Interview: PM Modi is hallucinating; Oppn might throw up a surprise candidate: RJD MP Jha

Among the most vocal members from the Opposition bloc in the Rajya Sabha, RJD MP Manoj Kumar Jha has often decried disruption of parliamentary proceedings, stating that it only allows the government to evade being held to account for its lapses. Yet, Jha believes that raucous disruptions by the Opposition over the Manipur issue in the recently concluded Monsoon Session of Parliament were inevitable.

In a free-wheeling discussion with The Federal, Jha speaks about a wide range of issues, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s lack of sensitivity on Manipur and his attack on the Opposition over corruption, dynasty, and appeasement politics, even as he underscores the challenges before the Opposition’s 26-party INDIA (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance) coalition ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

Q. How do you view the recently concluded Monsoon Session of Parliament?

Frankly speaking, I would consider this session in particular as one which I would not want to have again, ever, in my parliamentary career. This session was summoned in the shadow of what was happening in Manipur. What we witnessed first-hand during the visit of our INDIA delegation was alarming and unprecedented but in Parliament I didn’t see the sensitivity that was expected from the ruling party. Instead, the government took refuge in trivialising through the rule book our demand for a discussion on a serious issue.

This is not what Parliament is meant for... I must also tell you that even some members from the BJP thought that Parliament must have the longest possible discussion that would send a positive and conciliatory message not just to Manipur but to any other area that could erupt like Manipur. Unfortunately, our presiding officer and the government chose to, as I said earlier, trivialise the issue through the rule book.

Q. You have often differed with other members of the Opposition on using disruptions as an instrument of floor strategy to corner the government. Have your views changed now given the current government’s history of resisting discussions on any issue flagged by the Opposition?

I still maintain that going to the Well and disruptions should be avoided till you can breathe freely but if that doesn’t happen, as I firmly believe it did on Manipur, there is no other way out for the Opposition to demand answers from the government. I do not wish to quote again what the late Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley used to say about disruption as a legitimate tool in Parliamentary strategy. I would rather quote Hiren Mukherjee (Communist stalwart Hirendranath Mukherjee) who said disruption should be avoided at any cost but then, I repeat, we were under the shadow of Manipur and that made the situation very different.

Q. The government had said on the first day of the session that it was open to a discussion but the Opposition did not agree on the rule under which the discussion should be held. Was the Opposition not being stubborn?

Let me tell you, after about 8 or 9 days of the session, because of the obstinate stand of the government to have only a short-duration discussion, it was the Opposition that wanted to provide an alternative way forward. We told the Leader of the House (Piyush Goyal) that since a debate under Rule 267 is not acceptable to the government and a Rule 176 debate is not acceptable to the Opposition, let us have the discussion under Rule 167. Rule 167 provides for a detailed discussion on a commonly agreed resolution. I must make this very clear that the government agreed to this solution. Why it later went back on its word, I have no clue.

Q. But Piyush Goyal is on record saying he gave no such word.

I was part of the meeting in which he said the government is agreeable to a discussion under Rule 167. He even wanted a second meeting to finalise the wording of the resolution without further delay. If he met one or two Opposition MPs later and changed his stand, I have no idea. We provided an alternative route, the government agreed but then, to our surprise, it went back on its word.

Q. Was it because you were still adamant about that the Prime Minister must make a statement on Manipur in the Rajya Sabha?

The reason we wanted the PM to speak was not about being adamant. He is my PM too; the Opposition doesn’t have a separate PM. The issue before us was that the silence of the PM, the PM of the largest democracy in the world was complicating things in Manipur. A few words of sympathy, commitment to justice and compassion would have helped the PM’s stature, not the Opposition. I repeat, speaking up would have been more beneficial for him than for the Opposition.

I do not know who advised him not to speak but I can say whosoever advised him did him no favour. When we visited Manipur and went to relief camps of both sides – the Meitei and the Kuki; both sides had one wish – that the PM should speak because they had lost faith in the state government and they were not satisfied with the way the Centre had been responding to the situation even after the home minister’s all-party meeting.

Q. The PM spoke on Manipur during his reply to the no-confidence motion in the Lok Sabha. Were you satisfied with his response?

Forget what the Opposition thought of the PM’s reply; even his vocal supporters were not convinced. Let us be very clear – this no-confidence motion was not to unsettle the government because everyone knew very well that we did not have the numbers. The motion was purely and singularly to make the PM speak.

There are two things every parliamentary democracy in the world must remember – there is a legislative majority and then there is a moral majority. This instrument of no-confidence was brought in the House so that the PM takes the moral majority route. Yet, the ridicule, the jokes, the mannerisms that the PM chose to hide behind – frankly it doesn’t behove a PM to conduct himself in such a manner and that too on an issue of such great sensitivity. Every single PM of the country – from Jawaharlal Nehru to Manmohan Singh, via Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Atal Behari Vajpayee and others – had an Opposition but they never demonised the Opposition. This PM did it and that too during a discussion that demanded a show of statesmanship, compassion and solidarity.

Just imagine what the women in Manipur would have thought when they heard the PM’s speech. Instead of digging the past through unverified facts, alternative history and WhatsApp forwards, the PM should have spoken with the sincerity that the subject demanded. One day, he will not be the PM and those who evaluate him will not rate him positively on the yardstick of compassion, harmony and justice.

Q. The PM’s reply and also interventions by the home minister and others from the Treasury Benches seemed more focused on attacking the Opposition’s INDIA coalition.

During the Emergency, Indira Gandhi had a brief moment of hallucinations regarding the Opposition – that the Opposition was being funded by foreign forces; that the Opposition was a threat to national security, etc... The PM today has a longer association with such hallucinations and I see a paradigm shift in his views at a more violent level ever since the INDIA coalition came together.

We are a political formation which has no personal enmity with the PM but one that merely seeks to provide an alternative model of governance to the one you have given in nine years. Yet the PM’s language against the Opposition is so full of expletives and expressions which are normally associated with a wartime scenario where two nations are pitted against each other. If ever there is a book written on lowering of public discourse in Indian history and it has 12 chapters, 11 would be dedicated to the PM and, perhaps one, due to our reaction to his words, to the Opposition.

Q. The Prime Minister’s attack on the Opposition continued in his Independence Day speech. How do you respond to his scarcely veiled attack against the Opposition on corruption, dynasty politics and appeasement?

When the PM spoke of laying the foundation for the next 1000 years for India’s governance, I was reminded of the Third Reich and this is why I am worried about who is writing the PM’s speeches. Fact of the matter is, when he says nepotism or dynasty, we remember the whole album of nepotism on his table. I do not want to start naming individuals but just look at the rank and file of the BJP, the Union ministers and you will know the PM’s hypocrisy on dynasty politics. On corruption – everyone knows the double standards.

The PM speaks in Madhya Pradesh of corruption about a particular Opposition leader and then, the very next day, that leader joins the BJP’s government in Maharashtra. The PM’s problem on corruption is that only till the so-called corrupt person is not part of the BJP, he is corrupt. Even ordinary people have started looking out for who the PM calls corrupt and how much time it takes subsequently for that person to join the BJP. In Parliament’s central hall, where MPs across political lines meet and speak, even BJP members have begun to mock the PM’s stand on corruption and dynasty politics.

Q. The PM made an interesting pitch on appeasement, pitting it as an antithesis to social justice. This comes at a time when the INDIA group, which constitutes several parties that have had social justice as their fulcrum, is pushing aggressively for a caste-based census while at least some of its constituents, such as your party, have also been very vocal about attacks on Muslims and other religious minorities by groups affiliated to the BJP and the Sangh Parivar. How do you see this appeasement versus social justice plank panning out?

Let me refrain from going into details of the hollowness of the PM’s talk on appeasement and speak only about one issue – the caste census. The PM spoke about Vishwakarma Yojana to benefit OBCs. The PM knows very well that the only demand of the OBCs across India is the caste census and it is not an unjust demand. There is an aspirational youth from the OBC community that wants the reservation ceiling to go up because the previously mandated ceiling on 50 percent reservation has been demolished by the Supreme Court’s verdict upholding a 10 percent quota for the economically weaker sections (EWS).

To respond to this aspirational youth, you need scientific data and the only way for that is a caste census. The government formed the Rohini Commission for sub-categorisation of castes, defying all logic because you didn’t even have data on caste. The wisdom index of people advising the PM on these matters – dynasty, corruption, appeasement – is zero. The PM is being dishonest about his commitment to OBC welfare, in particular, and his rhetoric on appeasement in general.

Q. The BJP and even neutral political commentators have mocked the electoral feasibility of the INDIA coalition. Would you not agree that there is merit in the argument that many of the members of your alliance are simply not compatible as electoral allies?

I completely agree that there are incompatibilities but these incompatibilities notwithstanding, when your goal is clear you have a compelling reason to come together. The challenge before the INDIA coalition, of course, is to overcome these incompatibilities to an optimum level. At any time in our political history when we have fought a regime that appeared invincible and parties tried to come together to defeat it, these incompatibilities remained. It was at a greater level in 1977 when there were parties that opposed Indira Gandhi but, at the same time, they also couldn’t see each other in the eye. Yet, they came together.

Q. The INDIA constituents are scheduled to have their third meeting in Mumbai on August 31. You all have had two meetings so far but it appears like you are trying to delay answering the tricky questions of who would lead the alliance, your seat-sharing formula. Will the Mumbai meeting take up these substantive issues?

The first meeting in Patna was to come together and start talking. At the Bangalore meeting, the agenda was to develop camaraderie. When we meet in Mumbai, I think we will move to the next stage. Contrary to what the BJP and a section of the media may want, we are not bothered about who will lead the alliance merely to answer this ill-premised ‘Modi versus Who’ narrative. We have so many other issues that are way more important – what is the alternative vision we can provide, do we want a leadership of one person before whom no one else can speak or a leadership of first among equals, what is our agenda, our policy prescriptions.

Remember the 2014 election – what was the agenda the BJP presented: 2 crore jobs, controlling food and fuel price, high growth, zero corruption. People responded to that agenda and in 2019, maybe, they thought of giving the PM another term because the promises were big and required more time for implementation. Now, two terms later, those promises have proved to be pipedreams. Our blueprint should be to provide an actionable agenda of inclusive development, micro-level interventions with a timeline and so on. Rather than leadership and seat-sharing, what India needs from the INDIA parties is a progressive program and vision.

Q. The BJP, in the past two elections, succeeded precisely because it was able to turn the election into a Presidential style contest by asking Modi vs Who. You seem to suggest that such a contest won’t work now because Modi’s record as PM in terms of governance and fulfilling promises hasn’t impressed voters.

The PM’s work, his demeanour, the track record of his government and the conduct of his own party have all become liabilities. We needn’t be bothered about a Presidential-style contest because we will fight him and the BJP on the basis of our vision and programs. On personality, there may even be a situation wherein the issues and programs we identify may, by themselves, throw up a leader that might surprise everyone and, maybe, the PM may have no axis to hold on to.