Union Minister and BJP candidate from RSS stronghold of Nagpur Nitin Gadkari said the BJP-led NDA government’s programmes are solution-oriented while the Congress’ record on poverty alleviation lacks credibility.

Excerpts:

How do you frame the current general elections?

Frankly speaking, the 2014 election was based on hope, there was a lot of disappointment with the UPA government and Modiji was voted in with hope for better times. These five years, the performance audit of our government will show that in the comparison between 50 years of Congress party and five years of our government, we will come up looking good and our contribution will be more than theirs. Twentieth century politics is about progress and development. People are looking for solutions to problems of poverty, unemployment, shelter. In all our policies from Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana to Mudra to Jan Dhan Yojana, Ayushman Bharat, they are all oriented to finding solutions. In road construction, we have taken tremendous strides, from 2 km per day in the last government, we are now at 29 km per day and by March-end we will be at 34-35 km per day. Under Namami Gangey we have improved the quality of water of aviral Ganga…

But studies do not reflect that improvement in Ganga water, they show that it has become more polluted.

You ask the one crore people who bathed in the Ganga at the Kumbh. Priyanka Gandhi Vadra also drank that water straight from the river, would she have done that if it was polluted?

At the beginning of the campaign your party tried to frame the contest as Modi vs All, but the NDA is an agglomeration of more allies than the Opposition, then how is it Modi vs All?

When one party becomes strong, other weak parties, with nothing in common have gotten together in an alliance. Only fear of Modi is driving them together.

There is said to be fair amount of resentment among your state units in Maharashtra and Bihar because of the central leadership’s over generous attitude towards allies. Do you think you have been over generous, specifically in Maharashtra?

Alliances are an exercise of profit and loss, someone gets more, and some one has to sacrifice looking at the bigger picture of national interest. We will tell our workers that we have made these decisions in larger interest of the country and proceed from there. Lets see.

But allies, especially the Shiv Sena, do not shy away from trolling the BJP. Lately they carried a picture and laudatory article of the crowds drawn by Rahul Gandhi in Malda in their mouthpieceSaamna.

We have decided to fight the elections together and unitedly. The basic problem is that right now it is the time to face the electorate together. We were expecting a bit more positive attitude towards the alliance from the Saamna, but we are meeting and talking things over and I feel we should look ahead.

So you are not going to bother much about what Saamna says?

Yes.

This is also an election with a heavy national security narrative woven into it especially in the wake of the Pulwama attack and the Balakot air strikes. Do you think that it will prevail over other issues?

My personal opinion is that I’m extremely against the politicisation of national security or issues related to armed personnel. These are very sensitive subjects, and my feeling is that sometimes our Opposition behaves like Pakistan TV and newspapers. It is not appropriate and does not honour our brave soldiers and sometimes it is hurtful to the sentiments of the people as well.

But the Opposition says that it is the government that is using security operations as a campaign tool.

When the Opposition raises doubts on events, creating confusion, giving false statements. The best way is to not make comments on national security. My feeling is that one should not talk about this in the political domain at all, it is hurtful to people.

How do you look at the Congress’ poll promise of a minimum income support programme — NYAY — announced recently?

You just see from 1947, Prime Minister Nehru ji assures to the country that poverty will be alleviated, then Indiriaji with 20-point programme, 10-point programme, five-point programme etc., followed by Rajiv ji with almost the same things. But as far as economic policies that could address poverty are concerned, the result for ‘Garibi Hatao’ is zero. There is no credibility with regard to the Congress on this issue.

Statistics however have shown that the 10-year period of the UPA saw the largest number of people being pulled out of absolute poverty. That could give validity to the NYAY programme. Do you believe in a minimum income programme?

I believe that wrong economic policies, corrupt governance and bad leadership is the reason why we are still a poor country. Just look around the world, the Congress chose the Russian model of socialist model of economy, now see what happened to Russia and the socialist model? Even in western European economies and the United States, under liberal economic principles, there is a sense of crisis. It is time we gave thought to what it is we should do to bring about socio-economic transformation and give relief to the people at large. The BJP has reflected on the issue, and with strong feeling of nationalism as our spirit, good governance and development as our mission, and Antyodaya of looking at the poorest of the poor as the central premise of policy making we have been formulating policies.

So how is Antyodaya so different from NYAY and other forms of UPA’s welfarism?

I feel that NYAY is a political gimmick. Where will you get the ₹3,54,000 crore budget for that? That too over and above all the welfare schemes that the NDA government introduced. And by distributing this, where will you get the money to spend on roads, irrigation, schools and other infrastructure. I feel the Congress party is very confident on not winning this election, and hence not be called to account for that promise.

Even PM-Kisan income support is like a version of NYAY?

That is ₹6000 of cash income support, but in addition there are other things like increase in Minimum Support Price (MSP), we are bringing 1.88 lakh hectares of land under irrigation under the Pradhan Mantri Seenchai Yojana, some of these projects have been stalled after 50% of the works being done because of lack of support from state governments. We are also giving a fillip to an ethanol economy which will change the total prospects of farming as a profession.

Modi government has often been accused of increasing the communal temperature across the country. Especially around the issues of cow protection. How would you react to this?

This is totally 100% wrong. The habit of the media is that it puts everything down on our name, our reaction is like the rest of the country, that we will not tolerate any communal hatred being sought to be raised.

The Congress government in Madhya Pradesh had imposed the National Security Act (NSA) on a case of cow protection, do you agree with that?

Actually, we are in favour of cow protection, no question. Scientifically, gau mutraor cow urine is important, we are making many medicines out of it. Cow milk is also very important, it has certain nutrients which are important for health reasons. So we want to protect the cow, yes, but we will not tolerate violence in the name of it.

BJP president Amit Shah and the party’s Tamil Nadu election in-charge, Piyush Goyal, will visit Chennai on Tuesday to broadly finalise the alliance with the AIADMK for the upcoming Lok Sabha election.

 

Sources said they had received an itinerary, as per which Mr. Shah would arrive in the city by a special aircraft at 10.45 a.m. on Tuesday, and leave at 3 p.m.

 

Sources in the BJP were tight-lipped on whether there would be an announcement about the nitty-gritty of the alliance on Tuesday. They admitted that the talks with the AIADMK had gone “quite far”, but added that uncertainty over the PMK joining the alliance prevailed, and needed to be resolved.

“The broad contours of the arrangement are more or less final, with the BJP asking for 13-15 seats, not just for itself but also for accommodating the Puthiya Tamilagam (which has sought the Tenkasi seat), the Vijayakant-led DMDK, the Indhiya Jananayaga Katchi (who have sought one seat) and another smaller party, which has also asked for one seat. If the PMK signs up with our alliance, we are ready to offer four seats,” said a source.

 

EPS yet to give nod

 

While the broad contours of the seat adjustment have been hammered out, the final nod for the arrangement from AIADMK co-coordinator and Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami is yet to be obtained, and the four seats that have been earmarked for the PMK is one of the reasons for this. “It is difficult for the AIADMK, with a large number [of] sitting MPs, to give so many seats away. So, the PMK decision is crucial,” said a source in the BJP.

 

A senior BJP office-bearer said the party was staking a claim to Kanniyakumari — a seat it already holds — along with Nilgiris (Reserved), one of the three seats in Chennai and one in Madurai (since the Central government had sanctioned the setting up of an All India Institute of Medical Sciences there).

 

In his latest book, ‘Democracy on the Road: A 25 Year Journey Through India’, investor Ruchir Sharma has catalogued the 27 national and State elections that he has tracked over a quarter of a century in his personal capacity. Mr. Sharma, who is the head of emerging markets and chief global strategist at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, discusses the 2019 general election, explains why India has the highest anti-incumbency rate among major democracies and why it can never be a China on economic reforms. Excerpts:

There is a thread running through your book about India’s “deep distaste for incumbents”. Do you mean Indians instinctively throw out governments, whatever their record?

The word anti-incumbency was coined in India. When I write for The New York Times or such publications, and I use the phrase, they don’t know what I’m talking about because the phrase was coined here. That’s because India has the highest rate of anti-incumbency among major democracies in the world. In the U.S. and the U.K., most incumbents tend to get re-elected. In the U.S., for example, two-thirds of Presidents and Governors who stand get re-elected; in India, two-thirds lose their elections. That’s what the data say.

There are two or three reasons why this happens. The foremost is that the state in India is broken. Politicians want to do stuff and promise stuff, but the state is just broken and cannot deliver. It just falls through the cracks. For example, yesterday, I was in Bijnor [Uttar Pradesh], and before the District Magistrate’s office, a big protest broke out by sugar cane farmers over the question of dues. The whole issue is that you can keep announcing things, like minimum support price, but the moment you take your payment slip to the Food Corporation of India, they give you the runaround. The mechanism is so broken that your daily interaction with the government is very frustrating and possibly the only thing you can do is vote people out. Secondly, it doesn’t take much to vote people out because of the fragmented polity. In most States in India, you can win most seats by securing 30% of the vote share, so then just a 3-4% vote swing is enough to change the fortunes of a government, or if the Opposition comes together, it can change things. These are factors that distinguish India from other countries.

There have been many instances of governments being voted back. How do you explain that?

Again, there are a couple of things. There was a period of time, between 2005 and 2010, when a lot of incumbents won elections in India. A couple of things happened in that period. One, the economy was booming and inflation was fairly low, and two, because the economy was booming there was a lot of welfare that could be done, as governments were able to spend on these programmes. This really helped those governments come back to power.

Having said that, one of the more insightful statements which I have repeated twice in the book is by a Mangaluru MLA, U.T. Khader, who said that winning elections in India is like fighting a battery of six tests with a minimum passing mark on each. You can’t rely on just one factor — if you don’t do enough welfarism, you will lose; you have to get the caste arithmetic and religious politics right; or some huge allegation of corruption hits you. In American politics, there is a far more obvious connection between economics and politics. That argument appears simplistic in the Indian context.

You say that India’s national elections are a series of State elections. Can you explain?

That’s what happened in 2004, in 2009, and, in fact, in most non-wave elections, unlike the 1984-85 Rajiv Gandhi wave and the mini wave, mainly in north India, for Narendra Modi in 2014. In Delhi and Mumbai, we are preoccupied by questions like, “If Modi doesn’t return in 2019, then who comes in his place?” But it doesn’t work that way in the rest of India. We are a truly parliamentary system. One bit of data that I keep quoting is that in 2004, the gap between Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s popularity and that of Sonia Gandhi’s was much larger than the current one between Modi and Rahul Gandhi, and yet because she was able to stitch good alliances, the Congress was able to win. Even this election, it’s going to go State by State.

Coming to political personalities, you say that Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati hasn’t been able to accrue much influence outside Uttar Pradesh or grow beyond it.

It’s amazing to me how no regional leader has been able to grow nationally, and with Mayawati, you would have thought with a large Dalit population across the country, she would have become a pan-Indian presence. But the fact remains that Dalits are not a monolithic bloc of votes. The one State where I remember people telling me that Mayawati could have a big influence was Maharashtra, and yet she is a complete non-entity there. Being a prime ministerial candidate is a different matter and more a negotiation based on how many seats she gets, but her case proves to me that India is truly a ‘continent’ of 29 States and it is almost impossible for a leader who is strong in one State to replicate it everywhere else.

A part of your interest in politics was also to see whether there would be a leader who could push economic reforms. In the book, you come to the conclusion that the Indian DNA is statist and socialist.

In this country, there is no constituency for privatisation today. Is there any scenario in which you think that any big push for privatisation will be launched after the 2019 polls? I don’t think so. There was some chance in 2002, there was some chance with Modi in 2014. To me that is the evidence — that what I said about statism stands. The good thing in India is that the private sector is so vibrant because of some liberalisation in the past that it can carry the can, but that is also why India can never grow like China. In the early years of its development, China had no welfare state; it spent entirely on roads and infrastructure. The Indian polity will not allow that.

Through your many years of covering polls, you have met several political leaders — right from the time they were introduced to politics to when they were more mature in politics. What are the changes in Rahul Gandhi from when you met him in 2007 to now?

In 2007, it was a two-hour-long meeting in which he spoke for an hour and 59 minutes. He didn’t want to engage much despite the fact that he had just entered politics and it was a roomful of fairly experienced political watchers. The unfavourable impression was of being spoken down to. Over the years we found that he was much more interested in engaging and listening. We don’t know how much of that is change and how much is based on feedback. There is, of course, no doubt that he has improved a lot as a campaigner from 2007.

What about Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and her formal entry into the Congress? Will she able to make a critical difference to the Congress’s fortunes?

I think the days are gone when you could just land and your charisma would work. That India is not there anymore. You also know how deeply entrenched caste equations in Uttar Pradesh are. To disturb them at this stage will be a very difficult thing to do. If I were to be asked on how she can make the biggest difference, it would be to get her to focus on one thing. Let’s say she manages to be the combined Opposition candidate from Varanasi against Modi. Then you can focus that energy on one thing, but the idea of building the Congress so that it’s a serious contender by April 2019 based on just charisma… that concept no longer exists. The deliverables from Priyanka should be adjusted in that way if she is to make an impact.

You have described several tense meetings of your travel group with Prime Minister Modi and BJP president Amit Shah. Why is that?

They have a belief that the entire media is ‘liberal’ and out to get them. It’s a different situation from, say, 15 years ago, when the word liberal was not used so pejoratively. They really believe that the media is out to get them and it colours that interaction.

But a lot of it also informs a narrative of Modi versus all, and if not Mr. Modi, then anarchy. How well do you think that will work in 2019?

Rajiv Gandhi tried something similar in 1989 and that didn’t work so well. It may work with some sections of the people, especially the middle class, but at the broader level people vote for the party they want to and not see what’s going to happen after the election.

In your view, what will be the overarching issue informing the 2019 election? Will it be jobs, rural distress, Ram Mandir, or Mr. Modi’s own version of Hindutva?

This election is going to be all about alliances. Narendra Modi’s support base is still strong, there could be a little in and out on that, and he could still get 31% of the vote share, but the seats this time could be way less than the 9 to 1 ratio, which was the highest vote-to-seat conversion ratio in the entire electoral history of India.

In how many States the Opposition will be able to put up good alliances will determine the course of this election.

Narendra Modi and Amit Shah have a belief that the entire media is ‘liberal’ and out to get them. It’s a different situation from, say, 15 years ago, when the word liberal was not used so pejoratively.

The idea of building the Congress based on just Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s charisma… that concept no longer exists.