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Poor Inder Kumar Gujral! No one will envy his job. He has just as much freedom to
function as a parrot in a cage. He is already a prisoner of the Congress and let
no one be in any doubt on that score. All the talk of a Coordination Committee
over and above a Steering Committee means just this: the Congress wants to
exercise power without responsibility and never mind who exercises such power
Harlots at least provide, some entertainment. The Congress can provide only a big
headache to the prime minister.
Gujral has begun on a poor note. May it be seen that he has had no power to
choose his own government. The cabinet has been chosen for him and he has to live
with it. To suggest that the Gowda cabinet has been retained in order to show to
the world that continuity with the past has been maintained is pulling the wool
over the eyes of the public. The truth is that Gujral has been forced to accept
the status quo. But who, pray, was dropped? Devendra Prasad Yadav, the Food
Minister in the Gowda government. But why? Apparently, DP Yadav fell foul of
Laloo Prasad Yadav. Devendra Prasad and Laloo Prasad are rivals in Bihar state
politics.
And according to reports the former has been hoping to step into Laloo Prasad's
shoes should Laloo he indicted in the ongoing investigations in many scams. So
Laloo demanded Devendra Prasad's scalp and the tragedy is that Inder Kumar Gujral
had to give In. So much for this internal freedom to operate. If Gujral cannot
stand up to Laloo, to whom c-an he be expected to stand up to? Inderjit Gupta
continues to he the Home minister -- a job to which he is most averse. But
obviously that is what Gupta's party wants him to hold -- and that, as the saying
goes, is that.
What consultations within the United Front have shown is that the Front is in a
worse shape than it was ten months ago. All the inner contradictions within the
Front are showing up. The most painful of them concerns the Tamil Maanila Congress
whose leader GK Moopanar was forced to all but opt out of the Front by being
insulted. For the TMC spokesman to claim that his party. is still a part of the
United Front fools nobody. It will be something more than a miracle if the TMC
shows willingness to go back into the fold, though the lure of the kursi has in
the past killed greater resolves.
In fact, the TMC has already gone back and joined the Gujral cabinet, but it will
always be branded as 'Congress-friendly.' What should not escape attention is the
worsening of relations between the TMC and the DMK. The TMC has felt aggrieved
over the fact that the DMK did not support it strongly enough in intra-party
confabulations over the choice of the prime minister. Like everyone else Moopanar
was hoping to don the prime ministerial mantle and now feels cheated.
So here we have a situation in which the DMK and the TMC are at loggerheads and so
are TMC and CPM, CPM and Congress and in fact, everyone against everyone else.
The CPM and the Janata Dal don't see eye to eye, especially over events in Bihar.
The CPI and Telugu Desam are sworn enemies. At the last meeting of the so-called
Steering Committee, the CPI general secretary AB Bardhan brandy told Chandrababu
Naidu, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister: "I am going to Andhra Pradesh on April 29
and I will be criticising your government there." Some 'united' Front, this is!
If they can't get along in the states, how are they going to get along at the
Centre? And consider this: the parties quarrelling among themselves in the states
are propped up at the Centre by another party, the Congress, which itself is not
at peace, as we have noticed in recent times. Sitaram Kesri may believe that he is
running the Congress, when in fact, the party is at sixes and sevens. There is
surface unity, but below the surface tensions are brewing which at some stage can
be expected to blow up. No one can predict how long the dissidents within the
Congress will keep their quiet. Kesri may yet be shown the door.
At the same time it would be foolish to expect the Congress meekly to accept such
policies as will be laid down by the Front in the weeks to come. Policy
formulation will he at two levels. First, the sixteen constituent parties that
make, the United Front will have to agree among themselves at a meeting of the
Steering Committee. Whatever has been agreed upon will then have to be
negotiated-with the Congress in the Co-ordination Committee where the Front and
the Congress will see eye to eye?
The Congress wants to have it both ways: it wants the cake and eat it too. In the
final analysis, it is.. the Congress which, as of now, will have the last word and
will dictate to the United Front. How long will the Left Front parties accept the
Congress dictation, considering the illwill that each harbours against the other?
When will the Left explosion come? An addition to the Coordination Committee, one
understands that there will be a more informal interaction between the prime
minister and the Congress president at which time, presumably, the Congress
president will attempt to browbeat the prime minister. Is this how policy should
be shaped? If all goes well, the Congress can take credit for whatever good has
happened.
But if matters take an ugly turn, then the Congress can claim that it was because
the Front had not accepted its advice. It is a case of heads we win tails you
lose. The strategy, obviously, is to break up by United Front and hold it to
ridicule. Over a period of time it will expose the United Front to grave danger
and if its constituent units do not know it, one must consider them to be more
dumb than they presently seem to be.
Again, it is the same tactic; heads we win and tails you lose. If the policies
adopted by , the United Front (even after they are vetted by the Congress)
succeed, the Front as a whole can take the credit But if they turn out to be
counterproductive, Gujral can be blamed. Gujral probably couldn't care less,
considering that this, at age 78, will probably be his last innings. But what a
way to treat the nation and the people! This is cynicism gone haywire. The BJP is
right, the President should have called for fresh elections. The neat president
may yet find himself doing just that. For the present, one supposes, the nation
will have to put up with jokers.
(The author is a former editor of The Illustrated Weekly of India)
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