Showing posts with label BJP. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BJP. Show all posts
Wednesday 5 July 2023
Tuesday 4 July 2023
Half Marks for Indian Education
From The Economist
When Narendra modi, India’s prime minister, visited the White House last week, he did so as the leader of one of the world’s fastest-growing big economies. India is expanding at an annual rate of 6% and its gdp ranks fifth in the global pecking order. Its tech industry is flourishing and green firms are laying solar panels like carpets. Many multinationals are drawn there: this week Goldman Sachs held a board meeting in India.
As the rich world and China grow older, India’s huge youth bulge—some 500m of its people are under 20—should be an additional propellant. Yet as we report, although India’s brainy elite hoovers up qualifications, education for most Indians is still a bust. Unskilled, jobless youngsters risk bringing India’s economic development to a premature stop.
India has made some strides in improving the provision of services to poor people. Government digital schemes have simplified access to banking and the distribution of welfare payments. Regarding education, there has been a splurge on infrastructure. A decade ago only a third of government schools had handwashing facilities and only about half had electricity; now around 90% have both. Since 2014 India has opened nearly 400 universities. Enrolment in higher education has risen by a fifth.
Yet improving school buildings and expanding places only gets you so far. India is still doing a terrible job of making sure that the youngsters who throng its classrooms pick up essential skills. Before the pandemic less than half of India’s ten-year-olds could read a simple story, even though most of them had spent years sitting obediently behind school desks (the share in America was 96%). School closures that lasted more than two years have since made this worse.
There are lots of explanations. Jam-packed curriculums afford too little time for basic lessons in maths and literacy. Children who fail to grasp these never learn much else. Teachers are poorly trained and badly supervised: one big survey of rural schools found a quarter of staff were absent. Officials sometimes hand teachers unrelated duties, from administering elections to policing social-distancing rules during the pandemic.
Such problems have led many families to send their children to private schools instead. These educate about 50% of all India’s children. They are impressively frugal, but do not often produce better results. Recently, there have been hopes that the country’s technology industry might revolutionise education. Yet relying on it alone is risky. In recent weeks India’s biggest ed-tech firm, Byju’s, which says it educates over 150m people worldwide and was once worth $22bn, has seen its valuation slashed because of financial troubles.
All this makes fixing government schools even more urgent. India should spend more on education. Last year the outlays were just 2.9% of gdp, low by international standards. But it also needs to reform how the system works by taking inspiration from models elsewhere in developing Asia.
As we report, in international tests pupils in Vietnam have been trouncing youngsters from much richer countries for a decade. Vietnam’s children spend less time in lessons than Indian ones, even when you count homework and other cramming. They also put up with larger classes. The difference is that Vietnam’s teachers are better prepared, more experienced and more likely to be held accountable if their pupils flunk.
With the right leadership, India could follow. It should start by collecting better information about how much pupils are actually learning. That would require politicians to stop disputing data that do not show their policies in a good light. And the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party should also stop trying to strip textbooks of ideas such as evolution, or of history that irks Hindu nativists. That is a poisonous distraction from the real problems. India is busy constructing roads, tech campuses, airports and factories. It needs to build up its human capital, too.
Thursday 15 June 2023
Wednesday 31 May 2023
Friday 19 May 2023
Sunday 14 May 2023
Are smart people deliberately acting stupid? The Rise of the Anti-Intellectual
Nadeem Paracha in The Dawn
Across the 20th century, intellectuals played an important role in political parties and governments, both democratic and authoritarian. According to Richmond University’s Professor of Politics Eunice Goes, intellectuals perform several roles in the policy-making process.
They help politicians make sense of the world. They offer cause-effect explanations of political and economic phenomena, and diagnoses and prescriptions to policy puzzles. They also help political actors develop ideas and narratives that are consistent with their ideological traditions and political goals.
But in this century, politics has often witnessed a backlash against the presence of intellectuals in political parties and in governments. This is likely due to the strengthening of the parallel tradition of anti-intellectualism, which was always (and still is) active in various polities.
This tradition has been more active in right-wing groups. It was especially strengthened by the rise of populist politics in many countries in the 2010s. But mainstream political outfits in Europe and the US still induct the services of intellectuals, even though this ploy has greatly been eroded in the Republican Party in the US after it wholeheartedly embraced populism in 2016, and still seems to be engulfed by it.
Since the 1930s, the Democratic Party in the US has always had the largest presence of intellectuals in it. This policy was initiated during the four presidential terms of the Democratic Party’s Franklin D. Roosevelt (1932-45), during which time a large number of intellectuals were inducted. Their role was to aid the government in bailing the US out of a tumultuous economic crisis, and to develop a narrative to neutralise the increasing appeal of organisations on the far right and the far left. This tradition of inducting intellectuals continued to be employed by the Democrats for decades.
Interestingly, even though the Republican Party has had an anti-intellectual dimension ever since the early 20th century, it carried with it intellectuals to counter intellectuals active in the Democratic Party. This was specifically true during the presidencies of the Republican Ronald Reagan (1981-88) who was, in fact, propelled to power by an intellectual movement led by conservatives and some former liberals. This movement evolved into becoming ‘neo-conservatism’ during the Reagan presidencies. Britain’s Labour Party and Conservative Party have carried with them intellectuals as well, especially the Labour Party.
Some totalitarian regimes too employed the services of intellectuals in the Soviet Union, Germany and Italy. The Soviet dictator Stalin was not very kind to intellectuals, though. But intellectuals played a major role in shaping Soviet communism. Hitler’s Nazi regime had the services of some of the period’s finest minds in Germany, such as the philosophers Carl Schmitt and Martin Heidegger, the logician Rudolf Carnap, and a host of others.
They helped Hitler mould Nazism into an all-encompassing ideology. Just how could some extremely intelligent men start to both romance as well as rationalise a brutal ideology is a topic that has often been investigated, but it is beyond the scope of this column.
In Pakistan, three governments banked heavily on intellectuals to formulate their respective ideologies, narratives and economics. The Ayub Khan dictatorship (1958-69) carried scholars who specialised in providing ‘modernist’ interpretations to various traditional aspects of Islam. This they did to aid Ayub’s modernisation project. The intellectuals included the rationalist Islamic scholars Fazalur Rahman Malik and Ghulam Ahmad Parwez, and, to a certain extent, the progressive novelist Mumtaz Mufti and Justice Javed Iqbal, the son of the poet-philosopher Muhammad Iqbal. The writer Qudrat Ullah Shahab was Ayub’s Principal Secretary.
Z.A. Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) was studded with intellectuals who remained active in the party during at least the first few years of Bhutto’s regime (1971-77). These included the Marxist theorist JA Rahim who (with Bhutto) wrote the party’s ‘Foundation Papers’ and then its first manifesto. He also served as a minister in the Bhutto regime till his acrimonious ouster in 1975.
Then there was Dr Mubashir Hassan, who was the main theorist behind PPP’s concept of a ‘planned economy’. He served as the Bhutto regime’s finance minister. The intellectuals Hanif Ramay and Safdar Mir wrote treatises to counter the ideologies of the Islamists. Ramay also formulated the party’s core ideology of ‘Islamic socialism’. The lawyer and constitutional expert Hafeez Pirzada too was a founding member of the party. He was one of the main authors of the 1973 Constitution.
The Ziaul Haq dictatorship adopted the Islamist theorist Abul Ala Maududi as the regime’s main ideologue. Maududi was also the chief of the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI). Zia, when he was a lieutenant general in the early 1970s, used to distribute books written by Maududi to his officers and soldiers. Maududi passed away in 1979, just two years after Zia overthrew the Bhutto regime. But Zia continued to apply Maududi’s ideas to his dictatorship’s ‘Islamisation’ project.
Zia also had the services of the prominent lawyers AK Brohi and Sharifuddin Pirzada. Brohi and Pirzada were instrumental in formulating the murder charges against Bhutto. In his book, Betrayals of Another Kind, Gen Faiz Ali Chisti wrote that Brohi and Pirzada encouraged Zia to hang Bhutto, which he did. Pirzada also wrote oaths for judges sworn in by Zia that omitted the commitment to protect the Constitution. He would go on to do the same for the Musharraf dictatorship (1999-2008). In fact, Sharifuddin Pirzada had also served the Ayub regime.
The rise of populist politics in the second decade of the 21st century has greatly diminished the role of intellectuals in political parties and governments. This is because populism is inherently anti-intellectual. It perceives intellectuals as being part of a detested elite. Therefore, for example, one never expected intellectuals of any kind in Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI). This is why the nature of this party’s narrative is ridiculously contradictory and even chaotic.
However, in a January 2022 essay for The Atlantic, David A. Graham wrote that it’s not that intellectuals have vanished from political parties. Rather, due to populism’s anti-intellectual disposition, they have purposely dumbed down their ideas.
According to Graham, “This is the age of smart politicians pretending to be stupid.” If stupidity can now attract votes and save the jobs of intellectuals in parties and governments, then smart folks can act stupid in the most convincing manner. Even more than those who are actually stupid.
Across the 20th century, intellectuals played an important role in political parties and governments, both democratic and authoritarian. According to Richmond University’s Professor of Politics Eunice Goes, intellectuals perform several roles in the policy-making process.
They help politicians make sense of the world. They offer cause-effect explanations of political and economic phenomena, and diagnoses and prescriptions to policy puzzles. They also help political actors develop ideas and narratives that are consistent with their ideological traditions and political goals.
But in this century, politics has often witnessed a backlash against the presence of intellectuals in political parties and in governments. This is likely due to the strengthening of the parallel tradition of anti-intellectualism, which was always (and still is) active in various polities.
This tradition has been more active in right-wing groups. It was especially strengthened by the rise of populist politics in many countries in the 2010s. But mainstream political outfits in Europe and the US still induct the services of intellectuals, even though this ploy has greatly been eroded in the Republican Party in the US after it wholeheartedly embraced populism in 2016, and still seems to be engulfed by it.
Since the 1930s, the Democratic Party in the US has always had the largest presence of intellectuals in it. This policy was initiated during the four presidential terms of the Democratic Party’s Franklin D. Roosevelt (1932-45), during which time a large number of intellectuals were inducted. Their role was to aid the government in bailing the US out of a tumultuous economic crisis, and to develop a narrative to neutralise the increasing appeal of organisations on the far right and the far left. This tradition of inducting intellectuals continued to be employed by the Democrats for decades.
Interestingly, even though the Republican Party has had an anti-intellectual dimension ever since the early 20th century, it carried with it intellectuals to counter intellectuals active in the Democratic Party. This was specifically true during the presidencies of the Republican Ronald Reagan (1981-88) who was, in fact, propelled to power by an intellectual movement led by conservatives and some former liberals. This movement evolved into becoming ‘neo-conservatism’ during the Reagan presidencies. Britain’s Labour Party and Conservative Party have carried with them intellectuals as well, especially the Labour Party.
Some totalitarian regimes too employed the services of intellectuals in the Soviet Union, Germany and Italy. The Soviet dictator Stalin was not very kind to intellectuals, though. But intellectuals played a major role in shaping Soviet communism. Hitler’s Nazi regime had the services of some of the period’s finest minds in Germany, such as the philosophers Carl Schmitt and Martin Heidegger, the logician Rudolf Carnap, and a host of others.
They helped Hitler mould Nazism into an all-encompassing ideology. Just how could some extremely intelligent men start to both romance as well as rationalise a brutal ideology is a topic that has often been investigated, but it is beyond the scope of this column.
In Pakistan, three governments banked heavily on intellectuals to formulate their respective ideologies, narratives and economics. The Ayub Khan dictatorship (1958-69) carried scholars who specialised in providing ‘modernist’ interpretations to various traditional aspects of Islam. This they did to aid Ayub’s modernisation project. The intellectuals included the rationalist Islamic scholars Fazalur Rahman Malik and Ghulam Ahmad Parwez, and, to a certain extent, the progressive novelist Mumtaz Mufti and Justice Javed Iqbal, the son of the poet-philosopher Muhammad Iqbal. The writer Qudrat Ullah Shahab was Ayub’s Principal Secretary.
Z.A. Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) was studded with intellectuals who remained active in the party during at least the first few years of Bhutto’s regime (1971-77). These included the Marxist theorist JA Rahim who (with Bhutto) wrote the party’s ‘Foundation Papers’ and then its first manifesto. He also served as a minister in the Bhutto regime till his acrimonious ouster in 1975.
Then there was Dr Mubashir Hassan, who was the main theorist behind PPP’s concept of a ‘planned economy’. He served as the Bhutto regime’s finance minister. The intellectuals Hanif Ramay and Safdar Mir wrote treatises to counter the ideologies of the Islamists. Ramay also formulated the party’s core ideology of ‘Islamic socialism’. The lawyer and constitutional expert Hafeez Pirzada too was a founding member of the party. He was one of the main authors of the 1973 Constitution.
The Ziaul Haq dictatorship adopted the Islamist theorist Abul Ala Maududi as the regime’s main ideologue. Maududi was also the chief of the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI). Zia, when he was a lieutenant general in the early 1970s, used to distribute books written by Maududi to his officers and soldiers. Maududi passed away in 1979, just two years after Zia overthrew the Bhutto regime. But Zia continued to apply Maududi’s ideas to his dictatorship’s ‘Islamisation’ project.
Zia also had the services of the prominent lawyers AK Brohi and Sharifuddin Pirzada. Brohi and Pirzada were instrumental in formulating the murder charges against Bhutto. In his book, Betrayals of Another Kind, Gen Faiz Ali Chisti wrote that Brohi and Pirzada encouraged Zia to hang Bhutto, which he did. Pirzada also wrote oaths for judges sworn in by Zia that omitted the commitment to protect the Constitution. He would go on to do the same for the Musharraf dictatorship (1999-2008). In fact, Sharifuddin Pirzada had also served the Ayub regime.
The rise of populist politics in the second decade of the 21st century has greatly diminished the role of intellectuals in political parties and governments. This is because populism is inherently anti-intellectual. It perceives intellectuals as being part of a detested elite. Therefore, for example, one never expected intellectuals of any kind in Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI). This is why the nature of this party’s narrative is ridiculously contradictory and even chaotic.
However, in a January 2022 essay for The Atlantic, David A. Graham wrote that it’s not that intellectuals have vanished from political parties. Rather, due to populism’s anti-intellectual disposition, they have purposely dumbed down their ideas.
According to Graham, “This is the age of smart politicians pretending to be stupid.” If stupidity can now attract votes and save the jobs of intellectuals in parties and governments, then smart folks can act stupid in the most convincing manner. Even more than those who are actually stupid.
Saturday 13 May 2023
Wednesday 29 March 2023
Saturday 25 March 2023
Thursday 9 March 2023
Does the BJP have an obsession with the freedom movement?
Vir Sanghvi in The Print
Should Rahul Gandhi have been critical of the way things are in today’s India when he spoke in the UK? Does this amount to asking white people to colonise India as some BJP supporters have suggested? Or is he merely following in the footsteps of Narendra Modi who has also not always been complimentary on foreign soil about the situation in India, especially in the years after he first became Prime Minister? Is the BJP making the mistake of believing that attacking Narendra Modi’s governance is the same as attacking India, as Congress supporters claim?
There are no ‘yes’ and ‘no’ answers to these questions as we have seen over the last few days as the controversy has raged. My guess is that people who support the government will criticise Rahul while Congress supporters will argue that if he is asked questions about how things are in India, then he should tell the truth and not lie to make Modi look good.
Either way, how you approach this debate is largely determined by what you already believe.
So I am not going to waste your time by recalling the arguments of the last few days all over again. Instead, I am going to ask a different question: is the BJP doing Rahul a favour by making him the centre of a new controversy every week?
Consider the reality of the situation. Ever since he became the Congress’s chief campaigner, Rahul has faced setback after setback. He lost the 2014 election to the BJP and to Modi’s charisma. He tried again in 2019 but was defeated again even in his own constituency of Amethi. During his period as the Congress’s most visible leader, the party has lost state after state. Its top leaders, many of whom were Rahul’s friends, have either left the party or, at the very least, tried to leave. The consensus is that Rahul will not be able to beat Modi at the next election either.
Given this background, does he deserve so much attention? As the BJP itself has told us, he is not fit to be a leader; in fact, it has said much worse things about him, not all of which can be repeated here. So, if he is such a useless person, then why is the BJP so obsessed with him? Why does it use up so much energy in attacking him?
BJP, a party of obsessions
You could argue that despite the Congress’s dismal electoral performance over the years, one reason why Rahul has such a high profile and still acts as though he is the pre-eminent opposition leader is that the BJP takes him so seriously. No other opposition leader is subject to the kind of scrutiny the BJP subjects Rahul to.
In the early days of the BJP’s Rahul obsession, I used to think that the single-minded focus on the Congress leader was strategic. Perhaps, the BJP wanted to shine a spotlight on him to show Narendra Modi in a better light. But that time has long passed. Nobody regards Rahul as the man who will topple Modi in the next election. So why does anything he says rattle the BJP so much?
My conclusion is that the BJP, despite its shrewd grasp of strategy, is becoming more and more a party of obsessions. Take the BJP’s obsession with Nehru. Once upon a time it may have made sense to rubbish Nehru to discredit his descendants. But that ploy has run its course. Even those who support Rahul today do not do so because his great grandfather, who died nearly 60 years ago, was a great guy.
The BJP’s obsession with Nehru now extends to criticising the freedom struggle. It is entirely valid to say that we have made too much of Nehru and ignored other freedom fighters. But is it necessary to insult MK Gandhi and to praise his murderer Nathuram Godse as Sangh Parivar members have done?
Certainly, it does not help the BJP electorally. The attacks are launched not for sound strategic reasons but because a section of the Parivar has its own bizarre obsessions.
Beyond a point, it only makes sense to go on about the freedom struggle if the BJP believes that the Congress massively benefits from its history as the party of Nehru and Gandhi. But does it really? Does anybody believe that this version of the Congress is the party that Gandhi once mentored? I doubt if the Congress gets any votes on that basis.
There is a logic to going on about the freedom struggle if the BJP believes that its leaders have been insufficiently recognised for their role in fighting the British. But this is not the case. The BJP was only founded in 1980. The Jana Sangh, its predecessor, was only established in 1951. Nobody can reasonably expect either party to have been part of the freedom movement because neither existed before India became independent.
This should be fine. Most parties in today’s India were not around before India became independent. They don’t try and rewrite the history of a struggle they were not around for or abuse those who were. Why then does the BJP care so much?
Why BJP does what it does
Yet such is the BJP’s obsession with creating alternative icons that it strains credulity by hijacking historical figures. Yes, Vallabhbhai Patel and Jawaharlal Nehru had differences. But then so did Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani. That does not mean that Advani did not subscribe to the BJP’s ideology. So it is with Patel who even banned the RSS. And so it is with Bhagat Singh who was a left-leaning (communist even) atheist who had nothing in common with the ideology the BJP now espouses. And yes, Subhas Chandra Bose did fall out with Nehru and Gandhi but he was hardly a Hindutva supporter. He named a brigade in the Indian National Army (INA) after Nehru and after the war it was Nehru who defended INA veterans from persecution by the British.
Even the case of VD Savarkar is complicated. Yes, he was a patriot and freedom fighter who suffered for his views. But to hold up Savarkar as your own icon against Gandhi, you have to explain away too many things: his apologies to the British, his differences with the RSS, his support of beef-eating, etc.
So here’s my point: why does the BJP even bother? People who vote for the BJP support it because they admire Narendra Modi, respect his achievements and perhaps because they believe in a vision of a Hindu India. Nobody votes for the BJP because of anything that occurred in the freedom struggle. Or because the party now glorifies Bose or Bhagat Singh.
The only explanation possible is that on some issues – Jawaharlal Nehru and his descendants, the freedom struggle and Gandhi in particular – the BJP goes beyond strategy and gives in to an obsession. It is an uncharacteristic lapse for a party that is otherwise so pragmatic and worldly-wise.
But it works, I suspect, to Rahul Gandhi’s benefit because it keeps him forever in the news and at the centre of the public debate.
Should Rahul Gandhi have been critical of the way things are in today’s India when he spoke in the UK? Does this amount to asking white people to colonise India as some BJP supporters have suggested? Or is he merely following in the footsteps of Narendra Modi who has also not always been complimentary on foreign soil about the situation in India, especially in the years after he first became Prime Minister? Is the BJP making the mistake of believing that attacking Narendra Modi’s governance is the same as attacking India, as Congress supporters claim?
There are no ‘yes’ and ‘no’ answers to these questions as we have seen over the last few days as the controversy has raged. My guess is that people who support the government will criticise Rahul while Congress supporters will argue that if he is asked questions about how things are in India, then he should tell the truth and not lie to make Modi look good.
Either way, how you approach this debate is largely determined by what you already believe.
So I am not going to waste your time by recalling the arguments of the last few days all over again. Instead, I am going to ask a different question: is the BJP doing Rahul a favour by making him the centre of a new controversy every week?
Consider the reality of the situation. Ever since he became the Congress’s chief campaigner, Rahul has faced setback after setback. He lost the 2014 election to the BJP and to Modi’s charisma. He tried again in 2019 but was defeated again even in his own constituency of Amethi. During his period as the Congress’s most visible leader, the party has lost state after state. Its top leaders, many of whom were Rahul’s friends, have either left the party or, at the very least, tried to leave. The consensus is that Rahul will not be able to beat Modi at the next election either.
Given this background, does he deserve so much attention? As the BJP itself has told us, he is not fit to be a leader; in fact, it has said much worse things about him, not all of which can be repeated here. So, if he is such a useless person, then why is the BJP so obsessed with him? Why does it use up so much energy in attacking him?
BJP, a party of obsessions
You could argue that despite the Congress’s dismal electoral performance over the years, one reason why Rahul has such a high profile and still acts as though he is the pre-eminent opposition leader is that the BJP takes him so seriously. No other opposition leader is subject to the kind of scrutiny the BJP subjects Rahul to.
In the early days of the BJP’s Rahul obsession, I used to think that the single-minded focus on the Congress leader was strategic. Perhaps, the BJP wanted to shine a spotlight on him to show Narendra Modi in a better light. But that time has long passed. Nobody regards Rahul as the man who will topple Modi in the next election. So why does anything he says rattle the BJP so much?
My conclusion is that the BJP, despite its shrewd grasp of strategy, is becoming more and more a party of obsessions. Take the BJP’s obsession with Nehru. Once upon a time it may have made sense to rubbish Nehru to discredit his descendants. But that ploy has run its course. Even those who support Rahul today do not do so because his great grandfather, who died nearly 60 years ago, was a great guy.
The BJP’s obsession with Nehru now extends to criticising the freedom struggle. It is entirely valid to say that we have made too much of Nehru and ignored other freedom fighters. But is it necessary to insult MK Gandhi and to praise his murderer Nathuram Godse as Sangh Parivar members have done?
Certainly, it does not help the BJP electorally. The attacks are launched not for sound strategic reasons but because a section of the Parivar has its own bizarre obsessions.
Beyond a point, it only makes sense to go on about the freedom struggle if the BJP believes that the Congress massively benefits from its history as the party of Nehru and Gandhi. But does it really? Does anybody believe that this version of the Congress is the party that Gandhi once mentored? I doubt if the Congress gets any votes on that basis.
There is a logic to going on about the freedom struggle if the BJP believes that its leaders have been insufficiently recognised for their role in fighting the British. But this is not the case. The BJP was only founded in 1980. The Jana Sangh, its predecessor, was only established in 1951. Nobody can reasonably expect either party to have been part of the freedom movement because neither existed before India became independent.
This should be fine. Most parties in today’s India were not around before India became independent. They don’t try and rewrite the history of a struggle they were not around for or abuse those who were. Why then does the BJP care so much?
Why BJP does what it does
Yet such is the BJP’s obsession with creating alternative icons that it strains credulity by hijacking historical figures. Yes, Vallabhbhai Patel and Jawaharlal Nehru had differences. But then so did Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani. That does not mean that Advani did not subscribe to the BJP’s ideology. So it is with Patel who even banned the RSS. And so it is with Bhagat Singh who was a left-leaning (communist even) atheist who had nothing in common with the ideology the BJP now espouses. And yes, Subhas Chandra Bose did fall out with Nehru and Gandhi but he was hardly a Hindutva supporter. He named a brigade in the Indian National Army (INA) after Nehru and after the war it was Nehru who defended INA veterans from persecution by the British.
Even the case of VD Savarkar is complicated. Yes, he was a patriot and freedom fighter who suffered for his views. But to hold up Savarkar as your own icon against Gandhi, you have to explain away too many things: his apologies to the British, his differences with the RSS, his support of beef-eating, etc.
So here’s my point: why does the BJP even bother? People who vote for the BJP support it because they admire Narendra Modi, respect his achievements and perhaps because they believe in a vision of a Hindu India. Nobody votes for the BJP because of anything that occurred in the freedom struggle. Or because the party now glorifies Bose or Bhagat Singh.
The only explanation possible is that on some issues – Jawaharlal Nehru and his descendants, the freedom struggle and Gandhi in particular – the BJP goes beyond strategy and gives in to an obsession. It is an uncharacteristic lapse for a party that is otherwise so pragmatic and worldly-wise.
But it works, I suspect, to Rahul Gandhi’s benefit because it keeps him forever in the news and at the centre of the public debate.
Tuesday 14 February 2023
Sunday 5 February 2023
The Dead Cat Strategy - A Good Way to Overcome Poor Performance
Nadeem F Paracha in The Dawn
On January 27, 2022, former prime minister Imran Khan alleged that the co-chairperson of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), Asif Ali Zardari, had hired assassins to kill him.
Outside Khan’s hardcore group of followers, very few treated the allegation with any seriousness, even though, understandably, the PPP was not amused. Ever since his ouster in April last year, Khan has been churning out one bizarre claim after another in his daily addresses and press talks.
Of course, being a classic populist in the mould of Donald Trump and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, Khan hardly ever provides any compelling evidence to back his allegations. Like his populist contemporaries, he too is more interested in remaining in the news and in Twitter trends. The other reason is to deflect the media’s attention away from the plethora of scandals involving his immediate family, his party personnel and himself.
These scandals have begun to engulf him, now that he doesn’t have the kind of protection that he once enjoyed from the military establishment and the judiciary when he was PM. The scandals have dented his self-styled image of being ‘incorruptible’.
By delivering speeches almost on a daily basis that are studded with sensationalist claims and allegations, Khan is using what has come to be known as the ‘dead cat strategy’ or ‘deadcatting’. Both these terms were first floated in 2013. They are derived from a theory of a political strategist who has a history of working for right-wing parties. This is also the reason why deadcatting is often seen as a strategy that has mostly been applied by right-wing politicians and contemporary populists.
Both the terms are associated with the Australian political strategist Lynton Crosby. Crosby strategised the British populist Boris Johnson’s campaign for the 2008 London mayoral election that Johnson won. Crosby was first appointed by Johnson’s Conservative Party (CP) during the 2005 parliamentary elections, which the party lost.
But after working successfully with Johnson during the 2008 mayoral election, Crosby became the CP’s central strategist. In a 2013 article for the Daily Telegraph, Johnson excitedly explained Crosby’s strategy. He wrote that one of Crosby’s tactics included, (figuratively speaking) throwing a dead cat on a dining table on which people sat talking about an issue that was detrimental to the interests of a politician. So, once they see the dead cat, their attention is drawn away from the issue and towards the dead cat. Now the dead cat becomes the issue.
‘Dead cat issues’ are thus sensationalist, formed to draw the people’s and the media’s attention away from the issues that have become increasingly problematic for a politician. Johnson continued to apply this strategy when he was appointed PM in 2019. As PM, he went on deploying dead cat issues to divert the media’s attention away from the many holes that he kept digging and falling into.
But deadcatting has its limits. There are but so many dead cats one can throw on the dining table. In 2022, becoming increasingly controversial, Johnson was forced to step down as PM by his own party. The media had stopped talking about dead cats.
In 2019, the populist president of Mexico Andrés Manuel López held a press conference to announce that he had written letters to the Pope and the Spanish government, demanding that they should apologise for invading Mexico… 500 years ago. This out-of-the-blue declaration surprised many. Why was a president who had vowed to resolve Mexico’s many problems, now suddenly talking about a 500-year-old invasion?
According to the British political journalist and author Andrew Scott, López had made a sizeable number of promises, which included introducing widespread land reforms, poverty alleviation and the elimination of Mexico’s deadly drug mafias. Failing to deliver on any of the promises, López deployed the dead cat strategy. The ploy was absurd, but it did catch the media’s attention.
However, not everyone was impressed by the president’s ‘bold’ initiative to get the Pope and the Spanish government to deliver an apology for a centuries-old invasion of Mexico, whose main victims were the country’s indigenous Indian communities. The famous Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa suggested that the letters should have been delivered to López himself, because he had done absolutely nothing to better the conditions of the impoverished Indian communities, except churn out populist slogans and display meaningless stunts.
In the early 1980s, when India’s Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) was largely a fringe far-right Hindu nationalist outfit that had no mentionable economic programme, it started to encourage groups who had begun to plan building a temple on the site of a 16th century mosque in Ayodhya. The BJP turned the mosque into a ‘national issue’.
This was BJP’s dead cat that provided it mainstream traction. And so are the claims by the current BJP government, which uses these to keep the media’s attention focused on the so-called existentialist ‘threat’ to India from Pakistan and by India’s Muslims.
Imran Khan has been deadcatting ever since his government started to unravel from 2020 onwards. Some of the favourite dead cats of Pakistani politicians are ‘issues’ of morality and faith. As a PM who was struggling to deliver the grandiose promises that he had made, and facing increasing criticism, Khan decided to declare himself as the leading crusader against Islamophobia.
He started to write letters to the United Nations and other leaders of the ‘Muslim ummah’, urging them to facilitate his idea of formulating a blasphemy law which could be applied internationally. His ministers jumped in, claiming that he was fighting an international ‘jihad’ against Islamophobes and should be hailed for this.
When this dead cat could not distract the media enough, Khan threw in a bigger dead feline, by claiming that the US was conspiring to oust him from power. After being shown the door by a no-confidence-motion in the parliament, he’s been tossing dead cats with increasing frequency.
Recently, one also saw the current finance minister, Ishaq Dar, deploy the dead cat strategy after being castigated by the media for failing to stabilise the economy. He had been brought in as a miracle worker, but his performance has been rather dismal.
Being a Pakistani, he of course began to tweet verses from Islam’s holy scriptures, indirectly suggesting that the failing economy was due to the mysterious ways of cosmic forces. Ironically, rather than diverting attention, this dead cat ended up magnifying his failings.
On January 27, 2022, former prime minister Imran Khan alleged that the co-chairperson of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), Asif Ali Zardari, had hired assassins to kill him.
Outside Khan’s hardcore group of followers, very few treated the allegation with any seriousness, even though, understandably, the PPP was not amused. Ever since his ouster in April last year, Khan has been churning out one bizarre claim after another in his daily addresses and press talks.
Of course, being a classic populist in the mould of Donald Trump and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, Khan hardly ever provides any compelling evidence to back his allegations. Like his populist contemporaries, he too is more interested in remaining in the news and in Twitter trends. The other reason is to deflect the media’s attention away from the plethora of scandals involving his immediate family, his party personnel and himself.
These scandals have begun to engulf him, now that he doesn’t have the kind of protection that he once enjoyed from the military establishment and the judiciary when he was PM. The scandals have dented his self-styled image of being ‘incorruptible’.
By delivering speeches almost on a daily basis that are studded with sensationalist claims and allegations, Khan is using what has come to be known as the ‘dead cat strategy’ or ‘deadcatting’. Both these terms were first floated in 2013. They are derived from a theory of a political strategist who has a history of working for right-wing parties. This is also the reason why deadcatting is often seen as a strategy that has mostly been applied by right-wing politicians and contemporary populists.
Both the terms are associated with the Australian political strategist Lynton Crosby. Crosby strategised the British populist Boris Johnson’s campaign for the 2008 London mayoral election that Johnson won. Crosby was first appointed by Johnson’s Conservative Party (CP) during the 2005 parliamentary elections, which the party lost.
But after working successfully with Johnson during the 2008 mayoral election, Crosby became the CP’s central strategist. In a 2013 article for the Daily Telegraph, Johnson excitedly explained Crosby’s strategy. He wrote that one of Crosby’s tactics included, (figuratively speaking) throwing a dead cat on a dining table on which people sat talking about an issue that was detrimental to the interests of a politician. So, once they see the dead cat, their attention is drawn away from the issue and towards the dead cat. Now the dead cat becomes the issue.
‘Dead cat issues’ are thus sensationalist, formed to draw the people’s and the media’s attention away from the issues that have become increasingly problematic for a politician. Johnson continued to apply this strategy when he was appointed PM in 2019. As PM, he went on deploying dead cat issues to divert the media’s attention away from the many holes that he kept digging and falling into.
But deadcatting has its limits. There are but so many dead cats one can throw on the dining table. In 2022, becoming increasingly controversial, Johnson was forced to step down as PM by his own party. The media had stopped talking about dead cats.
In 2019, the populist president of Mexico Andrés Manuel López held a press conference to announce that he had written letters to the Pope and the Spanish government, demanding that they should apologise for invading Mexico… 500 years ago. This out-of-the-blue declaration surprised many. Why was a president who had vowed to resolve Mexico’s many problems, now suddenly talking about a 500-year-old invasion?
According to the British political journalist and author Andrew Scott, López had made a sizeable number of promises, which included introducing widespread land reforms, poverty alleviation and the elimination of Mexico’s deadly drug mafias. Failing to deliver on any of the promises, López deployed the dead cat strategy. The ploy was absurd, but it did catch the media’s attention.
However, not everyone was impressed by the president’s ‘bold’ initiative to get the Pope and the Spanish government to deliver an apology for a centuries-old invasion of Mexico, whose main victims were the country’s indigenous Indian communities. The famous Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa suggested that the letters should have been delivered to López himself, because he had done absolutely nothing to better the conditions of the impoverished Indian communities, except churn out populist slogans and display meaningless stunts.
In the early 1980s, when India’s Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) was largely a fringe far-right Hindu nationalist outfit that had no mentionable economic programme, it started to encourage groups who had begun to plan building a temple on the site of a 16th century mosque in Ayodhya. The BJP turned the mosque into a ‘national issue’.
This was BJP’s dead cat that provided it mainstream traction. And so are the claims by the current BJP government, which uses these to keep the media’s attention focused on the so-called existentialist ‘threat’ to India from Pakistan and by India’s Muslims.
Imran Khan has been deadcatting ever since his government started to unravel from 2020 onwards. Some of the favourite dead cats of Pakistani politicians are ‘issues’ of morality and faith. As a PM who was struggling to deliver the grandiose promises that he had made, and facing increasing criticism, Khan decided to declare himself as the leading crusader against Islamophobia.
He started to write letters to the United Nations and other leaders of the ‘Muslim ummah’, urging them to facilitate his idea of formulating a blasphemy law which could be applied internationally. His ministers jumped in, claiming that he was fighting an international ‘jihad’ against Islamophobes and should be hailed for this.
When this dead cat could not distract the media enough, Khan threw in a bigger dead feline, by claiming that the US was conspiring to oust him from power. After being shown the door by a no-confidence-motion in the parliament, he’s been tossing dead cats with increasing frequency.
Recently, one also saw the current finance minister, Ishaq Dar, deploy the dead cat strategy after being castigated by the media for failing to stabilise the economy. He had been brought in as a miracle worker, but his performance has been rather dismal.
Being a Pakistani, he of course began to tweet verses from Islam’s holy scriptures, indirectly suggesting that the failing economy was due to the mysterious ways of cosmic forces. Ironically, rather than diverting attention, this dead cat ended up magnifying his failings.
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