'The Congress is back -- sort of'

Rahul Gandhi has taken the fight to the Modi government, feels Milan Vaishnav. Aziz Haniffa/Rediff.com reports from Washington, DC.

Milan Vaishnav, one of the most astute observers of the political scene in India -- with all of its intricacies and nuances -- believes the Congress party is back -- sort of.

Speaking at a conference hosted by the India Project at the Brookings Institution to assess the Modi government's first year in office, which was attended by administration officials, representatives of America Inc, policymakers and analysts -- hungry for an educated take on the performance of the new administration -- Vaishnav argued that after being left for dead a year ago, the Congress party seemingly had resurrected itself, if only barely.

"The Congress is back -- sort of," Vaishnav -- an Associate at the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace -- said, and reminded the audience, "A year ago, it was sort of left for dead. It had an abysmal performance -- it only won 44 seats out of 543, and it was its worst showing by a long shot ever."

"So bad," he added, "that it couldn’t even occupy the official position as the Leader of the Opposition for which you need 10 percent of the seats in the Lower House."

But, Vaishnav argued, "Fast forward to today, and it hasn’t won any state elections, it hasn’t got any considerable number of seats, but Rahul Gandhi, who had been off the scene -- literally off the scene for 56 days on a sabbatical -- has come back, reinvigorated, rejuvenated, and has started to take the fight to this government."

"And he has done it using this controversial land bill as the focal point," Vaishnav noted, "and, he, in doing so, is harkening back to his grandmother, taking a page out of Indira Gandhi’s playbook, with the kind of left-leaning, populist message of essentially sort of class warfare."

Elaborating on this message, Vaishnav said, it was one of "you’re either rich or poor, and we’re for the latter, you’re either a have-not or a have-not and we’re for the latter, you’re either a farmer or an industrialist and we are with the farmer."

"This," he acknowledged, "is not necessarily a great recipe for long-term success -- I don’t think the country with a median age of 27 is really going to go for this -- but in the short-term this could be a very savvy political manoeuvre and I think that’s true."

The future of the Congress party, Vaishnav felt, would depend on "the dynamics between mother and son -- between Sonia Gandhi, the president of the party, and Rahul Gandhi, the vice president, and the heir apparent."

"There is a greater chance, left to Rahul -- if he gets elevated to the top job -- he will try to rebuild the Congress and fight elections, perhaps free of alliances and try to rebuild the Congress name, while Sonia Gandhi will be much more likely to join the coalition, specially in some upcoming elections like Bihar, which could save them (the Congress party) in the short-term, but will have long-term implications."

"So, they are trying to work through that puzzle at the moment," Vaishnav said.

His prognosis of the Modi administration one year in, was a "central tension that is running through it, which is on the one hand, a competing desire to centralise power, almost reflecting information through a centralised power and into a kind of rhetoric about competitive federalism about devolving power and decentralisation."

"And this tension shows up in at least three places," he said. "One, is the dynamic between the Prime Minister’s Office and the individual Cabinet ministries, the second is in the relationship between the Union government in Delhi and state governments and the third is how it manages broad coalitions."

"It’s not a healthy sign when ministers find out about ministerial priorities in the media -- when they find out that their joint secretaries have been shifted without their knowing, which is a very common occurrence in this government."

A coalition with a "range of actors," comprising key allies like the Shiv Sena, Akali Dal, were "worried and puzzled," by the government’s "sense of hubris that it had come and conquered Delhi," and taken "a very domineering approach," so much so that they had "started to create some distance between themselves and the government."

But, Vaishnav said, "The most critical coalition is within the party and it’s how you bring the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) and the Sangh Parivar with you, which have at their core a social agenda and your mandate electorally from the voters is fundamentally about the economy."

Thus, he said, "There is still a debate within this coalition about what then is this historic mandate -- is it really the economy stupid, or was it a move toward Hindutva --and that dispute has still not fully been adjudicated."

In this regard, he observed, "Certainly people who are aligned with the RSS certainly feel emboldened that their guy won, their party won, and their people are in, so therefore, they can start pushing issues that are of the Hindutva agenda and of course, in a way, they are sort of right."

"There is a sort of enabling environment, to do things like ban cow slaughter, to change text books, to build temples in disputed areas, to silence particular critics of Hinduism," Vaishnav pointed out.

"That is very much happening and so, the question for Modi -- and this is the big question -- is he has not been willing to really wage an intra-coalition debate."

Vaishnav pointed out that Modi "has neither publicly condemned many of these actions nor condoned them. But the big question mark is that on one hand he realises he can’t fully clamp down, because after all, this is his base -- these are people who are the foot soldiers you need to win the Bihar election. So, you can’t completely marginalise them."

"So, you need to keep them at a simmer without coming up to a boil," he said, but "any of you who are fond of cooking know that getting that temperature -- that sweet spot between a simmer and a boil -- is hard and it is hard to find a steady equilibrium."

Consequently, according to Vaishnav, "This is one of the key challenges we’ve seen and at times, it undermines that agenda of striking a balance."

Indian students in US spend more on tuition than India spends on education!

The US can help hundreds of thousands of Indian students who cannot afford to travel abroad to study by cooperating with Indian educational institutions, says Assistant US Trade Representative Michael J Delaney. Aziz Haniffa/Rediff.com reports from Washington, DC.

Assistant US Trade Representative Michael J Delaney, the point person for South Asia in the Office of the USTR, has bemoaned India’s considerable restrictions on foreign and direct investment in higher education, and says it is ironic that Indian students in the US collectively pay more tuition to beef up the coffers of American colleges and universities, which totals more than the budget of India’s ministry of education.

Delaney, one of the participants at the Brookings conference on the performance of the Modi government one year on, said, "India has major education problems and it seems to me that there’s probably more economic potential in that area than virtually anything else I can offhand think of."

"We are a natural partner for India," Delaney said, in the area of education vis-à-vis American colleges and universities cooperating with Indian institutions to afford higher education opportunities for Indian students.

"We have well over 100,000 students from India studying here and Indians are voting with their feet," he added.

"If you do a quick back of the envelope calculation," Delaney pointed out, "the tuition being paid by Indian students here probably exceeds the budget of the Ministry of Education in India -- an astonishing fact."

Consequently, he argued, "It is an unfortunate fact that inhibiting this natural partnership are considerable restrictions on foreign and direct investment in higher education, where I see tremendous potential there for both countries."

Thus, he queried the panellists, particularly the US-India Business Council that has pledged to bring US investment to the table and urged leading American colleges and universities and also community colleges to help India address this acute lack of higher education opportunities, especially for the millions of students who cannot afford to travel overseas for higher studies, if the Modi government has moved in any way to address this issue.

Diane Farrell, executive vice president and senior director of the United States India Business Council, acknowledging that Delaney’s point was well taken, said, "India is very challenged when it comes to financial opportunities and priorities and so education is obviously key."

"So, how do you solve that?" she asked rhetorically, and said, "They are going to try to be creative and partnerships -- whether it’s industry, whether it’s through other academic institutions."

But Farrell said, "You are pushing a big boulder up a hill in terms of the confluence of education reforms and the extraordinary demand because of the large student population that is coming through."

"The more the US can partner in that," she acknowledged, "the better investment we can make."

However, Farrell said, "In all of these discussions, remember the context…all of this is great, but somebody’s got to pay for it."

"Not necessarily the states," she added, "but you are talking about a even more complicated landscape when we talk about in India."