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Act one of the deadlock drama has ended in a Shakespearean tragicomedy.
Although Congress president Sitaram Kesri has successfully extracted his
pound of flesh in the dismissal of Prime Minister Deve Gowda, he has
indeed emerged as the Shylock of the political play being enacted in
Delhi. But then Mr Gowda is no innocent Antonio. Emerging as the martyr
and charmer at the end of Act One, the fumble harmer promises to "rise
from the dust", and dominate the polity with his new-found hubris.
Will Act Two see the rebirth of Mr Gowda as a successful hero who claims
to have "faith in destiny", and witness the unseating of Mr Kesri?
Although some section of the TV audience may clap at the occurrence of
such an eventuality, history would not only he turning 180 degrees but
in fact contradicting itself. Therefore, the outcome seems highly
unlikely. Additionally, the unfolding of the drama is bound to involve
several other players in the centre-stage, and thus the eventual
marginalisation of the present protagonists.
Marginal Role
What about the third player? Indeed, where is it? In these trying
times the BJP has really been relegated to a marginal role. It faces a
strange dilemma: so near, yet so far from power. Although the
Congress-UF impasse raises its hopes, yet the remotest possibility of a
patch-up dampens them. Indeed the hope is also mirage-like: even an
invitation from the President will most likely end up as Mr Atal Behari
Vajpayee's famous fortnightly tryst with destiny. And since a second
repeat of history usually ends in a farce, real hope only lies in
mid-term elections. Therefore, even if the BJP leaders are eyeing
political power greedily, the more realistic bosses running the RSS are
cautious: they have rather shrewdly begun gearing up for mid-term polls.
Despite the eloquence of Mr Vajpayee and the acquittal of Mr Lal Krishna
Advani in the hawala case the BJP has been reduced to a marginal role.
Why? The immediate answer is its low numbers - a mandate of just
one-fifth of the electorate and about 200-odd seats, together with its
allies, in the Lok Sabha. But why the incapability to increase its
numbers? Because of its non-secular image especially after the
destruction of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. The significant question
then is, if the Congress could rebound into power just five years after
it declared an Emergency and being popularly perceived as a dictatorial
outfit, why can't the BJP five years after its historical blunder?
The real reason is that politics, even in a celluloid world, is only
partly about image-building and mostly about innovative and consistent
agenda-setting. Unfortunately, the BJP campaign managers have put too
much emphasis on soundbites and too little on creating an alternative
vision of politics. Thus while Mr Manmohan Singh with his five
consecutive budget presentations and Mr Chidambaram with his latest one
clearly upstaged the BJP's previous USP as liberalisers, the latter,
because of a set of inconsistent policies on issues like Enron, could
not even cash in on its latest innovation, the Swadeshi strategy.
Take the case of the BJP's experience with coalition politics. Although
its alliances with Samata Party in Bihar, HVP in Haryana, Akali Dal in
Punjab, and BSP in UP have decidedly borne fruit, its latest strategy of
floating a 'national democratic front' with a common minimum programme
sounds like a borrowed idea bound to conflict with its centralising
goals. It has yet to evolve a policy of decentralisation and devolution
of power to the states. In fact, Ms Uma Bharati's vituperative attacks
on Dr Farooq Abdullah on national television gave away the recent
ambiguity among the party leaders on the issue of autonomy to J&K.
So is the BJP's muddle over Mandal. Ever since Mr V P Singh created the
platform of social justice a la Mandal, the third front has been cashing
in on it. In fact the BJP's kamandal was widely perceived as a ploy to
defeat the purpose of Mandal. Such a headstrong position on reverse
discrimination has not only checked the deepening of BJP's mobilisation,
but has given rise to internal contradictions within the party,
essentially along caste lines.
Consider the revolt of Mr Shankersinh Vagela in Gujarat, and the Kalyan
Singh versus Kalraj Mishra rivalry in UP.
Political Agenda
Although the Congress-UF alliance is facing perhaps its worst crisis,
between them they not only occupy the maximum political space (70 per
cent voter support along with the Left Front) but have shown an uncanny
capability of defining the main political agendas of the country. The
BJP, the most organised of the lot and with the added advantage of all
hype and hoopla, has largely remained a prisoner of an empty cultural
nationalism, an agenda without flesh and blood. Hindutva might appear
as the ideology of the largest community but it fails to provide goodies
to any single community. The basic failure to see politics as a system
of distribution of public goods has relegated it to the margins.
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