For the past four and a half years, India has had a classy, educated, honest Prime Minister in Manmohan Singh. He’s often been criticized for not seeming forceful enough, but he did score a major success against both left and right in the nuclear deal and subsequent vote of no-confidence, and will probably join a relatively small number of Indian PMs in finishing out a complete five-year term. (Quick quiz: how many have there been?)
One person who is being talked about as a viable candidate for India’s next Prime Minister couldn’t be more different — Lalu Prasad Yadav. Yadav is the ex-Chief Minister of Bihar, where he rose to power in the “Mandal era” by mobilizing what are referred to as backward caste voting blocs in the state. Once in power, Yadav became nationally notorious as a rampantly corrupt figure, who embezzled at least $267 million in the “Fodder Scam”. He was eventually forced out of office, but was able to continue effectively running the state after he installed his wife, Rabri Devi, as Chief Minister in his stead. Starting in the late 1990s, Lalu Prasad Yadav became the punchline of many Indian jokes; even saying his name in some circles leads people to start smiling, in expectation of the joke to follow. (Another quiz: what are the names of his nine children?)
During the current UPA (Congress) administration he has had a second political life as the National Railways Minister — and he’s had remarkable success in turning around a huge government operation that had for decades been dominated by inefficiency and losses for the government. During its tenure (1999-2004), the NDA (BJP) had even been making noises to the effect that the only solution would be privatization, or failing that, raising ticket prices aggressively. But under Yadav, in 2008 alone the Railways earned profits of $6 billion — without raising passenger ticket prices at all. He may have been incredibly corrupt (and may still be corrupt), but he has been remarkably effective at turning around a major government agency.
I mention Lalu Prasad Yadav as a Prime Minister possibility as a reflection of the chatter I was hearing, mainly from relatives, as I was traveling in northern India last week. I have no idea whether it’s a real possibility, and I’m certainly far from thrilled about the possibility of someone so corrupt becoming Prime Minister. But it would nevertheless be interesting, partly because it would involve the country making a clear departure from the Nehru family and western-educated elites, in favor of someone with a strikingly different profile.
He may or may not become Prime Minister, but it does appear that while Lalu Prasad Yadav is still the butt of a few jokes, many Indians are starting to utter his name with newfound respect.
Dude, i dont know what you smoke, or where you get your info from, but manmohan is easily one of the worst PMs that India has had.
No, the bad PMs were all forced out in six months or a year. He’s done fine by most standards.
true. if they deliver on a far-reaching vision that’s wonderful but the basic guidance for politicians is ‘do no harm’. On the same note India has done well under his stewardship (used in a sense distinct from leadership). One can also count the moon mission as an achievement in his tenure. Mr Singh is, by all accounts, a person who has been an even hand at the keel. The other folks I mentioned earlier were essentially gamblers. A little bit of good luck helped in making sure they left a lasting legacy. Mr Singh’s tenure is remarkable for its unremarkable-ness and he leaves the country a better place than when he took on the PM’s mantle. He deserves at least a B-.
another chretien-ism. both the anglophones and the francophones gave up on him. btw, here is a pic of canada’s ex-pm in a Q&A session.
But why is that so sad?. We have had Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi become prime ministers just because they were kids of ex-prime ministers. So do you think if some one speaks and writes in stylish English they are qualified ?. And Sonia Gandhi was almost made a PM in 1991, luckily she refused.
Lalu and Mayawati are leaders (though regional) on their own, coming from a modest background. I think they have a bigger claim to become PM rather than some wealthy kids of ex politicians.
110 · Ponniyin Selvan said
This is exactly why I worry about Laloo becoming PM. Now we will have 9 children to worry about for the next generation! If not Chameli, then Kursi. And if not that, then Gudiya. Where will it end?
he.. he..
Then we’ll tick off Lalu. Maywati, Modi and Jayalalitha are the most eligible, being single now (though Jayalalitha has a lesbian partner). I have no idea about Mayawati / Modi.
If Sanjay Gandhi had lived long enough to really implement his vision of itinerant vans that could unleash snipping teams across the countryside, imagine how much more PM material we would have now.
112 · Ponniyin Selvan said
I definitely don’t think that we want to tick Modi off given what he’s shown himself to be capable of.
How about Omar Abdullah? I know he is too young, but I think he will make a reasonably good PM and he is friends with Rahul Gandhi.
Yes, that’s Lalu. I can just see him visiting abroad with his pet cow or buffalo and talking to the press with a paan in his mouth and a spitoon on the lectern, or perhaps holding a press conference using a bharatiya baithak. Lalu as PM will make great theater.
I din’t tick off Modi. Infact I support Modi for PM.
Sure, He could become a PM too if he has the support of 270+ MPs.
Omar is not going to happen imo, his family going back to Sheikh Abdullah had a history with Nehru/Gandhi clan but I believe sometime back they had a major falling out. I think if the congress led alliance wins, it will be another stop gap PM who can make way for the heir in waiting.
117 · Ponniyin Selvan said
I think you should put that on the t-shirt you’re wearing when Babu Bajrangi pays a visit to your neighborhood. Best defense against a ticked-off Modi, I’m told.
Well.. If you read history, Nehru family (I suspect it is a well planned conspiracy to add Gandhi’s name to the family 🙂 ) and Abdullah family had love-hate relationships over the last 60 years.
Nehru and Sheikh Abdullah were best buddies before Independence when Nehru fought along with Sheikh against the ruler of Kashmir, but later jailed Sheikh and kept him in house arrest for 10+ years (I think). Later Indira Gandhi had a similar relationship with Sheikh and Farooq and Rajiv had similar relationship with Farooq. Judging by history, it is better for Omar not to get too close with Rahul.
No, I wear the Modi mask. 🙂
Infact I support Modi for PM.
Thats really an astonishing endorsement. You dont believe Modi was complicit in mass killings of Muslims or you believe that is did happen but should not be a disqualifying complicity. Would you support Sajjan Kumar/Jagdish Tytler for PM if they otherwise had the same credentials.
123 · Pagal_Aadmi_for_debauchery said
Ponniyin Selvan is a proud Hindu. When will you pseudosecularists stop with this persecution????
No, I don’t believe Modi was complicit in killings. I checked with history and the 2002 riots pales in comparison with 1969 riots in the same Ahmedabad area. Hindus and Muslims have been killing each other for decades/ centuries. That would have happened regardless of whether Modi was there or not. Just in 1947, under Nehru and Jinnah around a million people died in “riots”. We don’t blame Nehru/Jinnah as complicit in the killings.
125 · Ponniyin Selvan said
Damn straight! HRW can go suck it! Garv se kaho hum fundie hain!
he..he.. nice one.
No, I don’t believe Modi was complicit in killings. I checked with history and the 2002 riots pales in comparison with 1969 riots in the same Ahmedabad area. Hindus and Muslims have been killing each other for decades/ centuries. That would have happened regardless of whether Modi was there or not.
Ok, makes more sense now. I guess we differ on the complicity of Modi but I can see why you would endorse him if he you dont believe he was complicit in the killings.
128 · Pagal_Aadmi_for_debauchery said
Or, one can believe he wasn’t complicit if one wants to feel justified in endorsing him, and not feel like a cockroach.
125 · Ponniyin Selvan said
a little bit of me agrees with you that this is business as usual. the rest of me thinks that no self-respecting man would run for elected office again if this happen under his watch. it’s just a matter of decency. i give credit to Nehru for his shame over letting china bugger india in 1962.
but we live in different times now. [strokes his long white beard with his yellowing nails]
OT have you read the book by Rawi Hage? I think you’ll like it.
131 · khoofia said
Thanks for the suggestion. Just looked at the summary, and it sounds like it could be great.
i know it’s a tad flippant to say that – as if such unimaginable cruelty could be hid behind a blink – but i’ve stopped trying to make sense of india. every trip to india is so enervating, so gnumbing that i am left immobile.
Why isn’t a good looking man like Rahul Gandhi married?
With all those bollywood starlets running around the country, you’d think he’d have easy pickings. He should pick someone like lara dutta.
why so heteronormative yaar? maybe he would prefer chai with dara dutta.
No, it’s a question of context. Clement Attlee won a general election after the 1947 partition riots. Rajiv Gandhi ran for Prime Minister after the 1984 riots against Sikhs. Also, the Nehru-Gandhi family has run the government during much of the rioting in India since 1947.
136 · Amit said
I agree. The efficiency of the riots should be a matter of great pride to Modi.
They have had a long standing disagreement with the right wing in India, so their reports are colored with their political worldview. To be honest, their long standing failure to condemn US support for the terrorists next door makes them look more like an extension of American and European statecraft than a neutral agency.
138 · Amit said
Also, they are pseudosecular. To be honest.
Will you go on the record with that?
138 · Amit said
HRW on US war of terror. HRW on US-Pakistan relationship HRW on the misguided US support for Musharraf
and much much more. All carefully hidden away in plain sight on their web site at http://www.hrw.org.
140 · Amit said
No, I usually prefer to be on the receiving end of deep throat.
Come on people, give this poor fellow the credit that is due. He is MR.CEO of the true India Inc. And there is absolutely no doubt about. The transformation of Railways, that he was able to bring out, is nothing short of miracle. He is a real genius, and the elites of India can not come to terms with it, and have constantly tried to use him as the butt end of ridicule. Had Laloo belonged to the ‘forward’ caste, the manuvaddin controlled Indian mass media would have been singing his praise ad nauseam.
Yes, he might be corrupt to the core like 99.9% of the politicians of India, but that is no reason not to acknowledge his accomplishments. If there is one true accomplishment that UPA government can truly claim, that is in Indian Railways. As for the Nuclear deal, it was an inevitable. For the same reason that US warmed up to China, the time had come that they had to warm up to India; it is purely for strategic and economic reasons. UPA government might have managed to squeeze more than what USA was willing to offer and for that UPA government has to be appreciated.
Whether he could make a good prime-minister or not is something I have no idea about. Whoever wins the next election, they should make use of his genius. Fodder scam or no fodder scam, Laloo is the CEO of India Inc. By the way, if he was guilty of the scam why is he not behind the bars? Or that the fodder scam was blown out of proportion just to vilify him?
Had Laloo belonged to the ‘forward’ caste, the manuvaddin controlled Indian mass media would have been singing his praise ad nauseam.
This is true. There was a survey sometime back that showed the composition of Indian media. It is totally dominated by the upper castes. If Railways had a turnaround under one of the upper caste leaders we would have seen a tonne of articles praising him without any tongue in cheek remark.
Note that all of this is after 9/11 when the political winds changed. During the 90’s, I remember that HRW and Amnesty were viewed as an extension of the US state department due to both parties preference for the terrorists next door. If anything these links support my contention that their reports are influenced (intentionally or not) by the official US worldview.
Hard to see Lalu becoming PM.
Sonia will be PM if the UPA wins and the Supreme Court rules in favor of her eligibility to hold the position. Rahul will be PM otherwise if the UPA wins and the case is not resolved by then.
If the NDA wins, Advani will be PM. If neither coalition is close to a majority, we may see Karat (CPIM) or Mayawati (BSP) becoming Prime Minister.
Why is caste still important if (as it appears with lalu) he has been able to bootstrap his way to the top of the political hierachy in India.
If I was born a Dalit, but was able to uplift myself and become a billionaire, would upper caste members of indian society still look down on me?
I guess I don’t understand the caste delineations in India.
Why is caste still important if (as it appears with lalu) he has been able to bootstrap his way to the top of the political hierachy in India.
A simple look at the matrimonial ads in Indian news papers and websites would tell you caste is still important.
If I was born a Dalit, but was able to uplift myself and become a billionaire, would upper caste members of indian society still look down on me?
Whether they look down or look up is irrelevant if you become a billionaire or a powerful person. I heard that in UP, IAS officers remove their shoes (upper caste or lower caste) before entering Mayawati’s room.
145 · Amit said
It’s more likely just a case of countries with a free press being more likely to have their dirty laundry aired out in public. In India there are records kept (however sloppily) and investigations carried out to ascertain Modi’s level of culpability. Next door if the government doesn’t want to take a fall they just drop the subject. Nobody agitates, nobody in power investigates, and it doesn’t catch the eye of international organizations. Their US worldview no doubt colors their perceptions as to what constitutes “human rights” (for example, Amnesty Intl. a while ago tried to start declaring a right to an abortion a “human right,” which is inane) and they’re more likely to investigate stuff that gets picked up in the international media but I’d hesitate before saying they’re unduly influenced by the US government. They’re just working with the information they’re given and it just so happens that the US Press and the CIA/State Dept. tend to be the guys filtering that information.
Yes, I doubt there is any official influence, just that their worldview is shaped differently from the Indian worldview.
Here’s an example from the financial world of how such a difference can result in a misdirected analysis.
147 · nm said
Old money generally looks down on new. At the end of the day money and power are money and power and they will get you all sorts of respect. But respect among certain circles will only come with class and neither neither money nor power will buy that. I don’t mean “class” in the sense of being a “classy” person although that’s part of it. I’m talking about “class” in the sense of conforming to the sensibilities of the trust-fund brigades.
It will take a while for caste prejudices to subside. Among the upper reaches of power caste itself isn’t the impediment so much as all the socio-cultural baggage that tends to come with it. A village bumpkin who happens to be a Brahmin would probably deal with similar crap from the jet set.
Lungiwallah is a derogatory term used by North Indian pajamawllahs.
“A village bumpkin who happens to be a Brahmin would probably deal with similar crap from the jet set”.
You can be a village bumpkin and still be a brahmin?
Is there a cultural difference between these various castes? what makes them different from each other? is it just economics?
So, If I’m a billionaire Dalit would a Brahimn refuse to marry me and instead go for a civil servant Brahmin who wasn’t equally as rich as I?
what caste do the ambani’s belong to?
153 · nm said
Now that’s a long and involved conversation that I’m not qualified to discuss in any generalizable way (and I’d say very few people are.) I can only speak from my own experience so take anecdotal observations for what they’re worth. Basically it varies from region to region and even from village to village. Some places the various caste groups do have very different norms, vegetarianism is a big one. In other places there was a lot of convergence.
Being a Dalit probably will shrink your prospective marriage pool somewhat, but I’d bet being a billionaire will more than compensate. But once again it’s not just about the money and power. It’s also about how you present yourself. That includes how you dress, how you speak, what kind of manners you have (not in the sense of good vs. bad manners but in the sense of upper class vs. lower class), etc. Then again I don’t consider matrimonial preferences to be manifestations of prejudice so I don’t see a problem with that. People have every right to be endogamous within whatever group they care to be. The kicker for well to do folks from historically disadvantaged castes, though, is that once you “make it” there are very few people within your community of comparable status that you can marry.
For the most part caste differences aren’t all that different from class differences in the USA. Yes, in theory the upper middle class WASP girl would be okay with marrying the son of the Hispanic guy who mows her lawn if he was financially well off and all that, but let’s be realistic. What’s the likelihood of it actually happening?
Laloo’s image as a country bumpkin has a lot to do with class, and he has not been shy of exploiting this image. However, the fact that he dominated Bihar politics completely for so many years should be sufficient evidence that he is an extremely shrewd and ruthless politician. Bihar used to be dominated by the Congress party since independence, and Laloo effectively ended this dominance completely. I think anyone who seriously examined the political scene in India would take Laloo very seriously.
Given a choice between Laloo and Mayawati, I would prefer him. Mayawati is much more blatantly corrupt (as of this writing), and also extraordinarily paranoid. These are not very desirable traits in a Prime Minister. Also, I have no clue whatsoever as to what she intends to do as PM beyond enriching herself. She strikes me as a more ruthless, and paranoid dalit leader version of Jayalalitha.
155 · krishna said
Congress used to dominate all over India and had its power wrenched away from it. It happened all over India in every state and at the national level as the BJP likewise rose to prominence. It’s not so much Lalu’s doing as it is a natural maturation of the Indian political system to make room for voices besides Nehruvian Socialism.
The INC was successful at holding India together as a single Republic, but there is no way they could hold its coalition together forever under one party. India is simply too diverse for that kind of single-party system.
It’s time passed with Indira Gandhi’s emergency. Narasimha Rao did an exemplary job of keeping it relevant and wrenching India into the modern but they have basically excised his wing of the party since then. At this point the Congress essentially just trades on its residual power and the cachet of the Nehru/Gandhi dynasty. That’s not a very stable power-base and it’s probably for the best if they go the way of the Federalists.