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If Teflon has a human face, it must belong to Viswanath Pratap
Singh. Promoted within the Congress Party in the 197a as an
acolyte of Sanjay Gandhi, he fell out with Rajiv by 1986 and
three years later became Prime Minister with BJP support. Today
neither the dynasty tag nor the saffron sticker is associated
with his name.
Like any other intelligent strategist, V P Singh has only one
enemy at a time. During 1987-89, this was the dynasty-led
Congress. Thanks to the scandals megaphoned by him and his Jan
Morcha associates, the "Mr Clean" image of Rajiv Gandhi was
converted to ditchwater. After the 1989 Lok Sabha poll, the
Congress was kept out of power through an alliance between the
"social democrats" and the saffronites. L K Advani became the
Sitaram Kesri to V P Singh's ministry.
Following the approach later accepted by H D Deve Gowda, Singh
tried to cut away the BJP electoral base even while enjoying
power with their support. In around the same number of months as
the Congress turfed out Gowda, the BJP withdrew support from
Singh. In 1996 he took his revenge, ensuring that the DMK, the
TDP and the AGP refused to support A B Vajpayee in his efforts at
crafting a majority. The arithmetic of the 11th Lok Sabha was
such that only an alliance of the BJP with regional parties could
have provided a stable government. As the TDP, DMK, AGP and CPM
faced the Congress Party as the principal foe in their states,
there was very little prospect of their agreeing to give the
Sonia-Sitaram party any share in power.
In the 12th Lok Sabha too, attempts at ministry-formation by the
and regional and other non-Congress parties will encounter
turbulence because of the electoral antagonism between the TDP,
DMK, AGP and CPM with the Congress. Unless the Congress is
willing to commit hara-kiri in Kerala, Bengal, Assam, Tamil Nadu
and Andhra Pradesh, a coalition at the Centre may still elude
them.
Of course, it can be pointed out that the Congress is virtually
defunct in Tamil Nadu, and is likely to get substantially
weakened in Bengal after the Mamata episode. However, despite
this, that party is a natural foe of the TDP and the AGP, while
for the DMK it can at best be a tactical - rather than a natural
-ally.
Should the BJP persevere in its minority-friendly approach, the
regional parties are likely to accept it as a much more desirable
ally than a Congress party, subject to mood swings induced by the
dual structures of Sonia Gandhi and Sitaram Kesri. Indeed, while
VP Singh tried a repeat of the 1989 quarantine strategy, this
time replacing the Congress with the BJP in the isolation ward,
events have shown that this time the attempt has failed. Apart
>from the AIADMK, significant chunks of both the Congress and the
Janata Dal have broken away to ally with it.
After the polls, both the AGP as well as the TDP may join hands
with the BJP, if the Lok Sabha arithmetic is such that otherwise
they will get excluded from a share in national power.
There has been an attempt by some commentators to claim that the
South regards the BJP as a "northern" party, and hence that an
alliance with it will adversely impact on regional sentiments
there. This ignores the reality that it is the Congress under
Sitaram Kesri that has become an almost exclusively "northern"
party, at least in its leadership structure.
Thanks to Mr Kesri's natural desire to converse in the language
of his choice, he has surrounded himself with Hindi-speaking
lieutenants. It is another matter that his party has almost no
presence in several of the states these individuals hail from.
Thus, the advantage that the Congress had over the BJP has been
lost by the Kesri team. Only the "minority factor" still favours
the Congress over the BJP. However, placing Kashi and Mathura on
the back-burner and using dialogue rather than confrontation to
resolve the Babri dispute may neutralise this as well.
The BJP probably needs 200 seats on its own to become the nucleus
of a viable combination. Should the moderate "Vajpayee" strand
in its approach continue into the next year, then this "viability
quotient" (which essentially reflects its acceptability as an
ally) may move to 180 - a figure well within reach.
Even in the 1998 poll, should the BSP and the SP fight separately
in UP, and the Bihar electorate reject the CBI director's
implicit view that Laloo is blameless in the fodder seam, the BJP
may close in on this figure. Should it do so, then intelligent
diplomacy among regional parties may save it from repeating the
1996 fiasco, when the Vajpayee team got not a single extra vote
>from the Lok Sabha, despite being in office.
As in 1996, Tamil Nadu may play a pivotal role in deciding which
combination comes to power. In that state, clean sweeps are the
norm, and the question is whether the incumbency factor is strong
enough to erase memories of the more controversial aspects of
AIADMK rule. The tensions between the DMK and the TMC may affect
battlefield capability, though the final picture is still
unclear. In Maharashtra, the alliance between the Samajwadi
Party and the Congress may not prove entirely positive.
The aggressive "minorityism" of the SP in Maharashtra may drive
more majority voters away from the Congress, while the BSP - if
it contests in the state -can cut into the RPI vote bank and thus
impact adversely on Congress prospects. Thus the West and the
North appear to favour the BJP, while the South is likely to give
a boost to the Congress.
Had the Sonia Gandhi formula been accepted by Kesri and Mamata
won over, the East too would have seen a much better Congress
performance than in 1996. However, that party is today framing
its policies in response to inner-party disputes than the
challenges outside.
Thus, in the "alliance" phase of the 1998 battle, the BJP is
still the front-runner. However, it is not end-December but end-
January that will be decisive in fashioning the outcome of an
election gifted to the country by the Sonia-Sitaram Congress.
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