(MK Venu is Executive Editor of Amar Ujala publications group)It is ironical that the BJP was celebrating Good Governance Day on December 25 in the midst of news that the government would resort to the ordinance route to pass important economic legislation. Bharat Ratna Atal Bihari Vajpayee would certainly not have approved.
The new insurance bill and coal mining legislation were done via ordinance. Now the government is proposing changes in the land acquisition law through the ordinance route.
There may be more ordinances, for all you know. The narrow-focused business community may be applauding Modi's devotion to economic reforms, but all this does not augur well for our parliamentary democracy.
No one expected that the relationship between the ruling party and the opposition would deteriorate so early in the life of this Lok Sabha. This is very serious and will have profound implications for governance in the coming years. Modi will have to take a lot of responsibility for this early deterioration of ties with the opposition.
The BJP argues that the opposition is blocking the legislative agenda in Rajya Sabha, where the ruling party is well below the halfway mark. The opposition has hit back saying the BJP's mentor, the RSS, and several associated outfits have vitiated the political climate through a well-planned "ghar vapsi" campaign aimed at reconverting Christians, Muslims and other minorities to Hinduism.
Many media commentators, who have been staunch supporters of Modi, are deeply puzzled at the behavior of the RSS which organisationally helped put Modi in the seat of power which he occupies today. Many of them have begun expressing doubts about Modi's ability to create a conducive environment in the country so that critical issues of development could be addressed. No wonder there are newsreports suggesting that Modi has asked for newspaper clippings of negative articles on him and his government, of late.
Modi badly needs broad-based political buy-in to carry out developmental reforms. The BJP's calculation that it can cynically resort to the ordinance route until it gets a majority in Rajya Sabha by the end of 2016 is totally flawed. Politics doesn't work purely on numbers. How quickly Rajiv Gandhi frittered away the goodwill that resulted in 414 seats in Lok Sabha is still fresh in our collective memory. It is the job of the Prime Minister to establish a rapport with opposition leaders, inspite of all the differences, and take the common agenda forward. On this score, Modi seems to be losing the plot. Modi's government and his party must become aware of the kind of hubris that is now on display because of the ruling formation's conduct at various levels.
Atal Bihari Vajpayee would certainly have stooped to conquer had he confronted a situation in Parliament requiring him to make a statement on the RSS's campaign on conversion, or on the BJP MP's statement that Gandhi's assassin was a patriot.
Vajpayee had a way with words and he was endowed with long-standing personal relationships. Ashok Tandon, who served as the Prime Minister's media advisor from 1999 to 2004, once told me that the Prime Minister would often get a call from the West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu and they would talk for an hour on all kinds of issues. Vajpayee would tell all his officials to leave the room because the conversation was never strictly official. There was a personal rapport that Vajpayee enjoyed with ideological rivals. After naming Vajpayee a Bharat Ratna, Modi might do well to learn some of the political attributes of the former Prime Minister.
It was not as if the Sangh Parivar did not pressure Vajpayee from time to time. The Parivar hated the guts of the all-powerful Principal Secretary Brajesh Mishra. He was Vajpayee's eyes and ears and he tried to keep Sangh's agenda at bay as much as was possible in such a complex arrangement.
Crucially, Vajpayee managed to have a conversation with opposition leaders at all times. So much that everyone would speculate whether Vajpayee had a secret understanding with Sonia Gandhi on various matters. That era is clearly over as the new BJP under Modi has clearly decided that a political battle with a residual Congress of 44 Lok Sabha seats is not over. Modi bhakts, within and outside the party, want the "dynasts decimated."
Modi's trusted party president Amit Shah goes about threatening to uproot regional leaders who have won big victories in the Lok Sabha polls in their respective states. These leaders perceive that the seven-month-old union government is bent upon letting the CBI loose on them. Mamata Banerjee, whom Amit Shah accused of helping fund terror in West Bengal, is now devoting maximum energy on mobilizing a united political front against the NDA government.
Uncharacteristically, even Navin Patnaik has come out in the open, charging the BJP with attempting to destabilize his government in Orissa. Mind you, Patnaik had won the most stunning victory both in the Lok Sabha and assembly polls which were held simultaneously. Even as the CBI goes about questioning Navin's close political associates, Shah's men are ostensibly negotiating with BJD MPs to see whether they would be tempted to create a schism in their party. This has prompted Navin Patnaik, regarded as a clean leader by consensus, to publicly protest against such tactics.
Also note the irresponsible manner in which the Assam Chief Minister is being charged with harbouring ISI agents. The moment you say ISI agent, an underlying communal messaging becomes clear. The real puzzle is why is all this happening in the very first seven months of Modi's rule when he is supposed to focus just on the developmental agenda. Normally such aggressive political play occurs towards the end of a Lok Sabha tenure.
There seems to be a larger design to ensure that at the end of this project of confrontational politics, the only "clean politician" India will have is Narendra Modi. But such a project is certainly not going to get parliament working smoothly. And more crucially, it will irreparably vitiate the country's political climate.
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