The aam aadmi doesn’t care about the N-deal

When the debate on the nuclear deal degenerated last week into counting the votes of convicted murderers to save the Government and analysing whether a Lok Sabha MP would sell for Rs 10 crore or Rs 25 crore, I went in search of the aam aadmi. Not just because I needed a break from the dark and dirty doings in Delhi’s political circles but also because the aam aadmi or common man has been the mascot of the Government that could fall next week. Every time the Government has been in trouble it has evoked the common man. Sonia Gandhi did it again last week at a rally in Nellore where she explained her understanding of the nuclear deal. It was being signed so that the common man could be spared the daily power cuts that he is forced to endure. Tricky. But easier I suppose than explaining to rural Indians the existence of the international nuclear club and strategic equations in a post Cold War world.

Anyway, off I went in search of the common man. The first common person I spoke to was buying vegetables in a Delhi bazaar. Had he heard of the nuclear deal, I asked using the Hindi words parmanu karaar for it. He said he knew nothing about it, but when I explained that it could become the main issue in the next general election, he told me firmly that the only issue for him was prices. He could not remember a time, he said, when they had risen so fast and it was ruining his monthly budget and future hopes. My first common man was illiterate, so I next sought out a more politically aware, socially concerned common man who reads a Hindi newspaper everyday. What did he think of the parmanu karaar, I asked and he said, “I don’t think about it because I don’t understand it. What I understand is that potatoes cost more than Rs 20 and dal costs so much more than it did a year ago that people can barely afford to eat it now. Something has to be wrong with Government policies”. Everyone I talked to complained about high prices and said they understood nothing about the nuclear deal. At the end of a morning of vox populi I, a passionate supporter of the nuclear deal, was forced to concede that the common man could not care less.

In my humble opinion this shows the Prime Minister in an even better light. It exalts him from the status of diffident politician to courageous statesman. Politicians are called leaders by you, me and the common man because we expect them to lead when it comes to taking unpopular, un-populist decisions. Very few show themselves up to the task. But, whatever his other failings nobody can charge Dr Manmohan Singh with not showing leadership at a time when our major political parties of the Left and the Right have ganged up to force him to back down.

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You only need to analyse the reasons the Left and the party we should now call the Hindu anti-nationalist, Bharatiya Janata Party, give for opposing the deal to know that the reasons are flimsy and juvenile. The Left opposes the deal because it thinks that a stronger strategic alliance with the United States is bad for India. It is not. And, the party of Hindu nationalism opposes it because it thinks India is such a defeated, pathetic little country that one treaty is all it takes to make us subservient in perpetuity to the world’s sole surviving superpower. It is important for me to point out that this is the view only of the BJP’s top leaders. Rahul Gandhi told the truth when he said last week that he knew younger MPs in the opposition supported the deal. I can confirm that many older BJP MPs do as well, as do MPs in the smaller parties that constitute the NDA (National Democratic Alliance).

If they are allowed to vote according to their conscience, next week they might vote with the Government without needing to be paid Rs 10 crore for their votes. It is sad that at the finest moment of his political career the Prime Minister should need to seek the votes of jailbirds and other bad men whose two-bit parties appear to exist mainly to turn into extortionists when the going gets tough. What an ugly bunch they are with their one and two seats and their big, big greed now that they accidentally have a historical role to play. If the Government falls next week, pray that we do not end up with some new Deve Gowda as prime minister. If it survives, pray for the deal to go through.