Thursday, February 4, 2010

The rot in Maharashtra By Pratap Bhanu Mehta - The Indian Express, Mumbai

 
 

The rot in Maharashtra


Pratap Bhanu MehtaTags : pratapbhanumehta, column
Posted: Friday , Feb 05, 2010 at 0104 hrs


Although there is growing opposition to the abominable grandstanding of the Shiv Sena on everything from the rights of migrants to Shah Rukh Khan, we are still not grasping the depth of the crisis we face. The crisis has several dimensions. Machiavelli once said, in his own inimitable way, that we should esteem a man who is liberal, not a man who decides to be so. Part of the difficulty is that the odour of opportunism vitiates the credibility of the opposition to Shiv Sena. The BJP has helped nurture the monster it is now trying to free itself from. The Congress has consistently been pusillanimous in confronting, if not complicit in, so much of the Sena’s rhetoric. And the NCP is, at one level, even more insidious than the Sena. Its style of political equivocation blocks
any effective action against the Sena’s agenda.
These trends also represent a profoundly deep crisis in Maharashtra politics. At one level, Maharashtra should have been a beacon of progressivism. It has dynamism, talent, extraordinary economic advantages. But to put it somewhat gracelessly, Maharashtra politics has become an ominous combination of crony capitalism and nativism. The two may be related. We often think of Maharashtra politicians, from Sharad Pawar to Shinde to the Thackerays as, in a sense, organic products of different social constituencies in the state. This may have been true at some point. But at this juncture they are all grasping at political straws. And this is so for a particular reason. Most political parties and their leaderships in Maharashtra now derive their power not from social forces, but from their ability to create a state-business nexus. Their power to mobilise political funds is immense, and most of them are focused largely on occupying that perch. Maharashtra has consistently had mediocre state governments at best, a fact disguised by the immense advantages of the state.
Pawar, once a politician of considerable promise, has proved to be one of the biggest spoilers in modern Indian politics. The Congress’s stewardship of the state wrecked a lot of the capacity in the state. And you have to wonder if it is any accident that the two most moribund ministries at the Centre are agriculture and power. In short, the political game in Maharashtra is leveraging the state for creating immense networks of power, wealth and influence, not imaginative governance.
In such circumstances, politicians are floundering for electoral platforms. The Sena at least had an ideology. The rest are in a precarious position. They do not have the confidence of performance or a social base. So in the face of the Sena upping the ideological ante, they stand paralysed. Their refusal to consistently take on the Sena is a tacit acknowledgement of their own complicity and weakness. Some appeal to nativism to disguise their sheer opportunism. Others are unable to resist it because their own track records don’t give them a leg to stand on. So there is nothing to break the default equilibrium of politics in the state.
The second dimension of this crisis is the blot it represents on our freedoms. We tend to see each episode of Sena mania in isolation: sometimes it is taxi drivers, sometimes Shah Rukh Khan. The Sena may be a weakening electoral force. But the price it extracts on our freedoms is immense. Its power to curtail discourse is extraordinary. What kind of a democracy will we be, if historians cannot freely write books on Shivaji? What does the tearing down of Shah Rukh Khan posters, the attempt to muzzle his voice, the intimidation of movie hall owners, not to mention the beating up of taxi drivers, represent? It is an attempt to subvert democracy in the most insidious way: intimidate public discourse. To be fair, the Sena is not alone in doing this; we have excused in several state governments similar attempts to muzzle public discourse.
The third dimension of the crisis is social. Elites set standards in any society. And the extraordinary social respectability, if not downright obsequiousness, with which the Sena leadership has been treated over the years has sent out the wrong message twice over. It has legitimised the illegitimate, and it has probably led people to overestimate the Sena’s power. Power is always odd, in that you have it if other people think you have it. The minute others stop believing it dissipates. We have let the Sena get away with this illusion by not standing up to it. No single political group or powerful social force in Maharashtra wanted to call the Sena’s bluff. It makes you wonder how many of us are liberals by conviction or how many are deciding to be so.
The final aspect of this crisis is the breakdown of state institutions. Banning books and publications is almost never a good idea, but in the context of Maharashtra one question needs to be asked. This is a state that bans books with dangerous alacrity, even books of genuine scholarship. Why the double standards when it comes to publications promoting enmity? The issue is not bans, the issue is the impartiality of the state. Second, the state cannot be trusted to provide even standard protections that ordinary citizens deserve, like being protected from intimidation. In such circumstances, small groups can have disproportionate effects in creating a climate of fear.
The Sena’s hold on the popular imagination is exaggerated. It is a consequence, not a cause, of our inability to stand up to it. Liberal values are seldom subverted because of the strength of popular opinion against them. They are subverted because well-meaning people in positions of power equivocate. And elements of discourse elsewhere legitimise what the Sena is doing: targeting artists and writers has been staple sport in states ranging from West Bengal to Gujarat. The drive towards creating a nativist identity is a temptation in many states that have nothing else to go on. Expressing local and vernacular identity is one thing. Converting it into small-mindedness quite another. The very innocent move towards renaming cities and states has not been a harbinger of cultural expression; it has rather been a signifier of shrinking horizons.
The good news is that sociological trends suggest that most citizens are rejecting nativism; they want access to a wider world, whether it is through language or mobility. But it has not stopped politicians from playing that card. Maharashtra
is important not because the Thackerays can break India. They cannot. But it is important because its politics can be one possible future for India, an India where liberal values are in jeopardy.

The writer is president, Centre for Policy Research, Delhi

Vitol - Masefield AG - Sonia Gandhi $16.8 m

http://74.125.153.132/search?q=cache:3BJhf5KJrvkJ:intellibriefs.blogspot.com/2005_11_06_archive.html+The+Indian+Fraternity+Forum,+Doha+Qatar+%2B+Hasan+Chogle&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=in



NOVEMBER 11, 2005

Vitol - Masefield AG - Sonia Gandhi $16.8 m

Oil or grease? Vitol - Masefield AG - Sonia Gandhi (one million barrels $16.8 m)
Here are the key contact details for Vitol. In the chart appended to the Deccan Chronicle report (Nov. 12, 2005), Volcker report cites the LCs assigned by BNP Paribas SA for each oil lift, and information sourcd through SECO.



Volcker report Table 4 notes two contracts and two LCs.


1. Contract No. M/10/57 (LC N 731924); and Table 3 provides details of Non-contractual beneficiaries. On this LC, VOlcker report claims Masefild AG lifted oil against contract M/10/57 for a non-contractual beneiciaty it claims was the CONGRESS.
2. Contract No. M/09/54 (LC D726806); and Table 3 of Volcker Report claims Masefild AG lifted oil against contract M/09/54 for a non-contractual beneficiary it claims was former external affairs minister NATWAR SINGH.

Now the questions to be answered by Antonia Maino (aka Sonia Gandhi, President of Congress Party) are:

1. When did Congress Party register with Govt. of India as a oil-dealer or oil-broker?

2. Why is Congress Party interested in acquiring oil?

3. Is it unhappy with the likes of Reliance or IOC or other oil companies operating in Bharat?

4. Is Congress Party a public or private limited or privately-held company?

It is one thing to claim comraderie between Baathist Party and Congress Party as two parties representing two great civilizations (assuming that the representation is true); it is quite another to follow up the two letters Sonia Gandhi (aka Antonia Maino, President of Congress Party) wrote to Saddam Hussein with special meetings between Natwar Singh (and his comrades) with Tareeq Aziz and Saddam Hussein.

What benefit did Bharat receive from this international dealing by Congress Party without getting prior permission from the 'executive' branch of the then government in powe in Bharat to meet foreign dignitaries in Iraq?

Sonia, aka Antonia, come clean. There is a lot of cleaning-up called for. Pathak commission or inquiry authority will not be this clean-up.

5. Why hasn't an FIR beeen lodged against the President of Congress Party in this act of financial impropriety causing loss to the nation's exchequer?

6. Answer this simple question of fact: did Congress Party did or did not receive the benefit cited in Volcker Reprot as a non-contractual beneficiary, through Masefield AG/Vitol financial link-up? (We are assuming that oil did get delivered by the Congress Party).

7. What oil? What grease?



Vitol Asia Pte Ltd., India Liaison Office
617 Maker Chambers V, 6th Floor, 221 Jamnalal Bajaj Road, Nariman Point, Mumbai 400 021 India
Tel (91 22) 2288 5615
Tel (91 22) 2287 5069
Tel (91 22) 2283 1843
Fax (91 22) 2287 5070
Tlx 1183786

A VITOL CLUE


New Delhi, Nov. 11: The Volcker Committee report on the Iraq-oil-for-food programme has alleged that a global oil trading company named Vitol is the "underlying financier" for the oil barrels allegedly lifted by Masefield AG of Switzerland.


Masefield is the company that the Volcker report claimed had lifted oil for the Congress and former external affairs minister K. Natwar Singh, who it listed as "non-contractual beneficiaries" in the Iraq oil-for-food programme.


The UN-ordered probe report defines "underlying financier" as the "entity or party assuming financial responsibility for letters of credit (LC) used to buy oil in the programme..." A letter of credit links a company to the recipients of moneys.


Vitol is a global company involved in physical oil marketing with offices in many countries. It has an India liaison office at Maker Chambers V, Nariman Point, Mumbai. When the Vitol India liaison office was contacted by this newspaper in Mumbai on Friday, a Mr Sumeru Hattiramani there said he knew nothing of this matter and referred this newspaper to their Singapore office.


The office of Vitol Singapore Pte Ltd, when called, said it would not comment on anything and asked for a written set of questions to be faxed to them. This was done on Friday and this newspaper was awaiting a response from them at the time of going to press.


Both, the Congress and Mr Natwar Singh, have repeatedly denied any connection to the Iraq oil-for-food programme. The Volcker report has said the persons or entities who made surcharge payments may not have been aware that their payments were in contravention of the UN guidelines for the oil-for-food programme.


Table 3 of the Volcker report, titled "Non-Contractual Beneficiaries", has given contract number M/10/57 for the transaction it claimed involved Masefield AG and for which it alleged the Congress party was the "non-contractual beneficiary". In the case of its allegations against Mr Natwar Singh, the Volcker Committee says one of two contract numbers for the oil transactions was M/09/54. Both contract numbers next appear in Table 4, titled "Known Underlying Oil Financiers", and are listed under "Underlying Financier VITOL". The entries in Table 4 also mention Masefield AG as the "contracting company".


Table 4 claims Vitol was the "underlying financier" for the contracting company Masefield AG for "contract number M/10/57". Against this, it lists letter of credit number N731924 for the lifting of 1,000,896 barrels of oil for LC amount $16,808,457. This is the same contract number as that listed under the Congress party's name (against Masefield AG) in Table 3 of non-contractual beneficiaries.
Against contract number M/09/54 it lists letter of credit number D726806 for contracting firm Masefield AG for the lifting of 300,000 barrels of oil for LC amount $5,669,919. This contract number is the same as that listed under Mr Natwar Singh's name (against Masefield AG) in Table 3 of non-contractual beneficiaries.