HVK Archives: U.P.'s new dispensation
U.P.'s new dispensation - The Hindu
Surendra Mohan
()
10 April 1997
Title : U.P.'s new dispensation
Author : Surendra Mohan
Publication : The Hindu
Date : April 10, 1997
The new coalition Government in Uttar Pradesh is to be headed by Ms.
Mayawati of the Bahujan Samaj Party for six months and after that, the
BJP will provide the Chief Minister. This agreement should ensure that
the coalition will continue at least for a year. A similar experiment
was once tried out in Israel. In India, however, this is the first
experiment of its kind. Its success would enable the coalition era to
run smoother. For, a habitual, voluntary sharing of power among the
partners of a coalition is the sine qua non of its meaningful
continuation.
Another feature of the coalition is the abandonment of the pattern which
the same parties launched in June 1994. In that short-lived experiment,
the much bigger BJP propped up the BSP Government from outside. The
fragility of that regime has now made them wiser.
It cannot be gainsaid that both the parties have learnt their lesson the
hard way. For months together, the BSP had said it would form its own
government with outside support. As for the BJP, this offer of a
coalition was there for the BSP to pick up for a long time but on the
condition that the Chief Ministership be claimed by the former.
This background and the uneven course of the BJP-supported Government of
1994 should make the exuberant supporters of the new arrangement sober.
There are those who are sceptical of the character of the alliance in
respect of the rather disparate social bases of the partners. The BSP's
crude anti-forward castes stance and the BJP's commitment to those
castes created tensions in 1994, and this reality cannot be wished away.
In the earlier 'avatar', the Mayawati Government was put to enormous
embarrassment by zealots of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, one of the BJP's
soulmates, on the issues of the Krishna Janmabhoomi in Mathura and the
Vishwanath temple in Varanasi. Also, the Scheduled Castes were wooed
systematically by the RSS on the plea that a sister from among them had
been put in a prestigious office for the first time.
But the trump card then was to convey a message through some excerpts
from the writings of Dr. Ambedkar that Muslims and Dalits could not be
friends or allies. It is, therefore, obvious that the Muslim baiting
ascribed to him by the Sangh Parivar was purely motivated by its desire
to make political gains: to sell the Hindutva, i.e., anti-Muslim thought
processes to the Dalits to complement other efforts to build BJP's Dalit
base and to drive away the BSP supporters among Muslims.
It was natural that the BSP hit back. For, it must have realised that
the BJP support was a rope with which to hang it. It was a typical
tactic of a Leninist United Front. Hence the melas to honour Periyar E.
V Ramasamy and the exhibition and distribution of his books. He was a
known opponent of the hierarchy dominated by the upper castes and
inveterate baiter of Rama and other gods.
If the present coalition has to achieve results these blunders of the
past must not be repeated. Encroachment by one partner on the support
bases of the other or alienation of those sections which are aligned
with it must be eschewed as long as the coalition holds. Attempts to
raise the Ayodhya issue or revive the Hindutva agenda should thus be out
of the question. The BSP has also to give up totally its campaign
against Tilak, Tarazu or Talwar, symbolising for it Brahmins, Vaishyas
and Rajputs.
In a sense this is a marriage of compulsion rather than of convenience.
Both the partners must get over this fact. For, the BJP has joined
hands with the BSP after the latter allied with the Shiromani Akali Dal
(Amritsar), which is not averse to raising the issue of secession. That
the BJP, which prides on its patriotism, has overlooked this blatant act
of commission can only underline the nature of compulsion.
For the BSP, the compulsion arose from its reverses in the Punjab
elections - it won only one scat against nine in the previous assembly.
Even compared to the May 1996 general elections, its vote fell from 36
to 18 per cent. It lost badly elsewhere too, in Delhi, the Bombay
Municipal Corporation and in all other areas in Maharashtra. Moreover,
the BSP alliance with the Congress(l) also eroded. The BSP refused to
arrive at a poll pact with it anywhere outside Uttar Pradesh and
contested against the Congress candidates in the recent general
elections in Punjab and J&K. The alliance with the Shiromani Akali Dal
gave it three seats in the Lok Sabha. That, too, was over. Here was
then a party, which had made and unmade alliances by turns with the
Samajwadi Party, the BJP, the Congress(I), the Shiromani Akali Dal
(Badal) and the Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar). It was becoming a
loaner.
The BJP too had become a loaner by May 1996, and hence was ousted from
power in Delhi. Thus, the two parties have come together under peculiar
circumstances. Perhaps the role of the U.P. Governor, Mr. Romesh
Bhandari - whom both the parties, as also the Congress(I), accused of
running a proxy government on behalf of Mr. Mulayam Singh Yadav and his
Samajwadi Party - contributed to this development.
Now, the coalition Government has to pronounce positive socio-economic
policies, instead of practising the negativism of the past. A whole lot
of people have been alienated in the absence of a popular government and
the rule by a Governor for whom even MLAs did not count for much. A
responsive and responsible government is the need of the hour. No
tension-ridden administration can give that. The BJP leader, Mr. Kalyan
Singh, is not forthcoming and enthusiastic and if this attitude
persists, the stability of the Government will be in danger. In social
terms, it would imply that the alliance of the forward castes and the
Dalits had not been liked by the backward castes. The latter might
prefer Mr. Mulayam Singh Yadav or Mr. Kalyan Singh to the BSP.
The people have hungered for a popular government. It is therefore
necessary to secure Mr. Kalyan Singh's total involvement. Neither
should Ms. Mayawati be reluctant to give up power when the time comes
for her to do so. If she and her party have a different strategy in
mind, that is, to call for a mid-term election after the expiry of her
six-month term, then it could thwart the success of the coalition
experiment in the whole of India.
Hopefully, the Centre would help by shifting the Governor. It should
not be looking out for occasions to frustrate the coalition experiment.
Discretion on all sides is the desideratum if the people have to get a
reprieve from the bureaucratic rule and the coalition era has to be
strengthened. It is quite possible that Ms. Mayawati would want to give
to leaders of the SP a "taste of their own medicine," which course could
only be suicidal.
The SP should, on the other hand, be a vigilant Opposition against the
Government comprising disparate forces. There is little doubt that the
vote bank among the minorities would get further consolidated. It is
equally patent that the entire secular spectrum would be as vigilant,
and the S.P. has to faction as its major platform. If it pursues
positive, people-oriented policies, then the inherent contradictions of
the coalition partners could provide sufficient political material to
lambast them.
The SP and the United Front too might have to learn their lessons. A
coalition like this was available to them all along. The two
anti-Manuwadi and pro-social justice parties (the SP and the BSP)
committed to the politics of Dr. Ambedkar and Dr. Lohia would have made
a natural, ideological come-together. They could have extended the
concept of social justice to concrete economic issues concerning the
havenots by undertaking genuine land reforms and a massive employment
generation programme. But that was not to be.
The alchemy of democracy is leading the two anti-Manuwadi parties to
show to the forward castes that they are not unwelcome. Mr. Mulayam
Singh Yadav, in particular, has expressed this view forcefully. The BSP
too has been putting up candidates from among the forward castes, though
its rhetoric has not undergone much change.
In fact, the more the panchayati raj is actualised, the more the ground
realities will compel all parties to assume all-inclusive profiles. Were
the BJP also to realise the need to shed its anti-Muslim sectarianism,
the coalition experiment would get one more solid pillar to stand on.
After a long time, two parties with fundamental differences have
coalesced to give a popular government. The Samyukta Vidhayal Dal
governments of 1967-70 too included such disparate parties, but then the
motivation was anti-Congressism. That is not the case now. It is quite
patent that situations may arise in the future when parties having
different, even opposing, worldviews will have to form coalitions even
in normal conditions. The success of the U.P. experiment could open the
gate for such alignments.
(The writer is a member of the Janata Dal national executive)
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