Even before Orissa happened, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) hadn’t got the traction it needed, with alliances tottering in the south, east and west. NDA Convenor Sharad Yadav, 61, is not too happy with the ways things are in the alliance.
In an interview with HNN, Yadav speaks of friendships outside the NDA and how the alliance still hopes to regroup. Excerpts from the interview:
How badly has Orissa hurt the NDA?
The NDA has been weakened in Orissa by what happened, but I don’t think there will be damage in other states.
Why could you not anticipate the Orissa developments?
The BJP never involved us in it. The negotiations were going on between the BJP and the Biju Janata Dal (BJD). BJP President Rajnath Singh called me when it was over. That’s when I spoke to him. I was taken aback by the turn of events. I was under the impression that things would turn out fine. The BJP was dealing with this.
Does this affect the chances of your Prime Ministerial nominee?
The NDA has split in Orissa, but I don’t consider Naveen Patnaik as being out of the NDA. He will need us in the future. He has taken a big risk by choosing to fight the election on his own. His principal opponent is the Congress. The BJP-BJD combine would have got the anti-Congress vote. Now, the anti-Congress vote will be split. I am not updated about Orissa, but I know that the BJP had 18 percent of the vote there. The BJP-BJD combine was winning because the anti-Congress vote was consolidated in their favour. I can’t say if it will stay that way in the future.
Is the Janata Dal (United), the party you belong to, comfortable with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) choice of LK Advani as the prime ministerial nominee?
The announcement of Advani’s name as the prime ministerial nominee is not limited to the BJP. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) had made a unanimous decision on this. First, the BJP arrived at the decision. Then, we were consulted and the final decision was taken to project Advani prime ministerial candidate.
The JD(U) is fine with it then?
I am telling you as the NDA Convenor. All NDA members have decided to support him (Advani).
Has the NDA lost momentum from the time it chose to project Advani for the top post?
The NDA hasn’t lost momentum. The NDA has won in big states in the recent assembly elections to five states. We won in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. Before that, we won in Bihar, Punjab, Gujarat and Karnataka. The NDA has nine state governments. In Bihar, Punjab and Orissa, NDA constituents are running the governments. We also won in Jharkhand but the Congress manipulated its fall. The Congress has lost virtually all elections over five years, barring this time in Rajasthan and Delhi. In Rajasthan, the Congress managed to cobble a government. We have 82 MLAs there.
Are you in touch with parties that were once your friends, like Jayalalithaa’s AIADMK, for instance?
The alliances are not in shape in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, be it the NDA or the UPA. As far as the NDA is concerned, I can say that we discussed with some parties but the talks did not materialise into alliances. Barring these two states, there is an alliance everywhere. Recently, we have brought the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD), headed by Om Prakash Chautala, the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) and the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), headed by Ajit Singh, into our fold.
What about Babulal Marandi’s party in Jharkhand?
We are talking to him as well but it hasn’t materialised.
Are you still talking to Jayalalithaa?
No. I wouldn’t like to say anything more on this.
Is it possible that the JD(U) will have a prime ministerial nominee, given that things could change rapidly after the numbers are out?
JD(U) is in alliance with the BJP in Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. The JD(U) has no alliances in the other states. We will contest together in these four states and fight separately in Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, for instance.
Have you made an assessment of the impact that Advani could have on the Muslim vote?
Ours is not a one-day alliance. And in Bihar, we are partners in the government. The BJP has not had a negative impact. We have conducted many pro-Muslim programmes in Bihar. No state government has done as much for Muslims in 60 years, be it for the madrasas or the teachers in madrasas. We punished the guilty in the Bhagalpur riots of 1998. We got life-long compensation for the victims. How could we have done all this without the cooperation of the BJP? They didn’t stop us. We do politics of the masses, not politics of religion.
Does the JD(U) consider itself bound to the NDA? Could this change after the election?
This is an era of coalition politics. There are two fronts. The NDA is 11 years old. We have contested four elections together. We are not in a position to form a government by ourselves. The BJP is not in a position to form its own government. No party can do it. So, we have the UPA on one side and the NDA on the other. The JD(U) and the BJP are separate parties. We have differences of thought. There are many issues on which we differ. We have various kinds of disagreements with many parties. But we are united under our common minimum programme, which we call the national agenda. The issues were settled in the time of Atal Bihari Vajpayee. We ran a government for six years after that.
There are contradictions between the BJP and the JD(U). But the people of this country are not giving a majority to any single party. So, we have to keep our differences and contradictions aside. The JD(U) has demanded, for instance, reservation for dalit Muslims and dalit Christians. The BJP has not demanded it. It is not part of the national agenda. The JD(U) wants a quota within quota for women. The BJP doesn’t. They want a temple in Ayodhya. The JD(U) says that the Ayodhya dispute has to be resolved either by the courts or by a negotiated settlement. The BJP functions according to its ideology and issues. The JD(U) has its own issues. The JD(U) and the BJP are distinct parties, just as the JD(U) is distinct from the Akali Dal and the Biju Janata Dal (BJD).
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi is a part of the NDA as well.
The JD(U) deals with the BJP as a party. The JD(U) doesn’t deal with individuals.
I’m talking of a situation where the BJP fields Modi in the election campaign, say, in Bihar. What impact would that have?
In an alliance, it doesn’t matter where an individual goes to campaign. We sit among ourselves and find solutions to such things. Politics differs from state to state. The JD(U) and the BJP are aware of this. Campaigns schedules are drawn up after consultations. For instance, the JD(U) had decided not to involve celebrities in the 2004 campaign. We know where to draw the line. We know who will help us and who will harm us.
Is it likely that the JD(U) responds to a Congress or UPA invitation to join a secular front?
We are in the NDA since 11 years. The UPA is four-and-a-half years old. Are they more secular than us?
Are you in touch with the Communists?
We are old friends of the Left parties. We are constantly in touch with them. We formed a government with the Left on two occasions. We have been with the Communists for 60 years. At times we have been together, and at others we have been separate. For some time now, we have been going our ways. Our views are similar to those of the Left on many issues. On other issues, our opinion is the same as that of the BJP. Our main issues are economic, the state of the farmers, unemployment, inflation, SEZs. The SEZs they created for real estate are now defunct. We opposed the creation of SEZs. The difference is in degree of opposition. We opposed SEZs seriously. The BJP did it mildly.
Should the NDA come to power, how will it deal with terrorism and Pakistan?
The JD(U) thinks that there must be people’s involvement in these issues. Let’s take the blasts in trains, for instance. At the top, we need to strengthen the bureaucracy and the intelligence. But it is the vendors and the coolies whose lives are entwined with trains. We have to take them into confidence and mobilise them. We must give licences to vendors and tell them: look we gave you the licence. You are responsible for this much area. Your licence will be cancelled if there’s any extremist or untoward activity in your area. We must offer incentives to the coolies and food vendors in the railways stations in Delhi and Mumbai.
For instance, recent blasts in Delhi and Guwahati have been in garbage bins. There are lakhs of safai karamcharis in India. Let’s take them into confidence. People like us are not going to peep into garbage bins. The karamcharis do it. Similarly, there are 50 lakh fishermen on our coasts. In the Mumbai attack, the terrorists came by sea from Karachi. So, we need to beef up the intelligence at the top and take the people on the streets into confidence. We have to create a network of informants on the ground. We can’t deal with terrorism unless we have the people who sweat it out on our side.
Should Afzal Guru be hanged, then?
This is a stupid issue. It is of concern only to the media. I don’t want to say anything on this. There are lakhs of people going to the gallows anyway in India. The Arjun Sengupta Committee report has said that 78 percent of Indians live on Rs 20 a day. This means that a person who ought to have lived to the age of 90, is dying at 60. Those who should have lived till 60 are dying at 30. These people are on the gallows because of hunger, poverty and unemployment. That is our big worry.
What will the NDA manifesto say on this? Will you have a common manifesto this time?
We haven’t made a decision yet on our manifesto. We haven’t talked yet. Though in the past in Bihar, the JD(U) and the BJP have had separate manifestos.
Joblessness has become a vast problem now. What would you do about it?
The people who went to English schools had jobs when the market expanded. If you hadn’t known English, you wouldn’t have got a job in Tehelka. Now, the global crisis has hit the English-speaking jobholders who are being sacked. Ninety-eight percent of Indians study in regional language schools, in Hindi, Urdu, Telugu, Marathi, or Gujarati for instance. They had no jobs anyway.
What will the NDA do about it?
We must put big money into agriculture. And, instead of erecting barriers, let a representative of the union government go to backward states and directly give money for, say, a thousand roads, a thousand bridges. Cement and steel factories will function. People in the backward states will get employed. If we are able to form a government, my party will focus totally on the construction sector. You can’t imagine what a boost it would give to employment. This is what we would do.
What are the other NDA priorities, should it gain power?
The next most important thing is agriculture and irrigation. The condition of our farmers and our villages has improved where water has reached. Daily wages have risen to Rs 150-Rs 200. Where the farmer is dependent on rain, there is hunger, unemployment and poverty. We must shut out everything else and see that water reaches the farms, from the small lakes, big lakes, the land and the sky. We will see how the condition of our villages and our farmers will improve with water. Let’s take the Bhakra Nangal Dam in Punjab. Water came first to the farms, and then came the schools and the roads.
Where is the water now?
There’s no shortage of water in this country. Bihar has more water than it needs, which is going into the sea. Why can’t we tap and store the water we get from the monsoon?
The JD(U) is a regional party. Many regional parties say Article 356, which imposes Centre’s rule in a state, is misused. Has the time come to repeal Article 356?
No. Article 356 must not be done away with. Circumstances force the use of Article 356 many times. In Jharkhand, they had to implement President’s Rule recently, didn’t they? Anything can happen in the states, like in Punjab in the past. Everything can be sacrificed for the unity of the nation. Article 356 is necessary. People have begun debating it because of its misuse. Now, the Centre has to think many times before imposing President’s Rule.
The sensitivity of Centre-State relations has caused India’s structure to change periodically. The BJP has now promised to create the next state, Telangana, within 100 days of coming to power. Do you think India needs more states?
States like Uttar Pradesh are unmanageable. We must divide them scientifically. We must have a national commission to look into the issue of viable states.
Will this be in your manifesto?
There is no consensus on our manifesto yet. We don’t know whether we will have a common manifesto, or individual ones.
You’ve been in public life long enough to know the corrosive effect of corruption. What do you intend to do?
India would have progressed far more were it not for corruption in every field. People are looting all the way from Delhi to the villages. Take Satyam, for instance. It’s like a man has committed a murder and gone to the police station to confess. Ramalinga Raju was about to be arrested in the US. He knew he would be gone for life. Therefore, he chose to be in an Indian prison. He would never have confessed if he hadn’t been exposed in the US. Raju thought he would suffer like the Enron chiefs. We have the intelligence wing of the finance ministry, the sales tax and income tax wings, the SEBI, and the ministry of company affairs. Have all of them become useless?
The NDA has been in government as well. How come it didn’t look into these things?
We lost. If we were strong and perfect, we wouldn’t have been blamed forever. Why did people vote for the UPA? Because we made mistakes and they taught us a lesson. We have been punished. But is accountability only for the politicians? No one else is accountable in this country. Not the judiciary, not the bureaucracy. Not one bureaucrat has been punished for the Mumbai attack, for instance. Only the political system is accountable in this country. The media is free to do what it wants. They call themselves news channels and run fiction programmes on superstition the whole day. You should call them entertainment channels. Technology has given the media such a big tool, but it is not creating a scientific outlook. Nobody is censoring the Balika Badhu serial (on child marriage).
What about judicial accountability?
Is there any system in the world where the judges decide on themselves. The judges in our country recruit their own relatives and near and dear.
Why hasn’t the JD(U) raised this?
Sharad Yadav raised the issue of former chief justice YK Sabharwal and his sons. He got Delhi demolished. We make the laws in Parliament and we find that the judiciary is making 10 laws a day over what we say in Parliament.
Are you contesting this time?
The party will take a decision on that. There is democracy only in three parties in India: the Left parties, the BJP and the JD(U). Individual writ doesn’t run here.
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