Monday, December 29, 2014

Managing BJP Supporters well



BJP and Stakeholder Management

Stakeholder management is a recent addition to the ‘Knowledge areas’ for professional body such as Project Management Institute, most respected body for Project Management professionals. It is only understandable that BJP has to learn more on identifying Stakeholders and then managing them.

In his book “A journey: My Political Life” Tony Blair stresses that politician be, in part, Project Managers as well. Stakeholder management is managing people who will be able to influence the ideological objective, to achieve which, a party has been elected. There is nothing new said in that but, history is full of instances of failings, caused by forgetting its lessons.

In more than one way, running a Government is a Program, consisting of multiple projects, often at loggerhead with each other. The success of a political party in running Government depends on how well the various stakeholders perceive their interests are met by the mandated party.

Stakeholder Martix

Slotting the Stakeholders - PMI

At a high level this is the recommended strategy.  It is easier said than done.Basically you analyze each Stakeholder by the power they wield (Y Axis) and the interest (X Axis) they have in the project. For example opposition will have low power but lot of interest whereas interest groups will have high interest as well power.

Congress Vs BJP: Organization Style

A political party like BJP is very different from Congress the other main party, at least till May 16 2014. Congress is more like Church, institutional, central command, organized (no pun intended)and also brooks no dissidence. Differences are settled by central command with little tolerance.

There were two instances I recall to drive home my point. I am sure most will remember the infamous incident involving  AjayMaken and Rahul Gandhi. See this link to refresh those memories. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAryfSfyV0U

People like Ajay Maken is routinely rendered spineless toadies in Congress. Ajay Maken re-establishes his credentials as Congress worker by effortlessly making an U-turn around, so as not to be seen as contradicting Rahul and suffers no shame or lack of self-respect in the process.

In Congress, the only thing you need, to be part of the party is high intensity sycophancy. One’s view, political morality, principles, and ideology count for nothing. You just need to fall in line or fall out of party. 

Ramesh Jairam is a very well educated man, having graduated from the top two institutions in India, IIT (B) and IIM. But that does not make him person of ‘free will’ who can express his view and then stand by it. Education is not a constraint for servitude to high command. All you need is required quantum of sycophancy, sufficient to subdue one’s conscience’s call.

Here are two links which tells the story of the sycophancy trumping education.
After the infamous ISI comment by Rahul Gandhi, Ramesh Jairam chose to have a different view from his master and of course, high command brooks no dissent. Soon after the earlier comment came this report that tells, that all is well within the tyranny of Congress.

The IIT, IIM graduate Jairam spoke like any unscrupulous politician and said that the news channels ‘twisted my comment’

But BJP is not like the Catholic Church that INC is. It is more like Sanatana Dharma, consisting of various groups who agree to a common cause but that does not mean that they all are in agreement with each other in all matters, yet know to co-exist.

We have RSS, which is an organization with its own vision, agenda, and ideology. Though RSS supports BJP, both organizations have moments of differences. RSS is very watchful of BJP and ensures that the political compromises of BJP do not seep into its organization while BJP staves off the idealisms of RSS in pursuit of political goals. 

Under RSS, there are various organizations, each with its own agenda, sometimes with overlapping objectives. All the groups speak in their voices and it is quite jarring to the Media which has been sustained by central command type of politics, as well as some in the BJP cadre. 

Let me also recall the comments made by Giriraj Singh (dissenters should go to Pakistan) and how he steadfastly stood by his comments. He never apologized, nor said that he didn’t say so or accused the media ‘twisted’ his words. No high command can wrest a follower's conscience.

That is the difference between Congress and BJP.

From here to stronger BJP

I am not sure if BJP is focusing on managing its varied stakeholders given that the way it manages its stakeholders will have to be different from the approach INC takes.Sooner it realizes that 'central command' approach is not suitable to its politics the better.

From what one can surmise from SM, there are groups that support BJP yet are critical of it, on issues like Kashmir, Smriti Irani, PK, Subhash Chandra Bose etc, to name a few. These groups are already showing signs of disillusionment and at times the criticism that comes out of these sections of BJP supporters is far more ruthless than the ones coming from opposition.

I suspect BJP has not slotted these groups properly. Probably BJP has assumed such groups are high on interest and low on power and hence only respond, infrequently, with actions being taken by BJP. Whereas the various groups think they are high on interest as well as power. The discord in unity is also the result of BJP’s inherent nature as a political party representing these varied interest groups and the compromises it has to make to be relevant in political world.

BJP paid a price in Kashmir as a result of the political compromises it thought it should take. KPs have not voted in numbers as expected and if they had, the tally could have gone up by a couple of seats, effectively nullifying the impact of smaller parties.

It is time BJP paused and reviewed its strategy to manage its friendly stakeholders and have periodic interactive sessions within the organizations to understand the demands better. It also will give BJP an opportunity to explain why certain actions cannot be taken in the given timeline and hammer out a compromise.What is going to be costly is the delay in reaching a compromise with the friendly stakeholders.

No one from these nationalistic groups which support BJP will start supporting Congress in the absence of common ground but they can withhold their support at critical moment, like KPs did. BJP seems to have mistakenly taken the Pareto approach to objectives which work well in commercial organization and parties like Congress with a central command, focusing on things like 'Economics' sidelining aspects of culture and self-esteem. That narrative is not applicable to BJP. BJP will have to adapt to the Indian way of politics, taking all with them, not neglecting any section of the supporters. All its friendly stakeholders have worn their shoes off during last election to get BJP into power. All stakeholders do not want everything of their demands to be met immediately, but BJP’s neglect of the supporting stakeholders seems to be the problem.

In the end, these are all fights from inside and while others may gloat at it, surfacing of these differences and settlement will only make BJP stronger, burying INC deeper. For that BJP should know to play its card better.If they engage the friendly stakeholders more intensely, it is a win-win for BJP, an opportunity they should not lose. 

Sunday, December 21, 2014

Indian Right has no American Friends



Indo-US relation – Hobson’s choice

Today I write this, after listening to a speech by Tulsi Gabbard, US Congresswoman representing Democratic Party. She was in news during Modi ji’s visit to US for handing over her personal copy of Bhagwat Gita as a gift. It was a touching gesture and most in India were ecstatic by that single act . Today,  she spoke what she thought was right, from her heart in Manthana Platform, Mythic Society, Bangalore.

Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard arriving at Manthana Bangalore

India has many Liberal parties, they are CPI, CPI-M, CPI-ML, SP, JDU, BJD, RJD, AIADMK, DMK, NCP and a plethora of others. All of them believe in large government, public spending, government knows best attitude, speaks about equality without a clue and all their leaders are evidently well off and often affluent in personal lives. However, they never tire of protecting the poor, in sheer one-upmanship, indulging in naked appeasement to Muslim populace. The Ex-PM Man Mohan Singh said once that the Muslims have the first right to the fruits of Indian economy. He never explained the rationale and the reason remains a mystery till date. Indian democracy died that day.

Indian Right is often a confusing constituency. I think I should describe Indian Right as one which has, in addition to all the left ideologies, also has some right ideologies sprinkled on. What makes it stand out as one in India is, few internal organizations that speak their minds, an essential Right Wing characteristic. It is conservative, Nationalistic, two hallmarks of Right politics. At the same time, I have to concede that, being a political party, it cannot jettison all the policies of the predecessors at one go and is making effort to steer it from the economic mess the Liberal parties of India have left the country in. Indian Right is essentially a Nationalistic party and not being apologetic about it with a strong cultural root as Hindus. These two are lacking in the left and liberal parties in various degrees. 

Perhaps, I was one of the few, if not the only one, to find it jarring to see a Liberal Democrat Tulsi being showered love and affection by a Right Wing organization. Congresswoman Tulsi is the first Hindu to have reached thus far in American politics certainly influences the affection shown to her. The cynical me, told me that a vegetarian cow can always lunge at vegetarian me. Certain commonalities do not matter. 

There are many similarities between Democrats and the liberal Indian National Congress. I always suspected that, as many INC leaders and ideologists are elite and western educated, American Democratic politics found its expression in India through them. 

Both parties are left to the center. In both parties there are unabashed adorers of leaders like Stalin. Both parties pushed for Marxification of education. The history of India was written purely on Marxian view and nationalist views were simply given a shabby burial. Both party leaders were modernists, in the sense, thought that rejection of conventional wisdom is a sure sign of intelligence. Both parties bought votes on immigrant votes. Both parties attended to vote bank politics. If it was ‘racism’ that Democrats used as an abuse of the political opponent to make them cringe, it was the word ‘communal’ that INC used in India. Both parties gave sops to bribe a portion of the voters to further own political agenda. Both parties have strong support from media. In fact as in the case of the US, there is blood relationship between people in power and journalists. Both parties are extremely confrontational. In India, there are additional dimensions of corruption and nepotism which manifested without fear of being punished adds an unique flavor.

If at all any Indian party can be close to Democrats, it is Indian National Congress. BJP has nothing in common with Democrat. It does not stand for big government. BJP is for private investment, very nationalistic, protective of borders, respectful of Army and Police personnel who are martyred, never conceding with its arch enemy, Pakistan, religious core constituting the guiding force for the political party, accommodative, has many leaders with personal integrity and public probity, with no friends in Media, a little clumsy in public discourse and has fringe elements who indulge in violence and abhorrent behaviour. It is not that the Left does not have it, for example, CPI-ML kills people in hundreds but has the admiration of the media for their intellectual sex-appeal, hence never condemned without qualifications. 

It may appear that BJP is a natural ally of Republicans, given both parties have common political ideologies. This was the topic of discussion between myself and Rushette today on twitter.

Question from American Right

However, for India Right wing, there are no friends here also. 

The American Right has a core Christian constituency which has a special interest in India and its poverty politics. The Christian Churches from US, a solid supporters of American right is engaged in the business of aggressive, militant and combatant proselytizing in India. The method adapted runs like this. Anyone from India can register himself as an agent and has to show as proof that a prayer house has been built to render prayer service to local population. This act gets rewarded by the Christian Right in $ of donation which is a big deal in India. With this, the agent goes on to invest in larger church and pays money for appearing in the church, which helps him/her to show larger population, which in turn gets more funding. The payout is based on number of people showing up in the church with special incentive for the converted. India, at the time of her Independence, was a poor country, after British stole her wealth in totality. With the advancement in healthcare, increased life expectancy, there are many poor in the society and this is the harvest American Christian Right is attracted to, as flies to putrid meat.  Additionally, the financial support to education and medical help are offered to lure the weak and defenseless.

In the last decade the amount of money pumped in by Christians is to the tune of INR 100,000 crores (1 crore = 10 million) With about 2% of the population being Christian, this is brutal money power. With the Indian National Congress in power, especially with Sonia Gandhi, there were wholesale conversions happening all around the country as village fair. People who retired from heading Security organizations in India have confirmed these charges. 

The cost of one soul harvest is said to be USD 3300.  This is while the Hindus were not allowed to get access to Temple wealth which could have been put to create a support system for the Hindus. The temples and its resources were usurped by atheist political classes. As for the wealth belonging to Hindu temples, it can dwarf Vatican many times over.

That is the reason the American Right is in direct confrontation with Indian Right. Indian Right can never do business with American Right without compromising its National and Cultural identity, core values for Indian Right. 

It is a parody that those who convert the poor people of Indian are Liberal ideological inspirations indeed. The Pastors are often undistinguishable from a local Marxian ideologist, rousing the poor to rise against the evil Brahminical order (equivalent of White in US context) and to embrace Christ. They teach convoluted History to show that South Indians were actually people of Christ, based on notions already laid to waste by tectonic plate theory. They offer money for education and medicine. They dress like Hindu Godmen. They use Hindu symbols. The compose prayers imitating Hindu ones. All these are done with a view to trick the poor and uninformed Indians into believing that Christianity is same as Hinduism.

Most of the Educational Institutions in India were in the hands of evangelists at the time of Independence. So was the medicine. Schools and Hospitals are rich mines for conversions. American preachers are allowed access to children in Christian run schools to conduct proselytizing. The Joshua Project makes it a point to insult local culture and tradition. The Church explicitly tells those traveling with a view to proselytize, to lie at the immigration. Good Christian role model indeed. Most of these sites block Indian IP and have to be accessed otherwise. It means that they know what they do is criminal and wrong, yet do it. This is the constituency that is central to American Right.

Lie is central to Christian activities in India


Money plays a major part in luring people to change their religion. This is backed by American Right and is detested by Indian Right. The original ban on Modi’s visit to US was based on ‘religious intolerance’, in plain English, he banned proselytizing Industry in Gujarat, where he was the Chief Minister. The ban was a punishment for that affront to American Christian Right.

There are Nationalistic organizations who bring back the converted and this has also been going on, if not in equal numbers. However, this year such an act drew a comment from US government. http://www.deccanherald.com/content/448171/monitoring-reports-mass-conversion-india.html


If American Christians rationalize their proselytizing activities citing poverty, India also can make incendiary observations on American situation on ‘racism’ and ‘genocide of the blacks  and native Indians’ and other politically pregnant possibilities. There have been various studies conducted that have proven that the people uprooted from their cultural roots are a devastated lot. Indian Hindus are huge in number. By splitting the society only miseries are being multiplied for a long time, with no definite win in the near future. With Hindu insurgence those who converted by the lure of the evangelists will be orphaned in their own cultural backyards.


 There are no friends for Indian Right in the US.While it is compelled to oppose Republicans as a matter of self preservation, it tolerates Liberals as danger Liberals pose do not impact Indian directly. If there are no friends in American Right it is because in it US has bellicose, self righteous, pompous cultural Tzars in the name of Christians.  It is a shame that intolerance within American Right is the reason it is not able to build bridge with Indians. But a fact that cannot be wished away. 

dwimidha@gmail.com



Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Solving religious collision courses – Gharwapsi



Gung Ho on  Gharwapsi (Home coming)


 
The recent Gharwapsi (‘Coming home’) of 200 and odd Muslims in Agra was voraciously lapped up by the every TRP hungry media, concealing critical news and revealing just enough to flare up one sided and convenient political controversies. There was one more incident that took place in Aligarh few months back, right after May 16 – a group of Christians moved over to Hinduism, lock stock and barrel. The police swung into action, as it was reported, giving a misleading expectation that the story has not ended. However, there was no follow up story, either because there is very little the Police could have done or because there was no negative news to drumbeat. While the Jaychands waste precious time in Raj Sabha….
There are news items in the Media that some huge number of Christians and Muslims will be converted on 25th Dec 2014, the date being more than symbolic. The Liberals are just clueless as to what hit them and keep shouting that BJP Government is carrying out Hindu agenda. As far as I can recall, BJP did not come to power promising to implement Muslim agenda or create another Pakistan in India. It was a Hindu, Rashtriya (nationalistic) agenda that BJP rode on. RSS had worked hard on ground level to mould political views that benefited BJP, at the same time, keeping a distance that is required to be able to criticise BJP, if a need arises.
The Secular brigade in India, consists of Communists, AAPtards, Muslim and Christian Leaders (yes, people like John Dayal are secular with no counterbalance from Hindu), Liberals, Congress, at least as the label states, Westernized, Anglophobes, Macaulayites, Stephanites etc. The Liberals is a tag that covers the ugly sore. For example, Mahesh Bhatt is a Liberal, as is Rana Ayyub. They have an off and on Red coloration that earns them the right to be called Liberal.  The secular brigade, in lieu of the support given, ignores when the color changes from Red to Green; though technically Green is included in the bandwagon.
The news of Conversion at Agra has stirred a hornet’s nest. The Secular parties that subsist on minority appeasement would like to see enlargement of their vote bank and not the shrinking. As it stands today, that market is also divided, not leaving enough to any single party to seize power. Moreover, the secular parties have underestimated the possibility of Hindu votes polarizing against them.
While the Liberals are effusively articulate, as to how tolerant people should be in India, meaning, why people should not follow RSS and BJP agenda, there is no cerebral discussion to go to the root cause. It would be a tall order to get the Liberals to be engaged in riveting debate bereft of slogans and anecdotal narratives. 

Chess with Pigeons

Why is it that we have not found a religious equilibrium in India is a question we all have to ponder about? Islam has ruled in India for centuries and history is replete with instances of forced augmentation to Islamic demography through terror and killing. Even as early as 1921, the Mappila riots in Kerala saw rape of Hindu women, wholesale slaughter of Hindus and mass conversion. One of the modern day genocides, Bangladesh war of 1971 also saw similar activities.
Similarly, Christians have appropriated the space of education and medicine and along with it prime real estate in all major cities in India apart from rural holdings. In the last few decades, they have pumped in millions of dollars with which large tract of lands are being bought by their MLM agents for proselytization supply chain. One has to merely follow some famous twitter handles @sighbaboo or @trackingevangelism or @noconversion to view the evidences that support this view. The current attempt by British Parliament to criminalize Caste system is another covetous game, those pushing for it being hard-core Christians.
In spite of living together for centuries, the differences between the religious groups in India have not been bridged. From British to Indian secular brigade consisting of Congress, CPI, CPI-M, SP, RJD, TMC, TRS et al, all have cleverly leveraged the gap for own political benefits. None has tried to bridge it.
Could any party have done anything to bridge the gap, if they had wanted to? Or, did they never attempt because they knew that the gap is unbridgeable?
In current scenario, we have Hindus on one side, not as a single group but as a collection of multiple groups with a common cultural bonds tying across and on the other hand Abrahamic religions Christianity and Islam. In entire Indian sub-continent and South East Asia, India remains the one of the few countries to hold on to its cultural roots through its unwavering loyalty to its religiosity that surprisingly is not held together by any central authority regulating the followers.
The varieties within Hinduism are unlimitedly large. We have Keralites who pray to Krishna and Vishnu yet share nothing in terms of festivals with the rest of India.  In TN we have groups whose deities range from Ayyanars, a local deity to Ayyappa residing in neighbouring state. When one group of Hindus pray to particular deity, it is not at the derision of another’s. Person whose deity is Ayyanar goes to Ayyappa seamlessly and feels no conflict of interest. Nor does he feel any sense of inferiority when he prays to a God other than the family deity. Compare here the article written by Manu Joseph http://www.hindustantimes.com/comment/manujoseph/is-civilisational-pride-a-response-to-shame/article1-1296532.aspx
Hindus go to Darghas and Churches without any qualms. I was speaking to a Bengali friend of mine the other day who was telling that every family in Bengal buys a small piece of Cake on Christmas and celebrates with little reservation. 
It is the Christians and Muslims who are bound by their scriptures’ claim to exclusivity in contrast to Hindu scriptures’ universality.
Consider this from the Bible “Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me”
This means if you are a Christian, he cannot act as a Hindu, who can walk to multiple temples and Churches and Darghas and still be a Hindu. Christian, when he prays in a Hindu temple has to feel inferior, because, he as a Christian, has to concede that even though Jesus said that no one can come to Father except me, here is another path he has chosen.
In every turn Christianity stresses on exclusivity, which in effect, denies diversity. It does not take into account the other view, but imposes its view on others. In that it suffers from “I think so, so it must be true’ fallacy. Typical White Supremacist pride.
As for Islam, the call that there is no God but Allah is a giveaway. Islam plagiarized a lot from Judaism and Christianity but punishing the exceptions with more severity.
The first of the five pillars of Islam is this
La ilaha illa Allah wa-Muhammad rasul Allah.

There is no god but God and Muhammad is the prophet of God.
These are the foundations on which the edifices of religions have been built for Christianity and Islam. The followers are not allowed to accept that there could be a different view and that makes them intolerant of the others. Once they even consider that a person who prays to another cultural version of God is equal to those praying to my cultural version of God, their sensibilities are insulted. Their God’s word turns less truthful and less credible.
It is those exclusivities that have set the tone for confrontation even today. As a result, to prevent such insult, they launch on their proselytizing campaign to turn those people who pray to different version of God into own kind. At this point the confrontation is translated into conflict. When there is resistance from those being proselytized, these groups cleverly sell it as ‘hate crime’ adding insult to injury. 


My dad is bigger than your dad- Silly Christ


Without debating these foundational discriminatory principles which make these religions preach supremacism, the gap between Dharmic Hinduism and altruistic Abrahamic religions cannot be bridged. And this is the debate that Islam and Christianity do not want to get into. There lies the problem.
 That leaves Hindus only one option, that is to respond to Abrahamic religion the same way as they do. If they want to play conversion game, Hindus too should play the game with equal and excess vigour. If the terrorist wings of Islam want to instil fear in the hearts of Kafirs by carrying out terror activities, Hindus should at the minimum, not say that it is OK and not endorse things like #Illridewithyou. I have written elsewhere why Hindus are really unfit for bloody terror unlike the Islamists and Communists ( here http://notcovered.blogspot.in/2014/11/someone-should-solve-my-problem-hindu.html)
As a preventive action, Hindus, to stay as majority power in this country, should follow the path of #Gharwapsi without fear of guilt. #Gharwapsi enlarges the convert’s view to include multiple cultural varieties of God as against the narrow view that Islam and Christianity preaches. #Gharwapsi is equality, fairness, and equal opportunity. A person who embraces #Gharwapsi may choose to follow Rama, Vishnu along with Buddha and Christ without any qualms.  
#Gharwapsi of erstwhile Christians will enrich their spiritual life by allowing them to continue praying to Christ and at the same time, if they choose to, to pray to any other God. What it certainly does is, cure them of the Bible induced myopia that only Jesus is God. Ditto for Muslims.
Additionally, amongst Muslims, #Gharwapsi will cure them of their urge to kill another because the other refuses to pray to Allah or refuses to convert to pray to Allah. Person of Muslim culture, brought to Hindu home will certainly understand that religion is not about aggressive competition that my God is the God and what you pray to is Satan (This applies to Christians also, in fact a concept borrowed from Christianity)
For a prosperous India, a conflict-free India is a pre-requisite. No one but Yogi Adityanath ji has chosen this difficult path, braving the barking dogs from sold of politics and media. As Nationalist Hindus, it is our duty to support Yogi ji’s effort. That includes not calling for a ban on conversion, which at the end of the day is anti-constitutional and at the same time leaves the problem at hand unresolved.
It is time to go on the offensive on #Gharwapsi, not to feel victorious but to resolve the conflicts that have been haunting India for centuries
dwimidha@gmail.com