Chanakya neeti of divide and rule is Goa BJP’s secret weapon of 2017

Very few in the Goa BJP’s current crop of leadership would have read Kautiliya’s Arthshashtra, the most definitive treatise on politics and economics during the rule of Chandra Gupta Maurya. This treatise was based on knowledge acquired by the great Chanakya, (Kautilya was also one of Chanakya’s names), son of Rishi Canak and advisor to Chandragupta Maurya of the great Gupta dynasty. The seat of this knowledge was in the legendry Takshasila (Taxila) university, which led to the four elements of ruling laid down in the Arthshashtra, saam, daam, dand and bhed (motivation, money, punishment and lastly divide & rule). Bhed is also defied as stealth or the secret weapon.

In battle ground South Goa, deeply steeped in ancient traditions and philosophies the beleaguered BJP has no option but to bring some of Chanakya’s learnings at Taxila to the table if it wants to get something out of its 2017 election campaign. While it is short on saam, (motivation), and has ways of using daam (money), it has fully pocketed dand and bhed as its non negotiable instrument for a shot at power. It has deftly used dand (punishment) as a power tool using old cases to drag Congress politicians to police stations, the Crime Branch and the Anti Corruption Branch and to jail and will continue to do so. The manner in which it pounced upon the Louis Berger bribery case to send Alemao to jail and was on the  brink of doing the same to Digambar Kamat, till a series of interesting circumstances led to the former Chief Minister getting a judicial reprieve  and stay out of custody, is a superb manifestation of the BJP’s dand weapon.

While the case against Churchill Alemao and Digambar Kamat is well founded with the extent and quality of the investigation, it is very likely that the Goa government will calibrate the intensity of its investigations to suit its immediate political exigencies. And that is the tragedy. Left to its self, the initial evidence borne out of the statement made under Section 164 of the CrPC, by “those who carried the suitcases”, the common euphemism of the act of bribe giving makes it a virtual open and shut case and must be concluded, to give a semblance of confidence that bribe taking is a punishable offence even for Chief Ministers and Ministers. The irony though is that the BJP’s limited objective of humiliating and scaring Digambar and Churchill may have been achieved and it knows that the theory of Dand in Arthasashtra is about wielding the threat of punishment which is more potent than punishment itself.

Similarly, the questioning of Luizinho Faleiro and Pratapsingh Rane on the issue of allocation of plots to companies wanting to invest in the Special Economic Zones during the Congress tenure, is a part of the same philosophy. An FIR was lodged against “unknown persons” for the fraudulent manner in which GIDC plots were allotted to companies. Then the Chairman of the GIDC Babu Kavlekar was probed and summoned to the Anti Corruption Branch on several occasions but the then Chief Minister Mr Rane and the Industries Minister Mr Faleiro were never brought into the ambit of the investigations. In fact the ACB on several occasions was frustrated because the GIDC, consisting of some of the very same officers who needed to be probed was holding on to officially releasing the names of officials who were in-charge during the tenure under probe. Therefore the timing of summoning of Mr Rane and Mr Faleiro the Leader of the Opposition and the Goa Pradesh Congress Committee president, respectively is politically suspicious. The questioning was actually advanced right before the polling for the civic elections throughout the State.

Here again, an investigation into the manner of allotting the lands to the companies without doing due diligence on whether they were not fronts for real estate operations in the grab of setting up manufacturing companies, is not even needed since the High Court has explicitly stated that the allotments were done “in a manner not known to law”. The SEZ companies have gone to the Supreme Court against the High Court order, and the government is using this as an excuse for not forcing the companies to give the lands allotted to them back to the government. Shockingly the former Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar even spoke of doing a backroom deal with the companies to release 70% of their land and keep 30% of the land allotted to them if they carried out activities according to the State’s industrial policy. In effect, what the government was planning to do was allow those who were allotted lands fraudulently to start businesses on 30% of those very lands, because they were returning 70%. Remember the former Congress government isn’t doing this but the present BJP government. Therefore investigating Mr Faleiro and Mr Rane is farcical, when the earlier Parrikar government was willing to do business with the same companies Messers Rane and Faleiro had apparently invited “in a manner not known to law”. (to quote from the High Court order). This is therefore another instance of the BJP Government merely dangling the sword of action against its opponents with no interest in the specific case itself.

Now let’s come to Chanakya’s fourth principle of governance and politics, bhed or divide and conquer. BJP understands that the sentiments of South Goans will show a gradual to a rapid shift against the party before 2017. The only way it can get seats, especially in Salcete is prevent a unified opposition. If the Congress cannot consolidate its forces, then the opposition space may well be taken by a citizens group. The BJP is now playing in these muddy waters by trying to create rebel forces who will split votes. They will emerge officially as anti BJP fronts but will end up doing enough to allow the BJP to squeeze through. It appears that the first laboratory experiment has happened in the Cuncolim civic elections.

Cuncolim became a battle of the unwanted. Its MLA Rajan Naik was cold shouldered and removed as the South Goa Planning and Development Authority, to get in the Congress turncoat maverick Mauvin Godinho. Meanwhile Joaquim Alemao fielded his panel in these civic elections after the Congress made it clear that the 2017 ticket would go to either Cleophas Dias or John Monteirro. Thus the split was achieved as both Joaquim and John fielded panels and the former got 4 seats and the latter two. It is now learnt that the BJP pulled strings to get independents and others to back Joaquim Alemao so that he can take over the Cuncolim Municipal Council and emerge as a middle force which will dent the Congress in 2017. The sudden appearance of friend turned foe of Alemao, Mario Moraes in Alemao’s press conference to support him and the immediate declaration of Moraes as Vice Chairperson, was not quite a spontaneous innocent democratic act. It had the stamp of BJP’s divide and rule strategy. If Alemao splits the anti-BJP vote, the BJP candidate (it may not be Rajan Naik) will have an edge even here.

Junior Alemo, Yuri is applying the same formula is Sanguem where he has literally given Sanguem MLA Subhash Phaldesai a walkover in the civic polls. Junior Alemao, who lost narrowly to Phaldesai in the 2012 assembly elections, isn’t going to be the Congress white knight in 2017. In situations like this the BJP is known to move right in and prop up a third alternative to slit votes. It is no secret that it was the BJP which funded Churchill Alemao’s Save Goa party which achieved its limited objective of felling Congress heavyweights Francisco Sardinha in Curtorim and Luizinho Faleiro in Navelim.

It remains to be seen which way the unpredictable Mickky Pacheco goes. His recent statements have pointed to him moving out of the BJP stable, out of deep disappointment over the ruling party not doing enough to prevent his journey to jail and not giving the cabinet berth vacated by him to his Goa Vikas Party colleague Caitu Silva. But these are early days and what goes on behind the cover of contrary statements is known to those who feel the pulse of political manipulations. Today’s critic is often tomorrow’s foot soldier.

The weapon of stealth is therefore out of BJP’s sheath and into the big wide open. Chanakya or Kautilya would have been proud.