A HISTORIC MEETING - Zardari’s Ajmer trip helped both the PPP and the Congress Cutting Corners - Ashok Mitra

A HISTORIC MEETING  - Zardari's Ajmer trip helped both the PPP and the Congress

Cutting Corners - Ashok Mitra http://www.telegraphindia.com/1120420/jsp/opinion/story_15396901.jsp#.T5F2k7Na5vY

It could be interpreted as black humour. That though was far from the intention of the show's sponsors. When the prime minister of India and the president of Pakistan were closeted in New Delhi during the former's recent day's visit to Moinuddin Chishti's shrine at Ajmer, the heirs-apparent of the two countries had a session of their own. One of them is chairperson of Pakistan's ruling party because he is his mother's son. The other is general-secretary of India's ruling party because his mother has put him in that position. Both these parties are currently experiencing an acute crisis of existence. That precisely might have been the reason for arranging the chummy get-together of the babalog. The principle at work was something like the following: shipwrecked of the world, unite, you have nothing to lose but your sinking ships. The Pakistan People's Party is in a state of siege. The Taliban have infiltrated deeply into the country's armed and security forces as well as the minds of a substantial section of the populace. This turn of events has peeved no end Pakistan's bread-and-butter-giver cum arms supplier, the United States of America. Angry American diplomats are breathing down the neck of the PPP leadership, demanding immediate measures to reverse the developments, otherwise they will be forced — the hint has been freely dropped — to take the extreme step, meaning they will render Pakistan into another Iraq or Afghanistan. Asif Ali Zardari's — and the PPP's — troubles do not quite end here. Pakistan's supreme court has a bee in its bonnet. It thinks it has enough evidence of diverse financial skulduggeries at the expense of the national exchequer perpetrated by the country's president, and wants the PPP government to launch criminal proceedings against Zardari. That would be patricide; naturally the PPP prime minister is dilly-dallying on the matter and thereby further infuriating the highest judiciary. Equally disturbing is the rapidity with which the PPP has been losing its influence among the rising generation of the liberal intelligentsia, which had earlier sympathized with Benazir Bhutto's party in the belief that it had the potential to put together a viable democratic alternative to Pervez Musharraf's oppressive military regime. Musharraf is gone. All illusions about the PPP are however spent, the liberal crowd is increasingly veering towards the country's debonair and articulate cricket legend who speaks a reassuringly modern lingo. Imran Khan's political antecedents are not exactly convincing, the proposed reforms he alludes to remain beautifully vague. He is nonetheless being preferred to the crooked characters adorning the PPP. The ruling party at the helm of Pakistan's shaky democracy is labouring to break out of the awkward corner its own misdoings have pushed it into. To dispense with Benazir Bhutto's family will be to forfeit the party's raison d'être; the agenda instead is to build afresh around the family. The day's outing to India provided both a divertissement and an opportunity. It was a tremendous public relations exercise. Scripting Benazir's son to accompany his father on the trip — in fact a masterstroke — helped to lift the image of Pakistan and its ruling party in the international sphere, and in turn had positive effects in the domestic arena. The point was not how seriously India took Zardari Junior's inclusion in the presidential entourage and an exclusive session for the kid with Jawaharlal Nehru's great grandson, who is also India's prime minister presumptive. What was important was that this cosy one-on-one encounter duly impressed the watchers back in Pakistan. Does it not indicate that neither the Pakistan regime nor the PPP is a squeezed lemon? See with what deference our mortal enemies — India and the Indian authorities — receive our leaders, senior and junior; they even thought it wise to accord the young PPP chairperson the honour of a tête-à-tête session with India's future prime minister so that they could discuss together the grave issues facing their two nations and the world. For ruling circles in New Delhi and the Congress, the compulsions were nearly similar. It is proving to be an excruciatingly long dog day afternoon for them. Anna Hazare types on the rampage, the 2G spectrum scam coupled with the Commonwealth Games thievery, decimation of the major coalition partner, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, in its home base, the daily blackmail indulged in by the other major coalition partner and its impossible leader, the knock-out in Uttar Pradesh, frequent pressure tactics applied by such other notional allies as Sharad Pawar, the growing mess in Andhra Pradesh, the embarrassment of uninterruptedly rising prices, the faux pas over the poverty line, inability to discipline the impertinent army chief, farmers' suicide and the unabated agrarian crisis, question marks over industrial and infrastructural growth, declining exports, the whimsicalities of hot money movements, the falling rupee, and, topping all, the iffiness in the outcome of the impending presidential poll and its possible fall-out. In this bluest of the blue period, the Zardari visit was an excellent piece of diversion for the Indian establishment too. It provided a marvellous occasion to demonstrate how the statesmanship of our prime minister allows him to be both stern and kind-hearted. In addition, it allowed an opportunity for some crucially needed refurbishing of image of prominent political personages as well. For one, the occasion could be put to use to stem the threatened fading of the glitter of the heir-apparent's persona. He has made a fool of himself in the UP poll. In total charge of the Congress campaign, he had unlimited resources at his disposal, the media gave him saturation coverage, he raved and ranted at meeting after meeting and rally after rally, he hectored and bullied, he was thought to have won over the Dalits, the minorities were supposed to be Congress pocket borough from now on because of the spell he had cast over them, he had, it was claimed, won over important slices of the other backward classes vote, the upper castes were reported to have decided to detach themselves from the Bharatiya Janata Party and hail him as their new saviour, he kept referring to the other parties and their programmes in the most pejorative terms, his every demeanour was to proclaim his non pareil status. The Congress is in a state of shock ever since the votes were counted in the first week of March. Contrary to their make-believe assumptions, few people, it is now revealed, are enamoured of the heir apparent in UP — neither the minorities nor the Dalits, neither the OBCs nor the upper castes, neither the youth nor old grannies. Another instance of unchanging India, the reality bite is of no consequence. The party cannot do without the dynasty. Notwithstanding objective reality, it can, the party is convinced, survive — and survive in power — as long the dynasty survives. So, come what may, the royal family must not be permitted to lose its halo. Others may abide the question, it will not. Despite the disaster in UP, the heir apparent continues to be in overall charge of the party's affairs in that state, everyone else could be blamed for the great defeat, not he. There is actually a demand within party circles to invest him with even greater powers than what he has enjoyed till now, some are even pleading that no further ado, he must be immediately installed as prime minister. Nothing succeeds like failure. But there is a problem, which is best appreciated by citing the case of an episode that happened in the US half a century ago. Market research had perhaps gone wrong, the automobile industry flooded the market with a new crop of cars featuring the latest innovation, extraordinarily large tail fins. Buyers disliked the outlandish tail fins. Sales dropped, inventory piled up, a crisis appeared to grip the automobile business, which soon snowballed into a mini-recession in the economy. The sales pitch wailed by a retail car dealer said it all, "You don't like tailfins, I don't like tailfins, but, god damn you, what will happen to the American economy if nobody likes tailfins?" It is an analogous situation. What will happen to India's royal family — and Congress rule — if nobody likes the heir apparent? A major enterprise is therefore on to present a new, post UP poll edition of the young prince. Every little bit helps. The exclusive session with the just-out-of-his-teens Bhutto scion is pucca evidence: never mind the domestic scoffers, foreign quarters treat our heir apparent as a serious quantity. Is it also not confirmation of the versatile personality of our Prince Charming: he takes to foreign affairs as well as a duck takes to water?