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ELECTIONS '96

The Rediff Election Interview/Sharad Pawar

'The most important thing is to rethink liberalisation'

Moving away from Maharashtra, what is your reading of the position in the rest of the country?

Personally, I have visited some constituencies in Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, and Karnataka, besides my tour through Maharashtra. And I think we are doing very well everywhere. Even in the South, except for Tamil Nadu, we are doing very well in the other three states.

Why is Tamil Nadu, which has traditionally backed both Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, not succumbing to the Sonia charm?

There, I am not saying we are doing badly -- only, that I don't have a clear picture how we are doing. With the various alliances in operation there, it is becoming rather difficult to assess the situation, and I haven't been there, so I really have no first hand information.

Could the blasts in Coimbatore be a factor -- sympathy for the BJP, that kind of thing?

What sympathy? Look, before the campaigning began, the Intelligence Bureau had a list of 17 people whose lives they said are in danger. They said the ISI and the LTTE would cause problems, try to create a fear situation in the country. We -- my name is also on that list of 17 -- were all individually briefed by the intelligence agencies, given a list of dos and don't's, security measures were tightened, I have never had this kind of security before, certainly. So what happened was expected, actually -- it just happened that the target was Advani's meeting.

You say the Congress is doing well -- well enough to win a majority? Or at the least, well enough to make a bid for power?

About an absolute majority, I don't want to say anything just now, because things have not cleared to that extent, though off hand I would say we could fall short. But yes, the Congress will definitely form the next government at the Centre.

That assessment is based on....?

We will get many more seats than the last time. And several people, parties, are prepared to back us this time, if we fall short of a majority.

Like who?

Well, Mulayam Singh Yadav has already announced that he will support a Congress government, if the United Front fails to make a bid for power. Then there is the recent statement by V P Singh, on similar lines. There are several others, actually, but I don't want to name names just now.

So overall, what you are saying is that the Congress has cleaned up its act, and it is the opposition that is floundering. What, for instance, do you see as the mistakes the BJP is making?

Not mistakes, they have made one mistake only, but that is a very big one -- they are too eager, too grasping, they have forgotten how to wait. And in their eagerness, they have taken the support of all sorts of people -- how can they talk of corruption for instance, and have an alliance with Jayalalitha? How can they share a dais with Jayalalitha and Subramanian Swamy, who for years has been attacking her, and still retain credibility? Besides, their biggest argument is that the United Front fell because it was a coalition of 13 parties, and that coalitions don't work.

Are the people fools, not to notice that the BJP alliance comprises 14 parties? At every step of the way, they have themselves diluted their agenda, all because they are so very desperate for power that they are prepared to link up with anyone to get it. If the BJP had fought alone, or allied only with its traditional allies, like maybe the Akalis and the Sena, it would have done much better.

Another mistake is that it started off on a very high note, everywhere you looked, in the newspapers, you could see only BJP. Have you seen a marathon race? Some runners will be leading right from the first -- but after the halfway mark, it is the runners at the back who take over, while the early leaders fade out. That is the difference between the BJP and Congress this time -- the BJP took the lead, but we are the ones who are finishing strongly.

Talking of mistakes, a very senior BJP leader said that the Congress made a big one when it didn't allow the Vajpayee government to survive the vote of confidence... Why?

The argument I heard was that if the Congress had abstained, the Vajpayee government would have survived the vote of confidence. But being in a minority, it would not have been able to achieve anything at all, and in time it would have fallen. And with its fall, the stability plank would have been lost to the party for ever.... The BJP should never be allowed to rule, it is too dangerous. For instance, Advani was a minister during the Janata government -- and in his short tenure, he managed to fill his ministry with RSS people, and that gave us a headache when we came back to power.

The BJP and the RSS practise the politics of infiltration. I'll give you an example. Before the fall of the Babri Masjid, Bhairon Singh Shekawat and I were negotiating with the Babri Masjid Action Committee and the Ram Janambhoomi people, for three days we had intense negotiations. We reached a stage where, in one more day or maybe two, we could have come to an agreement. But at that time, the senior RSS person involved in the discussions said he had to leave for three days.

I asked him why, I argued with him, told him nothing could be more important, but he was adamant. So finally I asked him where he was going, and he said Hyderabad, to attend the seminar of the Indian History Congress. I was quite shocked that he thought a seminar was more important that this.

That is when he explained. The IHC controls the way Indian history is written and studied, it approves syllabus and textbooks, it has total control. And the key weapon of the RSS is education, its goal is to rewrite Indian history to suit its agenda. In fact, the RSS is already doing it -- the portrayal of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj as anti-Muslim is only one example, they talk of how Afzal Khan tried to trick him and how Shivaji killed Afzal Khan, that is the story the kids read about, but conveniently, no one menions that Shivaji's chief army commander was a Muslim, that he personally constructed three mosques for Muslims... one of my candidates in the state is a direct descendant of Shivaji Maharaj, and his family still pays money for the upkeep of these mosques, but this is never mentioned. Shivaji maintained that all communities and religions should live in harmony, but look how that is being distorted today!

Sorry, but how does all this tie up with the IHC?

To be a member, you have to do post graduation, and masters, in Indian history. So over the years, the RSS has been systematically selecting students, instructing them to study history, and getting them into the IHC, at last count the RSS-oriented students are 46 per cent of the society. Another five per cent, and the RSS will control it, and then it will write Indian history to suit its own ends. That body is like that, it plans ahead, and works systematically to achieve its goals. In fact, I must say that though the RSS and the BJP are my political enemies, I admire this quality in them, they plan for the future and they work steadily towards a goal.

To return to Maharashtra, do you see a positive result for the Congress impacting on the state government?

Of course! The state government will fall.

Simply because the Congress happens to win more seats than last time?

No. The BJP-Sena government is surviving on the support of Independents. And they are prepared to withdraw that support any time we ask them to.

Then why have you not done so before this?

Because the timing was not right. Politics is all a matter of timing. Earlier, when the Congress lost badly in the election, the prevailing mood here was anti-Congress. At that time, if we had tried to topple the government, the voters would have turned against us and we would have done even more badly in a mid-term election. Now, the mood is swinging around to our favour once again. Besides, as long as the Sena and the BJP were in Opposition, they were the ones who were doing all the criticising. Now, thanks to their misrule, the people are fed up and the climate is right for a change.

At a personal level, some doubts are being voiced about your own authority. The defection of close colleagues like Kalmadi, for instance. Your withdrawal from the race for the party president's post, to cite another instance. Why this erosion of the hold you once had on the state unit of the party?

(Laughing) Here, I am telling you that we are going to reverse the results of the last election, and you are talking of an erosion of my hold? As far as the party president's post goes, yes, I did initially decide to contest. But we senior partymen were having lots of discussions at the time, and the consensus was that the party could not afford a direct confrontation for the post, we could not afford a lot of messy publicity. So in the interests of the party, I withdrew from the race.

As for Suresh Kalmadi, he and I have not been close for over five years now, he has been with Narasimha Rao all this time. So it is not like he is 'my man', as you media people keep writing. And as for why he left, the simple truth is opportunism, which led him to make a bad miscalculation. If you remember, in the last days of the Gujral government, the media uniformly said the BJP would come back with a majority in the event of a general election.

Right from that time, Suresh had been talking to people like me, and Pilot, and others, telling us that the BJP's coming to power was inevitable, that it was time for us to leave the Congress and join the BJP. He knew that Rao was in trouble anyway, so he panicked, he is young, not seasoned in politics, he will make these mistakes...

You mentioned Rao's name -- why was Babri Masjid, of all things, used as the reason for not giving him a ticket?

Well, frankly, Babri Masjid was not the real reason, the real reason has to do with party matters I don't want to talk about. But the funny thing is that Kesri's mention of the Babri Masjid has actually helped us with the Muslims -- the community is very happy that we, at least, have taken action against one person responsible for the demolition of the mosque. (At this point, Girija Vyas chipped in to say that in her constituency, Muslims had actually celebrated when it was known that Rao had been denied a ticket.)

So your reading is that the Congress will form the next government, with or without support from other parties. In that event, what do you see as the party's agenda?

The most important thing is to rethink liberalisation. I am not saying it is wrong -- much before the country adopted the policy, in Maharashtra when I was chief minister we had opened up the state for outside investment. So I am not against the policy as such. But a more human face needs to be put on it, the poor should be brought within the framework of those it benefits -- and all this should go hand in hand with a mass education campaign, like I told you earlier.

That's it, putting a human face on liberalisation, to keep you occupied for the next five years?

No, there is so much to do. But strengthening the economy, streamlining liberalisation, expanding the network of those it benefits and ensuring a level of protection to the domestic entrepreneur, these would be the obvious priority areas.

How about you personally, what role do you see for yourself, after the election?

In course of this campaign, I have been repeatedly saying that I will not return to the state, I believe that after 30 years of working for Maharashtra, it is time now to concentrate on national politics. As to what role I see for myself, how can I say that now? The results have to come, we have to get a clear picture of how the party stands and what the possibilities are, and that is the time to think about these things.

Finally, doesn't your decision to campaign for only one day, that too the last day of campaigning, in your constituency smack of arrogance? Sort of like taking your constituency for granted?

No, not at all. You go talk to the people and see. They tell me, 'Pa warsahib, you don't have to bother to come here at all, even for a day, we will elect you anyway'. They know that my responsibility extends beyond this constituency, they also know that I have never neglected my people and my area, and they are happy with that. I campaign here on the last day as a matter of habit actually -- I have been doing it all these years, I come here last, and end my campaign with a speech to my people from Baramati, it has become a tradition with me.

No, it is not arrogance -- in a family, you take each other for granted, and Baramati is my family, these are my people, they take my help for granted, any time they want it, and I too take their support for granted because they have never let me down.

A life in the day of Baramati

The Rediff Election Interviews