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Eight months after the country was supposed to have entered the
brave new era of coalition politics with all the "secular" forces
having united to keep the "communal" BJP at bay - Indian polity not
only continues to slide downwards but also its plunge is becoming
speedier and more dismal. The Congress party's change of stance
towards the ruling United Front is ominous enough and speaks loudly
for itself. The Congress Working Committee has bluntly told the
Deve Gowda government that the Congress support to it will no
longer be "general and unconditional". Henceforth, it will be
"issue-based" which really, means that, the Congressmen, lusting
for getting their grubby hands on power and office yet again, could
bring the UF government down on any issue of their choice. No
wonder, the CWC has let it be known that during the coming
parliamentary session there would be at least eight occasions when
the rug can be pulled from under Gowda government's feet.
It is no less significant that Sitaram Kesri and his cohorts have
also bluntly told the UF that the forthcoming budget must conform
to the economic policies of the previous government, or else. The
clear meaning of this is that unless P Chidambaram follows exactly
in Manmohan Singh's footsteps, the Gowda crowd could be given
marching orders rather like daily wage earners. Surely, there is
some symbolism in the announcement that Kesri and other
office-bearers of the Congress parliamentary party will hold a
daily "strategy session".
Serious though all this is, it is less worrying than several other
developments of a grave nature. The Congress party's bombast that
it is not afraid of mid-term elections to the Lok Sabha is not one
of these. For it does not matter whether the Gowda government goes
or stays or whether the President grants dissolution Of the Lok
Sabha or refuses to do so.
The real and lasting damage to the Indian political system has been
done by the outcome of the recent elections to the Punjab assembly
and a series of Lok Sabha byelections. This has been aggravated
moreover by the manner in which various constituents of the United
Front have worked overtime to give coalition politics a bad name.
Coalitions may have become unavoidable under existing
circumstances. But all concerned - the Congress as much as the
various members of the UF, whether they have joined the government
or not have conspired to make sure that a coalition government is
not viable.
What is one to say about the state of affairs where even the most
urgent decisions cannot be taken because even the smallest group
can hold them up, where decisions eventually taken can be promptly
denounced by cabinet ministers supposed to be parties to them, and
where the CPI(M), arguably the most influential member of the UF
though not a participant in the government, is threatening to
launch a countrywide agitation against the government's economic
policies? Those inclined to claim that no one should be unduly
worried about this "creative confusion" are talking tommy rot.
There is nothing creative about the situation, while the confusion
is getting worse confounded by the day.
An ironic twist to the bizarre scene is that the two communist
parties, the CPI(M) and the CPI, are engaged in bitter
recriminations over their respective roles in the Punjab elections
which brings one back to the after-effect of the crucial assembly
poll in this sensitive border state that was the venue of the
virulent Sikh insurgency for nearly a decade.
It is gratifying that Punjab at last had a fair and peaceful
election with very wide participation by the people. The previous
election in 1992 was boycotted by the Akalis which alone made it
possible for the Congress to come to power on the strength of only
20 per cent vote. An even greater source of satisfaction is that
the wildly extremist forces of Sikh communalism, represented by
Simranjit Singh Mann, have been defeated.
But this can in no way obscure the uncomfortable reality that
Punjab has reverted to the old-style combination of moderate Akalis
and the BJP which means a strengthening of communal forces among
both Hindus and Sikhs. The alliance between the two may be a
safeguard against communal tensions but no guarantee that extremism
would not return.
Against this backdrop the overriding significance of the Punjab
election is that all parties other than the Akali and the BJP,
including the Congress, the various constituents of the United
Front, and conspicuously the two communist formations, have been
soundly thrashed. In other words, the entire combination of the
so-called secular forces has had a serious setback. The plight of
the BSP supremo is also pathetic. Punjab has arrested his advance
which had made him insufferably arrogant. His attempt to secure
the BJP support in UP to make Mayawati the chief minister has also
come a cropper. He has now announced that he would "go it alone"
which could mean that the UF might be one adherent less.
It is the Congress party however which has come out the worst from
the Punjab poll. The responsibility for this lies squarely on
Kesri and his cohorts. But in characteristic Congress style they
have deflected criticism by appointing a committee to explore the
cause of the Congress defeat. But is this any help to the party
which has ruled the country for 45 of the last 50 years and now
appears to be in irreversible decline?
As if the hammerblow in Punjab was not enough, the Congress under
Kesri has dropped a heavy rock on its feet also at Chhindwara in
Madhya Pradesh. In Rajasthan, the wily Bhairon Singh Shekhawat,
the BJP chief minister, has neatly turned the tables on the
Congress by persuading a veteran Congressman to change sides and
inflict defeat on a highly respected leader of his former party.
To have put up Kamal Nath at Chhindwara, in the mistaken belief
that the constituency remained his fiefdom, was idiocy of the first
order.
On top of all this there is the Congress party's crisis of
leadership. Kesri's delusion that he had entrenched himself as the
Karta of the faction-ridden Congress lies shattered, along with
Narasimha Rao's life-size cut-outs. The list of Kesri's critics
within the party is growing. The latest to join it is Sharad
Pawar.
Pawar has lambasted Kesri for being run by a coterie of "three
Mians (Muslims) and one Meira", the reference being to Tariq Anwar,
Ghulam Nabi Azad and Ahmed Patel on the one hand and to Meira
Kumar, on the other.
However, Deve Gowda will be ill-advised to try to draw any comfort
from Kesri's discomfiture. The Prime Minister's own prestige has
taken a very hard knock. In the assembly constituency in Karnataka
that he had vacated on becoming Prime Minister, Gowda's nominee has
suffered a humiliating defeat. In short, Indian politics has become
the proverbial hamam in which everyone is naked.
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