Bharatiya Congress Party

Some months ago, I was chided by a journalist friend for my views on the Congress party being a family-run proprietorship with scant scope for healthy disagreement or independent opinion. As per him, my corporate upbringing should have helped me comprehend that “Gandhi” was a brand-name to fetch votes in much the same way as “Surf” is meant to garner revenues for Levers. It was suggested I was displaying naivet'e in trying to search for ideology in what was purely business. As all kinds of unholy alliances are being sewn in the run-up to the next elections, one important change is the voters ability to decipher that stated ideology is a mere electoral position and consequent indifference to peripheral issues when it comes to voting. With characteristic middle-class double standards, we will label Ajit Singh as a classic turncoat but shall have enormous respect for Chidambaram who has been finance minister for opposing regimes with no visible moral compunctions whatsoever. ( Incidentally Ajit Singh too is an IIT graduate with years in the U.S. computer industry to boot but his image managers lost the plot somewhere). Reality is that PC did not fare too badly under either regime thus reinforcing the belief that the 2 primary national parties which form the backbone of their respective alliances are cut from the same cloth after all.

Why then are the BJP and Congress not talking to each other about an alliance? For starters, both are “religious” parties- one survived with minority appeasement and the other grew thru majority appeal. (please note I refrained from use of contentious terms such as “secular”) They still lay claim to having the best political talent (albeit from a far from world-class pool). And save for a few purely electoral issues have an increasingly similar agenda on issues of national security & economic development , inarguably the most important items on hand in the immediate term.

Given constituency level realpolitik, such an alliance can be announced only after the polls but I believe there is a strong case in its favour for the following reasons:

1. The primary reason for the Congress "opposing" the BJP is that conventional wisdom prohibits #1 & #2 to tie-up. Ironically, it is the BJP's political relevance and not irreconcilable manifesto differences that makes it an opposition party (if they were a pidly 12-member party they would have been part of every government). Do the Left parties who have built their foundation opposing the Congress suddenly have more in common with them? Despite the overt LTTE connection, if the hatchet could be buried with DMK, is there a case for inflexible ideology anymore?

2. Given all-round economic uncertainty and the perilous internal security, we need a decisive government like never before. That can only happen if the ruling combination has 300-plus seats which is the raison d ‘etre for this combine anyway. It is imperative for certain firm policy decisions to be taken to their logical conclusion without an opposition that blocks any constructive activity for mere electoral visibility. Both the 2 large parties behave irresponsibly when pitted on opposite sides and hence it is best they play together. While this argument may appear undemocratic, too much of democracy does not seem to have helped anyone.

3. Executive and Judicial appointments will be made on greater grounds of merit which in turn will have a cascading effect on governance. Unlike today, it is less probable that the likes of either the outgoing CEC or his potential replacement will find their way into important constitutional posts on the strength of their overt political affiliations. There will still be some level of give-and-take but given automatic checks and balances, it is likely to be driven by considerations less petty than they currently are.

4. The country will be be spared the ignominy of being held to ransom by a set of petty power brokers (actually glorified p**** ) and their hangers on. With a narrow constituency to pander (and even narrower considerations to ride on) the presence of each one of these chieftains is regressive and this whole business of coalitions has been turned into a circus.


If I had the veto, my proposed arrangement would be:

The party with higher number of seats gets to nominate the Prime Minister and the electorally smaller party gets the Home or Finance portfolios. For sheer adeptness at political adhesiveness, my vote would have gone to Pranab Mukherjee for PM but my right-wing bias obstructs this vote.

Contentious issues such as Ayodhya, Article 370 etc should be kept in abeyance for the full 5-year term. Most of them are electoral issues that are not too relevant for governance anyway.


My choice of team would be- Manmohan Singh (Finance), Arun Jaitley (Home), Narendra Modi (Defence) , Kamal Nath (Commerce), Rahul Gandhi (External Affairs), Kapil Sibal (Law), Arun Shourie (Industry) and Pranab Mukherjee (Parliamentary Affairs). Alternative suggestions are welcome. (the conideration set has excluded people from non-Congress/BJP parties).


Who would be the leader of opposition then?? Speaker?? The prospects are interestingly endless. Of course, the treacherous issue around family hegemony remains.

Weighty Matters

On the 21st of this month, I am invited home for a do by somebody I meet 4 times a week but is a stranger of sorts. We speak each time we meet but know little about each other but for our names. As I pondered over this invite by a gym-mate, my thoughts went down memory lane on the myriad experiences in health clubs over the years.

I first stepped into a gym (actually an improvised "akhada") when I was 17- just into college, embarrassingly thin and painfully conscious of it. Situated in moffusil surroundings the club was frequented by neighbourhood toughies and serious bodybuilders. Given that I was from "out-of town" and bereft of local godfathers, this place was a messiah of sorts. Located right next to my college, my "buddies" (thanks to an inexplicable sense of fraternity most small-town gyms have) ensured I stayed out of trouble whenever anyone acted smart with me (or vice-versa). I may not have made any real friends here but I still have a deep sense of association with everyone I worked out with here thanks to a prevalent mindset of treating gym-mates as team members. As an aside, my physique remained unchanged after 3 years of serious pumping.

At B-school, the world was divided into two- those who lifted weights and nerds. That I belonged to the former category did not show! Bonding took a whole new meaning here and the "gang" would work out together and then hang out in the evenings as the studious biblophiles furthered their pursuit of academic glory. Contrary to popular perception though, few muscled men scored with the opposite sex. This however was cynically blamed on a B-school lady's obssessive (and new-found) desire to be seen as a thinking man's sex symbol (or in some cases an opportunistic alliance to secure grades!). Ironically, while most iron pumping blokes sought favour with the intellegentsia for notes, projects etc all year, there was an amusing role reversal in the months before job placements. Fitness experts used to be in sudden demand as there was an emergent belief that 2 years of rote would count for nothing in the face of a bulging waistline and smartly turned out duffers might steal the thunder. Attempts typically lasted for 7 1/2 days till futility dawned on both sides. End result- my physique still remained unchanged but I must say more folks from this gang are likely to attend my funeral than any other sub-group I have been part of. I made friends for life.

Work took me to another small town in Gujarat, a state not particularly known for its passion for fitness (even among the millions who migrate to the U.S.) I had hoped to trade fitness tips for stock market advice but I soon discovered gyms in Gujarat were frequented by only 2 kinds of people- the terribly lonely and outsiders. The former ensured I had convenient supply of beer in the dry state but I had to occasionally pretend to be interested in local gossip during sessions (which invariably revolved excessively around promiscuity). I (finally) managed to develop some muscle tone though I fervently hoped I would get to visit a new gym soon.

For the next several years, I stayed off a fitness regimen. It can be greatly blamed on my years in South India where I felt like Schwarzenegger in most night clubs anyway and hence remained deprived of any motivation to lift weights. My strength levels dipped considerably though I started getting bigger. A much awaited shift to Delhi ensured one was back where one loved to be only to realize one had been caught in a time warp as far as gym-buddies went.

Gone are the days of doing the bench-press together in alternate sets as is the post workout drink. (even though the bar is a flight of stairs away). Locker rooms provide for enormous amounts of conversation but they revolve around politics, cinema, food and sometimes vacations. Anything that is generic and impersonal goes. A few well-known personalities who hit the treadmill suffer a bit more. They are relegated to worse levels of loneliness as nobody wishes to be seen as a wannabe "sucking up" to them. Sometimes I see a set of people disappear to the bar together but it is invariably a bureaucrat-businessman combination . More on that another day.

While I can't say I have been complaining about the state of affairs in my current gym, the "boy" in me is looking forward excitedly to this forthcoming do. Looking forward to drinking with people one works out with as one has done for over a decade now and hoping to add to the list of people one can eventually count as "friends". Guess this is a queer and slightly unique sense of bonding and only those who have experienced it can empathize with it. I am tempted to suggest this is a "male-only" phenomenon but then do I run the risk of raising feminist hackles ? Or maybe I am downright off the mark on that count.