Why Arun Shourie is wrong about Modi government
The liberal defenders of free speech in India — who have been vociferous in their critique of the Narendra Modi government — have found their new hero in former Union minister Arun Shourie. The noted journalist found himself a victim of the "luddite fallacy" with the progress of the BJP government and its policies.
For an economist with PhD from Syracuse University, New York, it was a “felicitous call" that suits his time-serving mind and wisdom. Having said that, much like Sudheendra Kulkarni, my respect for him does propel me to make an intellectual enquiry of his "dwarfed and resentful" claims against the present government. Much to the dismay of many of us his remarks on the functioning, nature and leadership of present government demand cultivated response.
From his outburst during the first anniversary of the Modi government, when he sharply criticised the pace of economic reforms and macroeconomic challenges, Delhi election management, reorientation of foreign policy and its follow up and lack of private investment in India.
As he quoted Deepak Parekh in that interview "with not much happening at the ground", he perhaps more likely ignored little later the views from noted industrial personalities like Anil Agarwal, Sunil Bharti Mital, Anil Ambani, Cyrus Mistry, Kumar Mangalam Birla, Jyotsana Suri and Rahul Patwardhan reposing the faith of the industry in the government at the launch of Digital India mission by PM Modi.
He blamed the party's strategy for the debacle in Delhi Assembly elections (2016). What if he is asked about his "strategic collusion" in BJP’s debacle in 2004 parliamentary elections, in which he himself was part of the party's core group.
About his arguments for BJP’s loss in Bihar Assembly elections (2015) due to "high-handedness", he must be "thankful and courteous" to the same team led by BJP president Amit Shah for victory in Uttar Pradesh (2017) after more than 20 years.
In both Delhi and Bihar elections, the BJP’s vote share remained comfortable at 32.2 per cent and 24.4 per cent respectively. Interestingly, historian Ramachandra Guha puts it well for him, “Much of the time Shourie writes or acts as if there is a singular truth, with him as its only repository and guarantor.”
When he compared the present government with "Congress plus cow" and terming the PMO as “weaker than ever” at a book launch event in New Delhi, he was quickly snubbed by the chief economic advisor, Arvind Subramanian, that India is “a pre-cautious development model” in both economic and political sense. To say that the promise of achhe din is more to be identified with the changes in the process of governance, leadership and its policies that are being undertaken under the Modi government, making a clear shift from “policy paralysis” of the previous UPA rule.
About his remarks on the initiative of demonetisation that “doing suicide is also radical”, one can point to the fact of recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecast where India continues to remain a “bright spot” in the otherwise bleak global economic situation.
On political front, the landslide mandate for the BJP in Uttar Pradesh makes the jury and political logic of demonetisation more clear and acceptable.
Given the context of recent Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) raids against co-founder of NDTV Prannoy Roy, Shourie has again raised his fingers to severely criticise the Modi government. To point out, while the criticism by noted legal luminary Fali S Nariman, on the day of the meet at Press Club in New Delhi on June 9, was more on the “questions of legality” on the actions taken by the CBI, Shourie was at his imaginative best making bitter notes against the government and its ministers.
His criticism was limited to comparing the present government with Emergency. Did he face under Modi rule, the infamous Congress drama of 1982 when hundreds of cases were made against a newspaper (The Indian Express), and allegedly under severe pressure from Indira Gandhi, Ramnath Goenka had to suddenly sack Shourie. Perhaps, he forgot to mention that he was one of the foremost votaries of Modi as a prime ministerial candidate of the BJP.
In the same Press Club meet in New Delhi, he asked the media to boycott the ruling government. For a man whose Magsaysay Award (1982) citation said, “He used his pen as an effective adversary of corruption, inequality and injustice”, does it not lead to the question if he stands against the presence of “conflicting views” on policy issues in media?
With no “journalistic space” what would be left for the alternative discourse to come and reflect on his thought. His position contrary to what famous British political philosopher John Stuart Mill (1859) argued to, “if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know be true. To deny this is to assume own infallibility”. Although he gave the infamous example of Defamation Bill (1988) of Rajiv Gandhi government, he failed to acknowledge that the present government has the humility and courage to revise, if necessary in "public interest", its policy measures, as was the case with the Land Acquisition Bill in 2015.
Shourie did not stop here only and by questioning the intellectual ability of senior Union minister like Venkaiah Naidu to, “pen a piece on a sheet of Class 3 standard”, he was rather making a critique of “editorial propriety” of India’s leading newspaper and also more of himself, by being the person who has worked closely with Naidu.
As far as the relationship between the RSS and the BJP is concerned, he said, “Why you think both are different." About this, one can ask what made him to change his position from terming the BJP once as a "kati patang" and his candid support for the RSS to take complete takeover of the BJP. If he thinks both the RSS and the BJP are same, what's the point of making a case for the RSS' role to revive the BJP.
In response to a question by Vir Sanghvi on being part of the Hindutva project, Shourie said, “...being just myself”. By making these quirky remarks Shourie might end up raising more questions than answers on his relationship with the Sangh Parivaar.
It is not that for the first time his position has undergone a change. On July 7, 2003, at the first Dhirubhai Ambani Memorial Lecture in Mumbai, an event attended by President Kalam, Shourie confessed to a have taken a U-turn on Ambani and their business model.
Being a man of wisdom and impeccable intellect, he gave the example of economist Frederick Hayek’s argument that, when rules ossify and become outdated, society starts violating those rules until conditions evolve where new rules come into play. Shourie earlier also had moved away from his position of supporting human rights to approval of state force against internal insurgencies. He once said, "If a state is open and democratic like ours, the monopoly for violence can only lie with the state."
No doubt being an independent citizen of a democratic country like India, Shourie has every right to be critical of the Modi government. But for a person who is counted among leading public intellectual voices of the country, the criticism must be reasonable enough to stand up with facts rather than based on a pre-build narrative. Once a proponent of Nehruvian thought during his graduation days at the St Stephen’s College, Shourie ended up as a leading voice of nationalist discourse in India.
As he explores the relation between faith and reason in his recent book, Two Saints (Harper Collins, 2017), and questions the existence of the all-knowing, powerful and compassionate God, only Shourie knows which way he would lead up based on his knowledge and desire for intellectual enquiry.
But this also raises one more important question as to why the present government needs to think and engage with those who started as well-wishers and are ending up on the other side.
Due to dearth of intellectual opposition from the right-wing school against the claims made by Shourie, one can expect more "intellectual investment" among "new minds and passionate learners", as this ideological divide becomes more scholastic, rather than looking for and building "institutional intellectuals".