks to enter the hatchback market with an electrical vehicle, reports The Economic Times. The estimated investment for the plan is $110-$120 million.
News it’s just kinda cool to news
A NASA satellite called ICESat-2, designed to precisely measure changes in Earth’s ice sheets, glaciers, sea ice and vegetation, has been launched into space. The satellite carries a single instrument, a laser altimeter that measures height by determining how long it takes photons to travel from the spacecraft to Earth and back.
Point of View
The Centre has taken some measures, like checking non-essential imports and encouraging foreign portfolio investment, to curb the rupee’s slide. In an editorial, The Hindu writes that these ‘ad hoc steps’ must not divert the attention from the fundamental reasons behind the decline. Taking measures to boost exports and finding alternative sources of energy are some of the measures the editorial advocates.
The term ‘urban Naxal’ is too popular to need any introduction. Political scientist Suhas Palshikar, in a column in The Indian Express, writes, “Labelling helps in defining — and possibly maligning — your opponents. It also helps obfuscate the issues or, at any rate, distract public attention.”
With inputs from Ratnadeep Chaudhary