ELECTION 99
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'Hegde wanted Deve Gowda destroyed'

Do you expect problems in the economic front also because of an imminent increase in the defence expenditure?

Yes, it is a disadvantage to the Vajpayee government that an enormous amount of money would have to be spent on defence. Yes, it will affect the economy. It will prevent the government from giving subsidies to the farm sector and many such areas. And it will lead to inflation. It will lead to higher taxes. They may be called differently, still the people will be taxed.

So you don't see a bright economic scenario for India, at least in the near future.

Well, because of this, there may be some surge also. Production may go up. Still people want everything subsidised; people want everything at a low price. They compare today's prices with the prices that prevailed 10 years back. Thank God, they don't compare it to the prices during the British rule and say that that was better!

About subsidies. How can we do away with subsidies when we have so many poor people in the country?

I do not say that we should not have subsidies. We should have. For example, the public distributing system. It has never been streamlined. It was treated shabbily by all the governments. First of all, it should be corruption-free.

And, it should be available only to the poor.

Yes, only to the poor. People who are well-off should not have access to it at all. Apart from that, even a country like the United States has subsidies and it has tariff systems too to protect its own products as against competition from elsewhere. So we should not also hesitate to apply these economic techniques here in our country. Wherever our industry needs protection, wherever our agriculture produce needs protection, the government must be prepared to enforce a tariff on what is brought from elsewhere. But we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that we can no longer be in isolation. It must be globalisation but with eyes open. You must keep your eyes open to see what is happening elsewhere and see what is necessary here.

About the military coup in Pakistan. Do you think India and China will come together now? Or, will George Fernandes again label China as our number one enemy?

No, I don't think that China would be very helpful to India in this matter, unless the threat of Islamic fundamentalism reaches there. They also have it but in a very small measure. If they feel it has to be nipped in the bud, they may perhaps co-operate.

Let us go back to the drubbing of the Congress in the election. Is it because Sonia Gandhi's charisma did not work that the Congress lost heavily? Or is it because they did not realise the importance of coalition partners?

It is obvious that the Congress is not strong enough to win elections on its own in various parts of the country. The charisma of Sonia Gandhi, if there was one, is not enough to win votes. It was enough to draw crowds but not to win votes.

Why do people come in large numbers to her meetings?

That is just curiosity. I think people consider election-time as festival time. During the festival, you go and enjoy yourself. You see the illumination, you see the crackers bursting, you see people assembling. So, you also join the tamasha. During the temple festivals, all kinds of people come to the temple but not all of them are driven by bhakti. Some of them will be real devotees. Some of them come to do some shopping. Some of them come to eat sweets. Some of them come to see balloons flying all over. That kind of an atmosphere prevails in an election too. A part of the crowd is your supporter but a considerable section of it goes to watch the fun and enjoy.

But then why was it that only her meetings were well attended and not the BJP's?

She is coming out in a big way only now. Others have been seen earlier too. So the curiosity factor does not work with the others. Well, when film actress Vijayashanthi went to Bellary, the crowd was unmanageable! She drew better crowds than Sonia Gandhi! Jayalalitha drew good crowds here. Good crowds do not ensure heavy voting in your favour.

What went against Sonia Gandhi, her foreignness or lack of experience?

I don't think the foreigner issue worked in the minds of people at all. Ultimately the election, in my opinion, came to one thing in the minds of the voter: who should be the prime minister, Vajpayee or Sonia Gandhi. I think many of them decided that it was Vajpayee who deserved to be the PM again rather than Sonia Gandhi about whom very little is known.

See, she is still not known in the country. That is her very big disadvantage. Maybe when she is known, that may become even bigger disadvantage, I do not know! Not being known may be the reason why she won 112 seats. If she is known and understood, she may get even lesser votes! I don't know. What do we know about Sonia? What do we know about her intentions? What do we know about her capacity and talent? Nothing is known about her except that the Congressmen fall at her feet!

From the way Priyanka campaigned in Bellary and Amethi, do you expect her to come into active politics soon?

I do not know what the family is going to decide. But she perhaps takes to politics better than Sonia Gandhi herself. But I do not know what the intentions of the family are. Whom does Sonia want to anoint, Priyanka or Rahul Gandhi, I do not know.

After Priyanka campaigned against Arun Nehru in Rae Barelli, some political analysts wrote that they saw a kind of ruthlessness which was there in Indira Gandhi in Priyanka too.

It was not ruthlessness, it was arrogance. Do not glorify it. When you say ruthless, you are glorifying. She was almost saying that nobody else except somebody from the Indira Gandhi family had a right to enter the place. No, that is not the type of comment one would like to see from people who are trying to emerge as politicians in this country.

All the senior leaders in the Congress are resigning one by one, accepting moral responsibility for the defeat -- except of course Sonia Gandhi. Nobody dares ask for her resignation.

Maybe they thought by doing that, they may force Sonia Gandhi also to accept responsibility. She accepts it but did not resign!

Will the Congressmen accept anybody other than a Gandhi as the Congress leader in the near future?

Sharad Pawar would have made a better leader for the Congress.

Everyone calls the Vajpayee Cabinet a jumbo cabinet. Do you call it a jumbo cabinet or a well-represented one?

The size of the Cabinet is inevitable because of the number of parties, which are participating in the government. You call it jumbo, you call it airbus, you call it anything. But we have seen a small assembly in Meghalaya where the ruling party has 50 MLAs and among them 37 are ministers! This is much better than that.

We saw both Chandrababu Naidu and Karunanidhi apologising and explaining at length to the minorities during the election why they chose to align with the BJP. After the election, both claimed that they have not lost the minorities votes.

They have lost the minority votes in the election. But it may come back to them later. Here the minorities have a tendency to be with the winning side as a group because that assures them that their demands would be met. Now that they have seen that the side, which they opposed has won, they may shift their allegiance. Karunandhi said he would act as a bridge between the minorities and the BJP and thus it may come true. But I think in the elections, both Karunanidhi and Naidu suffered huge big dents in their minority vote. I wouldn't say it was lost in the entirety.

Do you think the minorities will feel unsafe with them now?

The minorities will definitely feel safe with Karunanidhi. But they were angry with him. They did not disbelieve him. That is why they voted against him. Now they will come back to him. That's what I feel.

Chandrababu Naidu hesitated a lot but ultimately he saw that he might not be able to contain the Congress all by himself. The post Kargil situation in his opinion made the BJP a good vote-puller in his state. It is pure political arithmetic.

Murasoli Maran is talking about the coming together of all the Dravidian parties. Do you think it will happen?

In my opinion that is not going to happen. It will be very difficult.

Jayalalitha has enemies both at the Centre and in the state. What will happen to her now?

She is not totally destroyed, politically. What happens to her will depend on two things. One, the court cases. Two, what Vajpayee does there and what Karunanidhi does here. If they become unpopular, naturally Jayalalitha will be resurrected. On the other hand, if they manage the state and the Centre well between them, she will go down still further. So it will depend on the others and not on her. Now she cannot do anything by herself to get resurrected.

Even after toppling the Vajpayee government and even with so many court cases against her, she still managed to win 10 seats. What makes people vote for her? Is it the Two Leaves symbol?

It is the Two Leaves symbol and then the Congress managed to get much of the TMC votes for the alliance. That was because the TMC was seen as a vote-splitter and not seen as a serious contender. So many of the TMC voters deserted the party and went to the Congress which in turn went to the AIADMK also. But her alliance has not won any single seat with a majority of more than 48,000 votes. About 3 or 4 of them were won with a margin of less than 10,000 votes. It shows she has just managed to scrape through and the minority votes, in anger against Karunanidhi, went to her. These factors helped her to perform fairly.

Did Moopanar's move to align himself with Dalit organisations like the Dalit Panthers and Puthiya Thamizhakam affect his vote bank?

I don't think that was what mattered ultimately. His party was seen as a vote-splitter. People do not vote for a party, which does not create the illusion of performing well. The voters did not take the TMC seriously.

Every newspaper, every political analyst wrote that Ramakrishna Hegde was making a wrong move by aligning with an unpopular CM like J H Patel. What do you think made Hegde take such a decision?

Hegde was consumed by his anger against Deve Gowda. He wanted Deve Gowda destroyed. For that, he had to split the JD. If he had to split the JD, he would have to accommodate them in the Lok Shakti. That is what he did.

He was prepared to pay any price to get Deve Gowda destroyed because Deve Gowda had treated him very shabbily earlier. It was the personal feud between him and Deve Gowda, which resulted in all this.

In the process, he destroyed himself too.

I would again say that he is not destroyed. How can anyone say that he is destroyed? In politics, nobody is destroyed that easily.

But where is he now?

You see, politics is a race. In a race, you do not win by your own speed alone. You win because of the lack of speed and efficiency in the others. That may happen and work to your advantage. Somebody faltering, somebody not achieving the required speed, somebody making some other mistake that disqualifies him will make you the winner. Things could develop at a fashion, which would resurrect Hegde also. After all, he continues as the Rajya Sabha member. Even now he will have his say in the issues affecting the nation. The BJP may soon understand that it will be wise to accommodate him in some other position, if not in the Cabinet.

What could have been the reason why Vajpayee omitted Hegde?

They had to accommodate too many people from the JD-U. They already have five Cabinet ministers and two or three ministers of state.

But why did the axe fall on Hegde?

Because the others performed so well in Bihar. The assembly elections are coming and you have to keep them with you.

What was the best and worst parts of Election 99, according to you?

The best part is that it is over. The worst part is that it ever happened at all, that election became necessary at all.

EARLIER INTERVIEW:
'The issue before the voter is: who is going to be the PM?'

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