What will happen next in India ?
By Justice Katju
The third Modi government has been sworn in yesterday, so what next ?
My understanding is as follows :
1, This can be called the Second Janata Party government, because it will have many features of the Janata Party government which came into existence in 1977 following the Emergency.
The Janata Party of 1977 was really a coalition of several parties whose leaders, like Morarji Desai and Charan Singh, fought each other, and did little else, ( except instituting cases against Indira Gandhi ), until the party collapsed in 1979.
Similar is likely to be the fate of the present unholy alliance.
2. Since the Ministers have been sworn in, the next question will be about distribution of portfolios.
Here there will be tough bargaining, particularly about the Home Ministry, since under it come the intelligence agencies like the CBI, and the Enforcement Directorate, etc which the BJP used to attack political opponents.
There will also be tough bargaining about lucrative portfolios like Finance, Commerce, Industries, etc
3. A bone of fierce contention will be the post of Speaker of the Lok Sabha, because this post was repeatedly used by the.BJP during it’s 10 years tenure in breaking opposition parties and suspending or expelling opposition MPs.
It is rumoured that TDP leader Chandrababu Naidu has demanded this post for his party.
4, Both the TDP and the JDU have demanded special status for their states, which means they want more money from the coffers of the Central Government. But if granted, will not other states not raise similar demands and start agitations ? And how much money is in the coffers of the Central Government ?
5, After Prime Minister Modi concedes to the first set of demands, more demands will follow, for the appetite of a blackmailer is never whetted when the first demand is met. Like Oliver Twist in Dickens novel, he will demand more
6. The opposition INDIA alliance has 234 MPs, and will oppose the NDA government on almost every issue in Parliament
7, As for Modi, he will be reduced to the status of the British King, who reigns, but does not rule
8. The only good which this new dispensation will bring about is that atrocities and persecution of Muslims will stop, for both Naidu and Nitish Kumar want Muslim votes ( in fact Naidu has demanded 4% reservations for them in government jobs and admissions to educational institutions ). No longer will there be lynching of Muslims, or bulldozing their houses, or beating them mercilessly for not saying Jai Shri Ram, or arresting and incarcerating them in jail on trumped up charges for long periods, just because they were Muslims, Those days have gone with the wind.
How long will such a government last is anyone’s guess, but my own guess is that since it is so riddled with contradictions it cannot last more than an year.
As for India’s ‘godi’ media, one would not be surprised by seeing the mind boggling spectacle of its somersault, and transformation into a Rahul media.
Markandey Katju is an Indian jurist and former judge of Supreme Court of India who served as chairman for the Press Council of India from 2011 to 2014.He regularly writes blog at https://justicekatju.blogspot.com/
