Ramdev’s flip-flops

Anna Hazare has retired hurt and now we have the Rashtriya Swaya-msevak Sangh-sponsored Baba Ramdev who, in addition to his yoga expertise, is also a business tycoon with a turnover in excess of Rs 1,000 crore and extensive property.

All the financial details of his empire will be available to the public soon; he is already under the scanner of the Enforcement Directorate and the Income-Tax department, and his associate Balkrishna is just out on bail after spending nearly a month behind bars.
Baba Ramdev, who is receiving fulsome attention from news channels, presumes that the whole nation is with him. In his latest bloviation, he has criticised Team Anna and taken on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Congress president Sonia Gandhi and its general secretary Rahul Gandhi. The yoga guru changes his decisions by the hour and cannot be trusted to be consistent. Political parties will suffer if they think they can use him against the Congress. It’s no surprise that some politicians including BJP president Nitin Gadkari and NDA convener Sharad Yadav shared dais with Ramdev at the Ramlila Grounds on August 13, but none turned up as he broke his fast at the Ambedkar Stadium on August 14 with his supporters. Baba Ramdev’s protest at the Ramlila Grounds last year saw him hiding behind his supporters and trying to escape from the venue dressed as a woman. This time in his march from the Ramlila Grounds to Parliament he did not lead from the front but was again surrounded by his supporters, many of them women and children.
TV cameras can addle the brains of many intelligent human beings, including anchors who think the entire country is watching their news show, so why blame Baba Ramdev or Team Anna for their behaviour. Anna Hazare is a good man, has impeccable reputation and a formidable record of public service, but he got carried away by his popularity and the attention he was receiving and started confronting the entire political fraternity with threats and took public support for granted. Mr Hazare was not defeated by the political parties but by the lack of public response to his coercive tactics. The yoga guru will meet a similar fate, though we may never find out the true colour of his money — white or black?
Corruption is a grave issue, and now we have the CAG reports on coal block auction, the Delhi Airport modernisation project and the super thermal power projects. The reports are already generating a great deal of turmoil, with Parliament being adjourned on Tuesday. The coal scam has already created a stir as coal is one item the aam aadmi understands. This is not an easy situation to wriggle out of but the UPA has time to plan its strategy. The ruling coalition’s strategy in the 2G scam did not work — it went into the past decade, dragging the Opposition into the decisions taken, but none of this absolved former telecom minister A. Raja and his associates.
The Congress has indicated major mid-term surgery in September, which includes the induction of Rahul Gandhi in the government, while in the BJP strong chief ministers in the states continue to create confusion, which may cause the party multiple headaches both in Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat Assembly elections due in December 2012.
We can expect the campaign for the Gujarat election to intensify September onwards. This will be the decisive battle which will not only give away the trends for the Assembly elections to follow in 2013 but also give a clear picture to both the Congress and the BJP about where they stand with regard to the Big Battle 2014.
In a scenario where anyone close to 150 seats will form the next government, I see the Congress and the BJP at an advantage over the numbers the regional parties are likely to get. I think the mistake both the parties can make will be to try for 200-plus seats, since neither party has the capacity to achieve this. The regional parties, which seemed strong till now, are showing signs of weakness and may not be in a position to make any further gains with the exception of the AIADMK in Tamil Nadu and the YSR Congress and Telangana Rashtra Samithi in Andhra Pradesh.
Uttar Pradesh with its 80 Lok Sabha seats may well throw up a change, though I do not see the Samajwadi Party extending its gains. The Bahujan Samaj Party, the BJP and the Congress can all gain, and even the Rashtriya Lok Dal will align with either the Congress or the BJP, depending on the ground situation around elections.
Mulayam Singh Yadav looks tired and is unable to handle the situation as the SP government headed by his son Akhilesh Yadav finds itself in the middle a credibility crisis due to poor law and order in the state. Yadav Jr. has a pleasant disposition but it takes more than that to run India’s largest state. He must realise that credibility, once lost, is difficult to reclaim, and that neither strong-arm tactics nor strongmen at the district level can guarantee electoral success.
Election is round the corner, and at such time political parties try to cultivate the media. A handful of media establishments, both electronic and print, will lean towards one or the other party both at the Centre and in the states. This happens everywhere in the world. The reasons may be ideological or related to business interest, or that some media honchos are eyeing a political career. Every party will have lawyers, chartered accountants, film actors and media personalities queuing up to enter either the Lok Sabha or the Rajya Sabha. But when people who control “opinions” lean towards a leader or a political party for personal gains, it is a sad day for democracy.

The writer is a former Union minister