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© 2012 Sanjeev Sabhlok's revolutionary blog
JP and I go back a long time (since 1999 or possibly, early 2000). We had a particularly long 4-day interaction in January 2004 when he attended a conference I had organised in Delhi to discuss India's Liberal Political Strategy: 2004 and beyond.
At that time JP agreed that the Swatantra Bharat Party of Sharad Joshi offered a potential liberal alternative but did not personally want to get involved in politics. About 2 1/2 years later he had changed his mind (about not joining politics). That was an excellent decision.
I spoke with him about the Freedom Team (that I had proposed in 2006 and started in December 2007) sometime in early 2009. At that time he was focused on getting support for assembly elections. FTI member Shantanu Bhagwat had separately raised funds for LS in London.
For long I thought that LS could be a potential vehicle for FTI members to join after necessary thinking and agreements had been undertaken. However, while some FTI members joined LS and a few LS members initially joined FTI, the enagement did not go far – till now.
Fortunately, that has changed. On Thursday 9 February I was able to meet JP and had a long discussion with him, explaining the goals of FTI and how it was designed to overcome the shortage of high quality leaders. Should LS be found suitable, many FTI leaders may well join LS – giving LS a much-needed boost. We also noted some (slight) differences in strategy and some policy differences, but agreed that we are working in much the same direction and there are tremendous synergies between LS and FTI.
JP agreed that LS members should consider joining FTI. He is effectively (in my eyes) a member (honorary) of FTI now as well, but given time constraints will directly participate in FTI meetings across India, instead of participating on the internal FTI forum.
He has now issued relevant instructions, including by twitter. This is a very good outcome for India – that leaders who will offer India a modern, accountable government are now aligned, and will work together to resolve any strategic/policy differences. I expect both LS and FTI to grow strongly now, in the coming years.
a) Tweet 1
@JP_LOKSATTA Jaya Prakash Narayan Had a good meeting with Sanjeev Sabhlok of Freedom Team India.
b) Tweet 2 All Loksatta members willing to contest elections may please join http://www.freedomteam.in & participate in the annual conference on Feb 18, 19.
The photo below was taken by a driver at Andhra Bhavan. (Note that my eyes are severely burning/paining and hence squinting. Unfortunately this problem shows no signs of going away.)
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Glad to know, Sanjeev. I will be in India from June onwards and would be very happy to participate in this work. I can't wait to take this work forward!
Fantastic, Harsh. I too look forward to your shoulder (and initiative) being applied to this herculean task.
If there was one thing on top of my wishlist of news on “how ethical politics could graduate from splinter efforts to a united force”… this is it.
Atlast we began…
This is a very positive development and I am very pleased to know that FTI and LS are planning to work together. Because FTI has been preparing good leadership with limited grassroot level involvement and
LS has established some basic structure and visiblity at local grasstoot level atleast in AP,TN and MH (from what I read from their websites) but with limited number of good leaders
this way both complement each other and make a very good team.
I have arrived at this blog a few months ago when I was searching for Loksatta and Jago party. I knew about LS and JP being from AP for quite a few years and I have been following his team’s ideas and work etc
I arrived at the posts( in this blog) which talked about why both of them (LS and JAGO) will fail etc. I found the analysis good, but felt that the argument about approach
1) first get good leaders to agree on a strategy and then mobilize volunteers and public suppot
Vs
2)first get grassroot support establish foundations and look for leaders
bit difficult to buy
because I feel both are important and need simultaneous action .. that is because, From 2006 to 2009 Jp was trying to attract leaders to Loksatta without much success, partly because of lack of visibility, unless the people of the state know about the existence of a party for long enough they are not convinced to vote for a particular party the first time it comes to them, they want to try and test and have to get out of “the i am loyal to this party so my vote will always be for X party whatever they do” mindset. Once the party made foray into elections there was this seriousness about its existence as a party and it attracted some good leaders even after the elections. So I believe LS entry into electoral politics though wasted a lot of money and resources, was a necessary step. Also I believe a first time entry into polictics is a very difficult thing to aim for being able to win elections and form the government. This is because the election results are as JP quoted many times not in direct relation to the merit of the candidate as a good leader but so many other factors. Even if good sense prevails in general the last two days before elections people get very polarised with caste/region etc.
The best thing LShave done was to project that Loksatta’s idealogy is open for discussion,argument, and change based on the members of the party through internal democracy. So loksatta has not isolated anyone who differs with JP to be a part of loksatta . The evidence is from the blogs
http://lspleaders.wordpress.com/2011/11/19/jetti-ravi-wardhannapet-warangal-interview/
which try to give some exposure to other leaders in the party who are less known. Also I listened to many interviews/videos/live interactions on youtube most of them in telugu(so I am not posting the links here).
He always mentions I alone can do nothing and Lok satta will succeed IF and only IF all concerned citizens accept it as a platform and make it their own fight.But definitely I agree that lok satta though has some good leaders, it still needs more than that.
I think uniting the discrete efforts of all concerned citizens with common goals but very diversified opinions about the methods to achieve these goals is a VERY important step in achieving that goal. I laud your effort in this direction.
Dear Bindu
Re: 1) first get good leaders to agree on a strategy and then mobilize volunteers and public suppot Vs 2)first get grassroot support establish foundations and look for leaders” bit difficult to buy because I feel both are important and need simultaneous action”
Please note that JP’s is not the first such attempt at grassroots work. Sharad Joshi’s Swatantra Bharat Party (SBP) of which I was member of the national executive for a while was a far earlier avataar with 10 times more popular support among farmers. And YET SBP could not gain many seats (it got MORE seats in Maharashtra assembly than LS: two, and one seat in Rajya Sabha – so it was FAR MORE successful than LS.
I proposed FTI as the solution AFTER having done what JP is currently doing. And failed. That won’t work. It can’t work. Never. You don’t start digging for a skyscraper before finding the architects, engineers, designers, builders. All efforts to do ‘ground work’ without first having the the detailed blueprint AND leaders is going to miserably fail at the hustings. Jago party’s work is a recent example – of tens of lakhs of rupees being squandered without any realistic chance of forming national government.
One of Jago’s members – Surya Loonkar, told me on the phone a few days ago that FTI won’t succeed within the next 5 years. That’s possible (but not necessarily true). That Jago won’t succeed in the next 100 years is, however, far more true.
Do NOT waste resources on ground work till you have the right people on board, and these right people agree to key policies. Today Jago wants to give capital punishment for ‘corruption’ (without defining what constitutes corruption), and LS wants to prohibit liquor consumption. These ideas are not compatible with a liberal society. Unless such ideas are ironed out FIRST, there is no chance of these parties working together in a sensible manner to get 300 seats in parliament.
So, Bindu, FTI is the FIRST step towards reform. It is a platform for leaders who will debate and agree on (a) the policies and (b) the message. Only then should ground work be undertaken.
There are 60 crore voters. We don’t have the capacity to reach out to 60 crore voters without a clear and simple message taken to each constituency by TOP QUALITY leaders. So let’s not rush, but prepare.
Without homework, all efforts to reform India will fail.
s
If the liqour policy happens to be the difference, I am sure it can be ironed out pretty easily.
Because JP has repeatedly clarified about this in many interviews. (I am not able to find the exact link to post here. ) Loksatta has never advocated for liquor prohibition but only said it wanted effective regulation in the sale of liquor.
This includes :
1) Closing down illegal liquor shops (without license to run a shop).
2) Regulating and restricting the total number of shops and the duration for which they can remain open based on some effective control mechanism.
3) Enact the existing legislations against mixing methyl alcohol and illicit sedatives and hypnotic drugs (chloral hydrate) which is happening almost every where in Andhra pradesh (and probably many more states). This is dangerous and may lead to the death of the person consuming such liquor.
4) Make it illegal to distribute free liquor as a freebee to lure voters to vote for a particular party and enact this legislation effectively.
The process of auctioning license fee for liquor shops and giving license to the highest bidder has the following drawbacks. ( Almost 1 lakh rupees per day in rural areas is the license fee)
To get returns and significant profits from the sale of liquor the shops, need more customers and more sales.
To ensure they have more customers, they are sponsoring free liquor on behalf of political parties so more people get addicted and sell it at a higher price after elections/addictions.
The alternative policy proposed by lok satta seems agreeable to any liberal ideology, I have seen a post in this blog which said a restriction by a government can be justified only if a person is doing grevious damage to themselves.
Thanks, Bindu. There is merit in what you have noted. The way out is for all leaders who are going to contest elections to iron out differences prior to making policy announcements to the public. That is what FTI is trying to do. This issue will surely get resolved on the FTI forum.
I appreciate the importance of what FTI is trying to do and realize that it is very necessary for us all. I wish you all the very best.
Thanks, Bindu. Pl. spread the word and help India find the leaders it deserves.
Sure, doing a bit by posting these updates directly to my facebook wall. I will definitely discuss this with a potential FTI joiner, if I happen to come by one. For now,I am volunteering my time for loksatta.
All LS leaders (i.e. those who are going to contest elections) should join FTI, as a first step.
I am not a LS leader contesting elections,i.e. (only executive members are eligible for internal elections in LS)
I am not residing in India and I am a part of the organisation called “people for lok satta” which is a overseas chapter of LS involves those who cannot directly participate in the electoral politics but they are working on improving the prospects of LS leaders contesting elections in India by working on related issues, Spreading the message, creating awareness and visibility and funds where possible to LS in India.
Please visit http://www.peopleforloksatta.org/ and http://www.peopleforloksatta.org/CPP/index.php?option=com_content&view=frontpage&Itemid=7 to know more.