Interview transcript: BJP’s Arun Jaitley

This is an edited transcript of an interview with Arun Jaitley, the general secretary of India’s Bharatiya Janata party, by James Lamont, the Financial Times’ South Asia bureau chief, and Sunandan Roy Chowdhury in New Delhi on Thursday 7 May 2009.

FT: Who will win the parliamentary election when the results come out on Saturday 16 May?

Jaitley: Logically, a Congress-led government looks difficult. The numbers don’t add up. Congress committed three big, big errors. The Gandhi family is a pampered lot. They have only dealt with people at their beck and call. So they can do it to their own party men, who will stick and lick around. They can’t do it to say Prakash Karat (of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). They can’t rule four and a half years on his strength, then backstab him and drop him in the penultimate hour and then say ‘Sorry sorry Prakash. You are a good boy’ and then ‘Prakash, come back’. A Congressman will come back.

The same goes with Congress’s approach to Nitish Kumar. ‘I’ve said good things about Nitish then he will look at me better’. This is a result of this foolish pampering that Congress has done to the Gandhis.

FT: How well will Congress do?

Jaitley: I think the Indian media suffers from a feudal mindset. Pampering the Gandhis in that manner is completely inconsistent with the support base they have on the ground. Over the last 13 years, from 1996 to today. The post Rajiv Gandhi elections – the Sonia Gandhi phase – the Congress which used to ordinarily get 300 to 400 seats in the Lok Sabha is now in the 112 to 144 range. So they’ve never even been able to touch 25 per cent of the seats in the Indian parliament for elections. I’ll tell you this one will be less than the 144 that they got before.

FT: What makes you so sure?

Jaitley: As if the whole of India is enamoured with Congress! That is not the reality. Except in the two Left Front states where Congress may do better in Kerala and Mamata Banerjee will do better in Bengal. The Congress has 6 seats in Bengal and it will remain like that. Except in those two states, the normal pattern is non-Congress parties are doing better than the Congress and its supporting parties. So you will have the TDP, AIDMK doing better. You will have the National Democratic Alliance doing better. In state after state where that happens the Congress numbers won’t add up even if you pushed Samajwadi party and the Left on their side.

FT: Who will ally with whom at the end of the day?

Jaitley: No responsible political combination thinks on those lines: I will drop Mamata Banerjee and take the Left. I will drop DMK and take Jayalalithaa. Because I’m a Gandhi I can get away with this betrayal. Already the Prakash Karat betrayal is going to cost you. The day they betrayed Karat I was the happiest man because the Karat/Congress combination was a determined combination against me. Now my enemies are now fighting or backstabbing each other.

FT: Was ditching the Left over the US-India nuclear deal such a bad mistake?

Jaitley: I thought Manmohan Singh wrote down his political obituary when he betrayed the CPI (M). There can’t be a Congress government at the centre without the Left. This time even with the Left the numbers won’t add up.

FT: So the search for new partners is futile or suicidal for congress.

Jaitley: There’s a difference between ally handling by us and then. We have one difficulty. My ally feels if I ally with you I may lose my minority vote that’s what my allies think. On the contrary our relationship is consistent in power-sharing. We allow our ally to rule the state and our strength is significant in their states so they cant’ rule without us. The Congress is not liberal in power sharing. The allies they are trying to poach from non-Congress constituencies are fighting the Congress tooth and nail in their own states. They are trying to form government even with Chandrababu Naidu. Chandrababu’s numbers in the state assembly won’t add up. If Naveen Patnaik falls short will the Congress give up their role and put him in for three months. Naveen occupies the non-Congress space.

FT: Will you alliance lose Bihar’s Nitish Kumar to Congress?

Jaitley: “India has this convention of roadside Romeos. If I like this girl, I’ll start chasing her. So I go round her class, her home and she goes back in the same bus.”“The joke in India is that someone asks: ‘How is the relationship going?’ The boy says: “It’s 50 per cent complete. It’s 100 per cent on my side and she still has to look at me.”

That’s Nitish and Congress. So the Congress Nitish relationship is 50 per cent okay. At least Congress is ready.

In the BJP and the political system Nitish and I are very close friends. Every time I go to campaign in Bihar I see him. I announced his name as chief minister before JD(U) did. I helped him contest his entire election in every sense, from the alliance, from the seat sharing. Every time I go to Patna (the capital of Bihar), I go to him. So on the way back to the airport I drop into his house. He’s in Delhi, he drops into my house for dinner.”

Last time I was there, he said: ‘This is ridiculous. They are trying to put words in my mouth. I keep denying it every day.” Nitish is a very sober politician. He’s grown up in an anti-Congress tradition. So where’s the question of Nitish looking at them.

FT: Is Rahul Gandhi being naïve or astute by reaching out to many potential allies post-poll?

Jaitley: You are still being trained to play the cricket league in England. You are not ready for county. But because of the feudal mindset of Congress you’ve been asked to represent the country. And when you do that, you are out of your depth.

The man is yet to make one meaningful statement in the last five years. He can’t be comfortable on a serious subject without being handed a piece of paper to read. He’s learning. I’ve no difficulty. He’s entitled to it. But then you have to grow. You make foolish mistakes. In one go you almost send Mamata Banerjee back to us. And I’ve been maintaining Mamata is the most vulnerable in that campaign. No Congress or Third Front formation will take place without the Left.

FT: Could Mamata come back to you?

Jaitley: Mamata stands opposed to where the Left is. On these numbers, there cannot be a Congress or Third Front formation without the parties of the Left.

In the first round, I looked at the CPI (M) stronghold. They could be down 20 in Bengal but not down 10 per cent. My exit polls still give them a 4 per cent lead.

FT: How do you judge Manmohan Singh’s management of the economy over the past five years?

Jaitley: Manmohan Singh is the best politician India has seen. I can’t say the same about him as an economist.

I think he’s a great politician. He’s never won an election. He doesn’t contest elections. He’s not capable of winning an election. He’s incapable of campaigning. He’s incapable of winning mass activity.

That’s what democracy is about. Without doing any of these things to become a prime minister for five years and aspire for another five years, you have to be an outstanding politician. And then to maintain a Teflon image - I’m not a politician. I think he’s the cleverest post-independence Indian politician.

He’s not a leader. He was a good finance minister. He’s a terrible prime minister. He was a good finance minister because he was executing the policy ideas of another leader Narashima Rao. He just can’t take a decision.

FT: But as an economist?

Academically he knows the subject but he can’t implement what he knows. Because he’s not a leader, he’s a bad implementer of economic decisions. He inherited the economy when the boom period was there from 2004 to 2007. The economy grew because of the impetus from decisions taken from 1991 to 2004. A lot was attributed to global boom and a lot of it was entrepreneur driven. He has been pocketing the credit.

When the crisis came, he collapsed.

And when he collapsed, he collapsed so badly that now he says if I become Prime Minister again in 100 days I will fight the slowdown. That’s always the slogan of the opposition. In the first 100 days I’ll do this. The government in power can’t say this. The government in power has to tell us what it did in the last 100 days. And he won’t tell you a single step he will take in the next 100 days.

FT: What didn’t he achieve?

Jaitley: There was huge potential for infrastructural improvements in India. He picked up the most corrupt people and put them in charge of infrastructure departments as ministers. And that itself has led to a slowdown of infrastructure. Of our highways, our ports. Telecommunications is growing because the economy is growing and the operators are making it grow. But he did his best to prevent it.

For the last 150 days, the country has been without a finance minister. Look at what Barack Obama and Gordon Brown are doing. This man can’t come on television and give a simple economic statement to arouse the confidence of the nation. He can’t appoint a finance minister for 150 days at the peak of the slowdown. A finance ministry official told me there hasn’t been a meeting of the finance ministry officials since 1 December after P. Chidambaram left to decide any issue.

FT: But Manmohan Singh did bag the US-India nuclear deal. Wasn’t that an achievement?

Jaitley: I thought he wanted a place in history. And he thought to himself I must leave some footprint behind. And that was the only one he could think of. I am not so sure today I cannot say that whether Pakistan will be free of Taliban or whether it will be completely ruled by Taliban. With out closest neighbour possibly under Taliban control and in control of a nuclear state, I’m not so sure that Manmohan Singh will be judged favourable for the nuclear deal from India’s point of view.

FT: Has the nuclear deal tied your hands?

Jaitley: The issue is that the India-US relationship should not be seen through the prism of the deal. We have China and Pakistan. And therefore we need a certain amount of a nuclear deterrent. In any case, the deal has no bearing on domestic Indian politics. The deal cost Congress the friendship of the Left. Though we opposed the deal we vicariously got an advantage. It broke up our opponents.

FT: What is your opinion of the Bofors corruption investigation being dropped?

Jaitley: Bofors is the only corruption case in India that has reached the doorstep of the prime minister. The deal was very simple. Trials by the Indian army preferred a French gun. After five trials, it preferred this gun. The sixth trial changed the preference to Bofors.

Before the fifth and sixth trials a company called AE Services entered into a contract with Bofors promising to get them the Indian order on 31/3/86 and being entitled to a kickback. The contract was signed on 24/3/86.

AE Services got the commission. The closest friend of Sonia Gandhi Ottavio Quattrocchi was AE Services. His name being AE Services is proof. The name was conveyed by the Swiss to India in 1993 and the document was given in 1997. According to me, it’s an open and shut case.

FT: But Quattrocchi will go free.

Jaitley: In 1993, he was allowed to escape by a Congress government out of India. His extradition was sought when he was in Malaysia. Malaysia doesn’t cooperate with India over extradition. Extradition is no proof of innocence. Manmohan Singh lied to the whole country when he said he had won the extradition case. Daoud (an fugitive Mumbai mafia boss) isn’t being extradited. That would mean that Daoud is innocent.

So when the Malaysians refused to extradite him. The Indian government moved to the Supreme Court. Between Friday and Monday - there was a weekend - this man absconded for a second time from Malaysia. That’s a victory in his favour. Then he arrested in Argentina. The Argentine court said it was a prima facie case. The government of India must ask the Argentine Supreme Court for permission to bring him to India. The government of India sent a message to the Indian ambassador saying it was a costly exercise therefore we should not pursue this in the Supreme Court. The accounts that were frozen…the Assistant Solicitor General goes to London and tells the Crown prosecutor to release the accounts. That’s the whole case.

FT: Does India need electoral reform to bring in a presidential model?

Jaitley: India is too diverse. There are religions, castes, languages and regions. The present system is bringing instability but the present system at least ensures that all the diversities are represented in the Indian parliament. The closest we came to a presidential system was when Indira Gandhi was prime minister and she became a bad dictator. I wouldn’t like to discuss absolute power in an India without accountability to the party or to parliament.

FT: Has the destruction of the Babri Mosque, the Gujarat riots and communal violence in Karnataka and Orissa dented the appeal of your party?

Jaitley: I tell you if you’ve seen in this election we’ve tried to restrict ourselves to governance issues. The economy, security and leadership. That’s been our track record in government. There are contradictions because of complexities in India and we have to live with them.

FT: What would you do in your first 100 days?

Jaitley: Focus on security and the economy.

FT: Were the Mumbai attacks handled badly?

Jaitley: I think it was terrible. Just look at our foreign policy. Pakistan and the Taliban, Nepal and the Maoists, Bangladesh is a Hujji centre and the LTTE in Sri Lanka. We have fire all around.

FT: How would you have responded differently?

Jaitley: It showed how poor our intelligence had become and how weak our security response had become. In the attack on parliament at least we liquidated the terrorists on the spot. The whole of idea in the militants’ mind that two of my boys can hold the Indian army for four days is a terrible feeling.