HVK Archives: End of an experiment unity as a front, fear as a creed
End of an experiment unity as a front, fear as a creed - The Times of India
Vidya Subrahmaniam
()
16 April 1997
Title : End of an experiment unity as a front, fear as a creed
Author : Vidya Subrahmaniam
Publication : The Times of India
Date : April 16, 1997
India's first federal government has collapsed - not in the first week
as widely predicted but a full ten months later, when it had seemed here
to stay, when it had unexpectedly gained in respect. By the time the
government exited, people had begun to look anew at coalition politics
and the richness of variety it promised; even sceptics were grudgingly
accepting that for governance to succeed it didn't have to be overly
centralised. That the catastrophe occurred by courtesy a party
desperately in need of a pep pill to shore up its morale is known, of
course.
Marshmallow Soft
And yet, if the Congress was primarily responsible for ending an
interesting experiment, the Front constituents must equally share the
blame for hastening the process. The United Front coalition which gave
the appearance of being rock-steady has turned out to have been
marshmallow soft, its panic-stricken constituents unable and unwilling
to take a long-term view of unfolding events which in the end proved all
too overpowering for them. For the Front, the bottomline in any fight
with the Congress should have been preservation of its identity and
federal outlook, without either of which it loses its raison d'etre.
But if this required meeting the challenge head-on, the Front did the
very opposite by capitulating in a manner that is bound to have left
even the Congress shell-shocked. Contrast the earlier bravado of Front
functionaries with their current quit-cry form.
The Front put up a breathtaking show of solidarity for 12 whole days."
Not now, not ever," was its war-cry to all questions on a leadership
change. Front spokesman Jaipal Reddy who led the shouting brigade can
possibly be forgiven for posturing for that is his job, but what
explains the charade enacted by others, beginning with Mr Laloo Prasad
Yadav? His walking stick twirling menacingly in the air, Mr Yadav had
dared the Congress to seek the removal of Mr Deve Gowda; leadership was
an internal party matter, he had thundered. If Mr Yadav's pluck that
penultimate day was deserving of a gallantry award, his counterpart from
Andhra Pradesh was no less heroic the next day. Speaking to waiting
journalists a precise 12 hours before, he, Mr Yadav and others
collectively decided to sacrifice Mr Gowda to appease the Congress, Mr
Naidu had aggressively repeated the line about the UF leadership being
non-negotiable, about the Front preferring elections to manipulation by
the Congress.
The Front leaders not merely backtracked on a principle which they
claimed was central to their survival but plotted to have Mr Gowda
removed in a most ungracious manner, even as some of their colleagues
were applauding him in Parliament. Or were they? Mr Chidambaram
certainly did not. Fielded to defend the government, he instead spoke
of rising from the ashes, of a rosy future with the Congress. In other
words, he was himself voting out his government. Worse, the Front
constituents would have actually liked it if the man they had sworn by
for 12 days running had gone quietly, without a fight, without having
his say. In the event, Mr Gowda, who was left alone to defend himself
and his government on the floor of the House, exposed the ambitions of
not just the Congress but of his own allies who had defeated him even
before he could be formally defeated.
What was it that prompted the UF constituents suddenly to decide that Mr
Gowda was dispensable? Fear of elections, we are told. No quarrels with
that. Mr Chandrababu Naidu is understandably worried about the fallout
of his liquor policy, Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mr Laloo Prasad Yadav
have the newly fortified, ascendant BJP to reckon with, while Mr
Karunanidhi and Mr Moopanar would rather not test Ms Jayalalitha's
electoral strength. But this ground reality did not manifest itself
overnight, it stared them in the face all through the fortnight. The
truth is that the Front factions panicked seeing that the Congress
wasn't coming apart. But things don't quite work out that way in the
Congress. The decibel level of the murmurs within the Congress was
gradually growing when the Front hastily threw in the towel. This was a
signal for Congressmen again to close ranks. After all, why should the
Congress oblige the Front when in its abject surrender it saw its own
flourishing future?
Further Incursions
The point in all this is not that Mr Deve Gowda had to stay. He could
go, but it was not the Congress's place to say so. Having once allowed
another party to breach its sanctum sanctorum (for which read the
decision-making mechanism) the UF cannot now stop further incursions
into its territory. Two months into a fresh pact with the UF, the
Congress may decide that it doesn't like the new man in, a not unlikely
happening in a situation where the Congress extends support from outside
as it is once again expected to. After all, the Congress did not pull
out of the old arrangement only so it can wait in the wings forever and
more. Sooner rather than later it has to find a fresh reason to
extricate itself from its commitment to the UF. For on that route lies
power. And when that happens, few tears would be shed, indeed, the
Front will have lost the goodwill it had painstakingly built in its
earlier tenure. By then, time would be also ripe for the BJP to occupy
the political space left behind by the squabbling partners. For the UF,
an additional handicap then would be the exit of the Left, which despite
its overbearing manner was in the end a far more reliable ally.
Consider the alternative scenario. The Front constituents hold firm on
the floor of the House and follow it up with a letter to the President
reaffirming their unity. The collective impact of the act would have
been many times what Mr Gowda single-handedly achieved with his dramatic
declamation in the Lok Sabha. Congressmen are mortally scared of
elections, much more so than the Front, and the closure of all other
options would have been too fearful a prospect for them not to
reconsider resuming the alliance on terms fixed by the Front. Even
assuming things didn't work out that way, the Front could have at least
gone to elections with its head held high.
Had the UF constituents looked at the Front as a long-term investment,
their labours may not have yielded fruit immediately, but in time they
could have jelled into a cohesive, viable future option for all parties
sharing the Front's vision of a truly federal state. A party like the
Akali Dal, which has thrown in its lot with the BJP more for want of a
non-Congress alternative than because of a shared ideology, would have
been a natural constituent of such a broad-based front.
Arbiters of Power
The UF constituents must understand the extraordinary position they
occupied in the outgoing government; they enjoyed the kind of autonomy
and powers that can never be theirs in a centralised set-up. The Front
chief ministers, regional satraps usually relegated to the margins of
decision-making, functioned as full fledged arbiters of power, something
they cannot even dream of as affiliates of the Congress or the BJP.
Indeed, that reason alone dictated that the Front prepare itself for
autonomous existence, outside the centralised framework offered by the
Congress. An alliance with the BJP, which might become the only option
for parties like the DMK and the TDP in the event of a second break-up
of the UF-Congress pact, is similarly doomed. The BJP's go-slow on
contentious issues like Article 370 and Ayodhya is attributable entirely
to its not having a majority of its own. Once that becomes attainable,
courtesy of the foothold that party would have gained in areas
controlled by its allies, it would no longer need them as crutches. By
which time it would be too late for the discarded allies to regroup.
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