 "Prithviraj Chavan")
Former Maharashtra chief minister and Congress leader Prithviraj Chavan tells Aditi Phadnis that the Narendra Modi-led government at the Centre needs to show more generosity and have a more accommodating attitude, otherwise, it will lose ground as it is doing in Maharashtra.
You took part in a march to the Rashtrapati Bhavan to tell the President that you were concerned about the degree of intolerance and alienation prevailing in India. Why are people angry?
When communal riots took place in Gujarat in the aftermath of the Godhra train burning incident, then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee spoke up and reminded the Gujarat chief minister (Narendra Modi) of his responsibilities. The party in power at the Centre now is the same (as it was back then), but the PM is silent. Intellectuals and Left-leaning liberals were also angry because of the Godhra riots, but they never blamed Vajpayee. The PM's intervention then actually soothed tempers.
Now the very people, who make objectionable remarks about communities and religions, are sitting next to the PM - at public meetings, Cabinet meetings… So is there tacit support at the highest level for remarks of this kind?
After the Godhra episode, at the highest level, it was said, "Let's teach them a lesson". The government was willing to look the other way. We are getting the same feeling today, whether it is with the Cabinet ministers or the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.
There is another problem. Chief ministers in several Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled states are political lightweights. There is a degree of centralisation that brooks no dissent, leaves no room for different opinions. The country's attention is being diverted by nonsensical issues such as the raid on the Himachal Pradesh chief minister and attacks on the Congress president's family. This is an all-powerful government with a full majority in the Lok Sabha. (But) the government has found nothing against anyone so far.
How do you see the Maharashtra urban body elections panning out?
The BJP government in Maharashtra is rattled. Polls in the state have not been as much in their favour as they had wanted them to be. Fights within the party and with alliance partner Shiv Sena do not augur well for the state.
Consider the results. The BJP has not won a single seat in the areas where Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and the Union Roads Minister Nitin Gadkari have their strongholds. In two major municipal corporations, the BJP was not able to win a single seat - the Congress got the chance to elect the mayor in one municipal corporation and the Shiv Sena in the other. The extent to which the CM and the Sena have locked horns does not bode well for political stability in the state. My prediction is, closer to the Mumbai municipal elections due in 2018, you will see a major falling out between the alliance partners - because he who controls Mumbai controls Maharashtra. At that point, other permutations and combinations could be tried out.
What are the real challenges in Maharashtra?
The only challenge is to get the government to start working! The impression is that the drought is over. But the bigger crisis is farm produce prices - of cotton, rice, soya bean, sugar cane, milk…
The strategy seems to be, keep prices low so that consumers are happy, and to hell with the farmers. Pulses are an aberration - the crisis brought about by their high prices is due to complete mismanagement and the government's inability to check manipulation of the commodity markets: it did not import pulses at the right time and allowed traders to benefit hugely by removing in 2015 the stockholding limits that the Congress government had introduced in 2008. Since there were no stockholding limits, traders bought up stocks and just kept them. The government claims it has busted underground stocks amounting to 78,000 tonnes. We are asking it to make public how much of this was seized from where… the names should be made public.
The point is, in order to keep the consumer happy, the policy on farm sector produce has become arbitrary. Whatever happened to the BJP's poll promise that procurement prices of agri-commodities would be 50 per cent more than the cost of their production?
Maharashtra is facing a financial crisis…
The abolition of the local body tax for traders with a turnover of more than Rs 50 crore and the cancellation of toll tax at more than 60 locations have depleted the treasury. The revenue shortfall could be as much as Rs 7,000 crore. Add to this the Rs 10,000-crore road toll hit that the government will have to take… Money will have to be found to compensate for this loss. This is why the government is hoping the Goods and Services Tax bill is cleared by Parliament and comes into force from April 2016 as promised… otherwise it won't be able to balance its books.
What is your party's position on the goods and services tax (GST) now?
We are committed to the GST, provided the issues we have raised are addressed, including the one on one per cent additional levy.
What do you think will be the outcome of the Bihar Assembly polls, which got over recently?
The way I look at it, the government and the Hindu outfits alike are waiting to see how many small intolerances India is willing to bear. They are pushing the envelope on various issues: for instance, the Sanatan Sanstha, two members of which are suspected to have killed rationalists M M Kalburgi and Narendra Pansare. In April 2011, I had given the central government all the evidence about the group and the reasons why it should be banned. I had found that it had links with three blasts - in Malegaon, Madgaon and Panvel. The government wanted more evidence.
Then, two members of the group were arrested. One Samir Gaikwad was arrested in connection with the murder of Pansare and Rudra Patil was found murdered after the police found some connection between him and the killing of Kalburgi. What is the hitch? Why isn't the government taking action?
So whether the BJP wins the Bihar elections or loses them, things are quite clear in my mind: the nation is facing a serious loss of image. If the BJP loses the elections, that will signal the end of Modi magic, which could send the party into overdrive to compensate for the defeat. On the other hand, if it wins, the party will continue making objectionable statements at rallies... Either way, it is bad for the country. Ten per cent growth in these circumstances seems a mirage although the objective conditions are in our favour and could have got us there. That is the tragedy.
