I campaigned extensively in my constituency, Hazaribagh, for three-and-a-half months, during which I covered 10-12 villages a day. I covered areas I hadn’t been to for 20-25 years as they were Naxalite-affected. Sitting in Delhi, we are completely divorced from the ground reality, and this applies to the media as well. Issues vary from towns and villages to industrial areas. My constituency has villages, two major towns and a large coal belt. The pitch has to be different in each of the three areas. In the villages, the issue is the famous bijli-sadak-pani, education, electricity and women’s issues. You can’t lecture them about Pakistan or economic policies. You sound foolish. You have to respond to their demands. They sensed a lack of credibility in me and in the political class in general. They asked me if I would return only after five years. In the bazaars and towns, I spoke of state and national issues and President’s rule in Jharkhand. That rang a bell. In the coal mine area, the most important issue was the Provident Fund interest rates which had cost me the last election because I reduced it from 12.5 to 9.5 per cent. The UPA government reduced it further to 8.5 per cent and that has stood me in good stead in the coal belt. There, the issues are of pollution, dust, working conditions. People come back in the evening laden with black dust. Varun Gandhi was no issue there. Other major national issues don’t concern them. Ottavio Quattrocchi and Bofors, for instance, are not issues in rural areas. In urban areas, they would be. Price rise and kerosene were issues in rural areas. As for terrorism, it’s all about local terrorism, Naxalism. But they don’t like to hear anti-Naxalite talk either as they could be punished for even hearing such talk.

•Dhiraj Nayyar: The BJP has raised the issue of tax havens and black money. Most of our FDI comes from Mauritius and that’s legitimate. Has your party made that distinction? How do you plan to address the issue of bringing the money back?

There is a lot of confusion on the Mauritius issue. The Mauritius route was opened for FDI and FII investment by Manmohan Singh in the 1990s and it has continued. But several things have happened since then. One is that we are not short of foreign exchange. We don’t have to go out and attract foreign exchange from anywhere under any circumstance. The second is that after 9/11, a movement started against terrorist funding in IMF, ADB etc. This led to a movement on behalf of transparency and tightening of laws. So the situation has changed. The third thing is that after the financial crisis, there is greater awareness of slush funds playing a destabilising role in the global economy, which is why the G20 demands greater transparency. I believe that India should have been leading this movement for transparency in international transactions—which means, making tax havens more transparent. Taxation is a sovereign responsibility. With regard to secrecy in banking laws in various countries, we are in a better position to demand that secrecy laws should go and we be told whose accounts they are. No Indian account in Swiss banks is likely to be legal. If it’s legal under Swiss law, then it is illegal under Indian law. So there is a case for taking up this issue strongly. We have to involve the IMF and G20.

•Unni Rajen Shanker: Has Hindutva stopped being an issue?

As far as my constituency is concerned, I didn’t raise the Hindutva issue. Nobody said I should raise the issue.   

•Manoj C.G.: On the Indo-US nuclear deal, the BJP has maintained that the 123 agreement is not in India’s national interest and they will renegotiate it. But recently, L.K. Advani said it can’t be disregarded. What prompted this change?

I haven’t met Mr Advani after that statement. But we will review it when we are in the government. It is a treaty between two nations and such treaties are not easily rescinded. Basically, what he said was that the BJP’s position and the government’s position will be reviewed after we get into the government. There are lots of steps remaining before the agreement is implemented, for example, an amendment of the Atomic Energy Act. An option for the next government would be to let the treaty lie for a while, or, after examining all aspects, take a step forward. I remain convinced the deal is not in India’s national interest.  

•P. Vaidyanathan Iyer: While you have Advani as your PM candidate, you also have voices supporting Narendra Modi as the next PM.

For this election, Advani is the candidate. Through a natural process, Narendra Modi has emerged. Earlier, we were talking about Arun Jaitley, Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj, Venkaiah Naidu, Pramod Mahajan. These were the second-generation leaders. No one was talking of Modi but whether you like it or not, he is the most popular campaigner for the BJP today. In my constituency, there was an insistent demand from the party people to get Modi. He has emerged, and it’s not through dynasty or conspiracy. So, if some people feel he should be the candidate after Advani, there’s nothing wrong in it. In Ahmedabad recently, I said he will make a good PM. He’s the natural choice for leading the party whenever the opportunity comes.   

•Anandita Mankotia: In the telecom sector, what would your broad strategy be and how would it be different from what it is now?

It would be very transparent, whatever bidding process we adopt. This government’s procedures have not been transparent. It’s a scandal of huge proportions—the manner in which the spectrum issue has been tackled. Even if this government does something in the next couple of weeks, it will have to be reviewed by the next government. 

•Shekhar Gupta: On the nuclear deal, did the UPA do enough to communicate with the BJP. Were you given sufficient respect? 

The answer is no. They woke up to it very late in the day. When the famous statement between Manmohan Singh and George Bush was signed in July 2005, even people in the government were not aware of it. It was a hatchet job. When they came back and started working on the nuts and bolts of the agreement, that was when they should have consulted us. But they kept taking one step after another without taking the main Opposition party into confidence. They did not share the 123 Agreement with us. I hold the Left parties, especially the CPI(M), responsible for the nuclear deal going through. Why? Let me give you the background: it all started with a lunch at JD(U) leader Digvijay Singh’s place. Sitaram Yechury and Natwar Singh were present. I told Yechury that I wanted to discuss the nuclear deal with him. He agreed. Natwar Singh, Digvijay Singh, Yechury and I then agreed that since we were opposed to the deal, we should adopt a common approach. I suggested that Parliament have a resolution on this issue. Yechury said, ‘Fine, work out a draft’. I showed the draft to my leadership and sent it to him. A day or two later, we met at Natwar Singh’s residence and discussed it. Some changes were suggested. Everyone took it back to their respective parties. Then we decided that in order to have a majority, we must involve the Samajwadi Party. Amar Singh was all for it.  This was during the 2006 Monsoon Session of Parliament. We decided that we would meet with the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha and tell him about this on the first day of the session. We met but the absentee was Sitaram Yechury. In Parliament, he said he had been held up in traffic or something like that. I then suggested he tell the Congress party about our resolution. He went to talk to Pranab Mukherjee but returned to say that a resolution is not acceptable to the Congress and they will not budge an inch. Then I said we won’t budge either and let’s go ahead with the resolution. But the CPI(M) did not support the resolution and we did not have a majority in Rajya Sabha. If that resolution had gone through, the government would not have been able to go through with the nuclear deal. And why didn’t it go through? Due to the recalcitrance of the CPI (M). Apparently, Yechury had been warned that there was some statement Pranab Mukherjee made in West Bengal about the CPI(M) hobnobbing with the BJP. That put the cat among the pigeons.  

•Shekhar Gupta: Were you aware that the nature of your opposition to the nuclear deal was completely different from the CPI(M)’s?

Yes. There was no meeting of minds with regard to the approach. But the objective was common; that the nuclear deal could not go through.   

•Shekhar Gupta: So the Opposition could not make common cause against the ruling party. By the same logic, BJP and Congress can’t talk. This kind of untouchability, when there are no majorities, brings governance to a standstill.

Basically this arises out of the theory of untouchability in Indian politics. BJP is an untouchable. If anyone touches us, the other also becomes impure, because we are communal, bad, some kind of virus.  

•Shekhar Gupta: At this point, Naveen Patnaik and Nitish Kumar who have been BJP allies are not seen as untouchable.

They might have gone to bed with us, but the moment they get out, they become pure. If I were to leave the BJP today I’ll become as lily white as anyone else. Anyone who departs regains the purity. Somebody with the BJP or in alliance with the BJP is untouchable. But it isn’t as if we don’t talk. We talk in Parliament, in the lobby, in the Central Hall, and we spoke to the Congress regularly, on every important issue, when we were in Government. We accommodated their wishes. Mr Vajpayee would speak with Sonia Gandhi. We needed the support of Congress on various progressive legislations that were passed by NDA: the money laundering bill—I got it passed in Lok Sabha. I took it to Rajya Sabha, where Pranab Mukherjee made some very valid points of how the provisions of the bill could be misused by an insensitive political set up. I saw merit in that. You don’t have the majority to ride roughshod and that’s the beauty of the system, that it forces consultation. I missed the absence of this consultation in the past five years. The tragedy was as long as the Left was supporting this government, it couldn’t even take our help.  

•Dhiraj Nayyar: What are the lessons you have personally drawn for India from the current economic crisis? Are you satisfied with the current government’s approach to the multilateral process at G20?

I would say that apart from the financial crisis, we have a domestic crisis of our own making. There’s a huge fiscal deficit of 10 per cent. The permanent damage to economic management, contrary to Manmohan Singh’s persona, is unbridled populism. This is a race to the bottom: the farmers’ loan, education loan at 4 per cent, housing at 6 per cent, income tax exemption up to 3 lakh, Rs 2 kg rice and wheat. Not a single attempt has been made to rein in subsidies. On the multi-lateral process, we should have been leading from the front. We haven’t come out with anything worthwhile on strengthening the IMF.

•Shekhar Gupta: Did you ever get a sense that the CPI(M) was willing to accept some version of the nuclear deal?

No. They wouldn’t have accepted any nuclear deal. As Advaniji had said, their basic objection stemmed from their anti-Americanism. That’s where it was completely at variance with our approach.

•Shekhar Gupta: Did you get the feeling that the Congress would have been more open in consulting you if it wasn’t for the fear of the Left?

No. I think the Congress only tried to complete the formalities of consulting us towards the end of it, when everything had been done and there was a fait accompli. Also, Manmohan Singh made a major miscalculation: he thought if they could tackle Brajesh Mishra (former National Security Adviser), they had tackled the BJP.

•Raj Kamal Jha: You said there was a direct line between Vajpayee and Sonia Gandhi. When the UPA came to power and that line broke down, was it because there was no corresponding relationship between Sonia Gandhi and L.K. Advani or was it because of Dr Singh?

It is entirely the responsibility of the government of the day to reach out to the Opposition. Democracy is all about consensus. Mr Vajpayee fulfilled that duty extremely well. When there was the issue of Indian troops going to Iraq, Sonia Gandhi wrote a letter to Vajpayee and subsequently took credit for the fact that it was her letter which had stopped Mr Vajpayee from sending the troops. Nothing of that kind was true. But the fact remains that after he got the letter, Mr Vajpayee invited her to discuss the issue.

When Vajpayee wrote letters to Manmohan Singh on the Pakistan issue, on Hurriyat traveling through POK into Pakistan, Manmohan did not invite Vajpayee for a discussion. There has been a difference in approach which makes me believe we have been far more democratic. The Opposition did not get its due from the Government and that’s why there has been such lack of consensus on many issues over the past 5 years.

•Surabhi Agarwal: The BJP’s manifesto has been surprisingly quiet on disinvestment. At a time when tax revenues are falling and the deficit is widening, BJP talks of increasing the threshold on income tax exemption as well as giving a blanket exemption to other groups.

If you have a competitive race for populism, why should we lag behind? In the five years of the UPA government, populism has become the order of the day and it is tragic it should happen under Manmohan Singh who famously said in 1991 that the day of free meals was over. Dr Singh has made many U-turns in his life.

Transcribed by Neha Sinha