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The soft option it is

As the lady herself will acknowledge, I seldom agree with Varsha Bhosle. And that, I think she might also acknowledge, is a good thing. But in her most recent outbursts against the dear man who is our PM, I couldn't agree more. I might have used words other than hers -- "I did not ask for a weak, groveling, pathetic slug of a PM" -- but of this much I am surer every day: This man Vajpayee is the worst PM India has ever had.

To each crisis he has been faced with, each crime he has had to deal with, this man has responded with the same ineffective nonsense: Pray, quote poetry, fast in atonement, call for debate, postpone, on and on. Everything, except the swift and decisive action we expect from a leader of a nation. Vajpayee seems to believe governing means merely sitting in his office, walking past guards of honour, greeting the foreign leaders who stop by on their way here and there. He does not comprehend that he was elected to address the real problems real Indians face daily in a real India.

But having agreed with VB on so much, I have to say this: It didn't need the recent negotiations with militants and the Amarnath tragedy -- the events that seem to have pushed VB to her disgust with Vajpayee -- to know that this man is our worst PM. For I knew VB would feel this way today well before Vajpayee ever came to power. I don't say this to show off, or to prove I am some clairvoyant superman. Because it gives me no pleasure at all. In fact it is deeply depressing. But to me it was always abundantly clear. The signs were there: This man and his party knew nothing about and cared nothing for governing India. They were, like all the other politicians we are blighted with, mere lusters after power. They found a way to get there. That's all.

Let me explain. The signs I am talking about are many and I will get to some of them. But the first was actually rather simple: The demolition of a certain mosque in 1992. No man, no party, that rides to power on the back of a campaign to demolish a mosque is going to be a success at governing India. Of course, I believe such a party did not even deserve a chance to govern India. Many others did not either. But many others did, and precisely because of that campaign. Given the disillusionment people like VB feel with Vajpayee today, it is tempting to say, we told you so. But I won't.

More seriously. You cannot govern this country by turning some Indians against some other Indians. By drumming up hatreds between Indians. The lesson from the countries that have tried that route is clear: Nazi Germany, Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia and a host of others descended into murder and destruction. No, we never got as far down the hellhole as those countries did. But we have had our share of riots and massacres and bomb blasts.

Merely winking at all the mayhem their campaign set off, as Vajpayee and his party have always done, makes a poor resume for the job of running the country; especially when the resume begins with "mosque demolished" anyway.

Other signs. Vajpayee's own party never quite won enough parliamentary seats to claim power by itself. So to actually make that final leap into the PM's chair, whether in '96, '98 or '99, Vajpayee has had to ask for support from a glittering galaxy of Indian shame: Jayalalitha, Sukh Ram, Thackeray, Paswan, Mayawati, Sharad Yadav, Bansi Lal, Bhajan Lal, need I go on? And I haven't even mentioned the specimens from Vajpayee's own party.

Nearly every symbol of Indian corruption and thuggery has made appearances in his coalition and Vajpayee had not a single qualm about using their support to reach and stay in power. Oh yes, we hear all kinds of rationalisations, but the truth was what we found: When you stand on the shoulders of criminals, you do not punish criminals. Simple. And forget about the more mundane business of governing. It hardly interests criminals.

This is the explanation for Vajpayee's poetry and fasts and such other tripe. For quite apart from his own weaknesses, his ability to govern effectively is utterly undermined by the people he governs with. He is left with no choice -- or thinks he has no choice -- but to wring his hands in bewildered sorrow. Unfortunately, that is a poor substitute for leadership.

VB quotes KPS Gill saying: "There are no soft options left for India. Those who seek to bleed this country must themselves be made to bleed ... the Indian state will not allow terror and intimidation to succeed, whatever the costs." Truer words there couldn't be. Yet while KPS and VB refer to the terrorists on our border, here is a thought for them: The reason that particular terror is succeeding is because we have never cared to stamp on it when it happens here, among us all. Because those who bleed India the most are our own very homegrown Indians.

For yes, terrorists killed a hundred Amarnath pilgrims and yes, by god, whoever that god is, they must pay.

But 3000 Indians were massacred in Delhi in November 1984. Another 1500 Indians were slaughtered in Mumbai between December 1992 and March 1993. Many thousands more were injured, their homes and business destroyed. By any definition, what happened to these Indians was terrorism. But those responsible for these killings, those who instigated them, are not just unpunished. They are even part of governments -- Vajpayee's own included -- even hailed by vast sections among us as patriots. Their crimes are simply explained away, often as the highest form of nationalism or even somehow protective of religion. Not least by Vajpayee himself.

To me, it is clear as daylight: When you fudge over this kind of terrorism instead of punishing and ending it, there is no way you can stop what happened to those poor pilgrims. Because your own strength, your own ability to administer the law, is compromised. That is where Vajpayee has failed.

VB quotes KPS some more: "The war in Kashmir is not about the defence of Kashmir alone, it is about the defence and survival of India itself, of democracy and of the diverse and unique civilisation [we have in India]."

And she quotes Mani Shankar Aiyar, saying that Vajpayee has not realised "that nation-building is hard, solid, boring work." Truer words and all that, once more; and intimately related too.

The survival of India, our democracy, our unique civilisation -- that these things are in question today is hardly because of terrorists massed at our borders, whatever their numbers. We must worry about their survival most of all because of the mess that we have allowed to grow and fester inside. The criminals who have become the makers and administrators of our laws; the lip service we have paid to educating all Indians; the poor excuse for health care that millions of Indians must live with; the perversion of justice they must also live with; again, need I go on? When seven of every 10 Indians have no access to sanitation, what democracy and civilisation can flower?

Indeed, nation-building is hard, solid and boring work -- precisely because it consists of these mundane things. Every nation VB mentions in admiration for its stance towards terrorism -- Italy, the US, Israel -- has learned this lesson to one extent or another. They know that you fight terrorism not by mere posturing at the border, but by building a nation from the inside out, for all your citizens. That, too, is where Vajpayee has failed.

We all want India to be a powerful, confident country. A "hard" nation, some people like to say. But it is the soft option we and our governments have taken all along. That, by allowing the rise to great power and stature of Indian criminals. By ignoring the real problems so many Indians face daily, whether it is nonexistent drinking water or police brutality. By hailing garbage as progress: renaming things, pulling down mosques, chasing Shivaji's sword to London, installing statues.

It was Mani Shankar Aiyar's own Congress that had us trudging that soft, waffling path for so many years. That is a major reason the country turned to Vajpayee and his BJP. We wanted an alternative to Congress depravity.

But Vajpayee and gang have shown us that they will choose that same soft option too. Just as the Congress always did. Right from the moment a man called Advani got on a Toyota and told us it was a chariot.

Dilip D'Souza