HVK Archives: Fatal attraction
Fatal attraction - The Hindustan Times
Sumer Kaul
()
22 April 1997
Title : Fatal attraction
Author : Sumer Kaul
Publication : The Hindustan Times
Date : April 22, 1997
What Doordarshan's entertainment channel so successfully fails to
provide viewers, our politicians give us in the course of
periodical day-and-night performances, even more so than our
cricketers do. Unfortunately, unlike the latter variety of
entertainment, involved in the spectacle is not this international
cup or that but the national cup of woe, with the politicians as
the perennial players and the people as the perennial losers. After
the third such one-dayer in the current series, this particular cup
is brimming. Not because a government has fallen but c use of the
elaborate pretences on which it has been brought down, pretences
that fully match those on which it was set up in the first place.
Given the fact that on both occasions the driving force was sheer
lust for power, nobody outside the immediately aggrieved political
families has shed a tear at the demise of the Gowda Government.
What saddens and angers the people at large is that even after this
inevitable denouement, no lessons are being learnt. The political
bazaar continues to resemble the sights and sounds and stinks and
instant gratification associated with certain areas of a certain
hue. Ideology, principles, morality and even hygiene having gone
out of Indian politics, no party and no leader considers it
necessary to introspect on those lines.
Look at the nature of the political debate and the media comment
between that high noon of March 30 and the midnight of April 11.
Why did Mr Sitaram Kesri do what he did? Why did he do it when he
did it? His action has violated the people's mandate. The people
do not want another election. Look at the expenditure involved in
holding an election! Let us do something, anything, to avoid that
situation. So went-and goes-he great debate.
The consensus on the first question among politicians and pundits
alike is that Mr Kesri's action had a wholly personal angle to it.
Giving currency to this line of thinking was/is the CBI/ ED related
circumstantial evidence as well as the barely subterraneous
toppling machinations of his intra-party detractors.
So what is new? When Indira Gandhi declared the Emergency, was
there not a personal angle to it? When Mr V. P. Singh unleashed
Mandal, was there not a personal angle to it? When Mr Narasimha
Rao time-bombed the Hawala revelations, or survived in the then
wobbling saddle by allegedly suitcasing Messrs Ram Lakhan Singh and
company and of course the JMM Johnnies, wasn't there a personal
angle to it'? And indeed by the same yardstick of circumstantial
evidence, when as the still paramount leader of the decimated
Congress party he pledged unconditional and full-term support to
the United Front regime and thereby positioned himself on the right
side of Mr Gowda, wasn't there a personal angle to it?
In the event, what unprecedented sin did Mr Kesri commit? I am no
admirer of his, not by a long shot, but in condemning him for what
is widely perceived as an act of sheer selfishness, even those
analysts who should know better have completely ignored a fallout
of his action that went, even if unwittingly, well beyond Mr
Kesri's personal fortunes. Recall the post-election scene last
year: The Congress was roundly mauled at the hustings and left with
gaping scars of corruption and scandal. It was this pathetic
entity that offered its services to the UF cobblers and they, on
their part, not only fell for the bait but actually sought it. A
case of fatal attraction!
Having entered the live-in relationship, the UF made the mistake of
believing that the arrangement was infinitely and indefinitely more
advantageous to the Congress. Comrade Indrajit Gupta even dared
the party to walk out of the cohabitation. With each passing day
the party was inexorably drifting towards the far pavilion of a
superannuated concubine. So Mr Kesri struck and, let's admit it,
brought the party back to the master bedroom. It became a force to
be reckoned with again, it was beseeched by more than one UF
luminary to kindly reconsider its decision even during the
confidence motion. The disgraced party suddenly became a key
player. Whatever Mr Kesri's motives may have been, he deserves
credit for this turnaround in the party's importance.
But the timing? How could Mr Kesri pull the plug during the Budget
session? Tut-tut! And when India-Pakistan Secretary-level (!)
talks were on, tut-tut! When NAM foreign ministers were about to
gather in Delhi, tut-tut! And, horror of horrors, (as one worthy
actually lamented during the Lok Sabha debate) when the King of
Oman was visiting!
Just because big business and the affluent sections are thrilled
with this year's budget give-aways, does it mean that it is the
bounden duty of every party to support it? In another time and
milieu-when, for instance and in particular, the Left was not
Right-this sort of budget would have been cause enough for some
parties to throw out the government. As for allegedly adverse
signals to foreign investors, this is a self-demeaning line of
thinking and devoid of a basic understanding of what such investors
and MNCs are all about. Was the Kesri move as bad as, to cite just
one example, what happened in Tianenman Square? Did that scare away
the foreign investors?
As for the international meetings at the time, it is not as though
the Kesri move had made the government evaporate. In Italy,
governments change roughly every ten months but that has not
crippled its initiatives or jeopardised its international
relations. In any case, both NAM and India-Pakistan relations
transcend partisan postures and a change of government in no way
impacts on India's approach to either.
Finally, the cry that the Kesri action has violated the people's
alleged preference of a potpourri dispensation. This wretched
claim contains a trainload of bluff and nonsense; what it suggests
is that each voter gave one bit of his ballot paper to Party A,
another to Party B and so on, or alternatively, 600 million voters
got together under a peepul tree and decided that so many would
vote for Party A, so many for Party B and so on. How ridiculous
can we get!
Similarly spurious is the cost argument-as if the Rs 500 crore an
election entails is to be incinerated, rather than spent, as it is
in fact spent, on a variety of requirements, thereby providing
income to a range of suppliers. In any case, this expenditure is
one-sixteenth of the fertiliser subsidy given to prosperous farmers
who can afford fertilisers, a fraction of what governments
willingly let go on open power thefts, a small part of what Mr
Chidambaram has agreed to forego by reducing the income tax rates.
These arguments are a fig leaf. It is not people but politicians
who don't want a mid-term election. The reasons are transparent.
They are afraid that their parties may perform worse this time.
Ale greater fear is that they may not get the party ticket this
time or if they do, may not win this time, Add to this the
underlying contradictions in the so-called United Front. As likely
as not, come elections and they will again fight like Killkenny
cats, for aren't they already at loggerheads within the coalition,
indeed within their own parties even, and virtually daggers drawn
in the states?
Hence the post-confidence vote panic and parleys. Indeed, at the
time of writing (April 14) there is a distinct possibility of the
UF doing an Elizabeth Taylor. The fatal attraction again, for the
same instant gratification, with the same denouement in store. Cry
the Indian democracy!
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