ELECTIONS '98
COMMENTARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ARCHIVES

Don't write off the Vajpayee government as yet

Seldom in the past has the outcome of an assembly election cast as heavy a shadow on the central government as the results of Wednesday's exercise in four state have on the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition government.

Perhaps it has more to do with the splintered state of the 12th Lok Sabha, perhaps it is the cumulative outcome of eight months of seesawing existence of the Delhi durbar, possibly it is the recalcitrant nature of most of the BJP allies, maybe it is a combination of all of the above... But what it has resulted in is a near-consensus reached across the political establishment that if the assembly election results go against the BJP in the three northern states, someone other than A B Vajpayee could be unfurling the tricolour at the Red Fort on August 15 next.

Every political party realises, sometimes in the course of its existence, that issues that seem clear-cut while in the Opposition, take on a different hue once it comes into power. Thus, we have the unusual sight of the BJP squabbling with its longest-standing ally the Shiv Sena, over the question of allowing the Pakistani cricket team into India, an issue that the two saw eye-to-eye over till recently.

Ditto, over the question of assembly election results impinging on the central government's longevity and vice versa. Today the BJP may disavow reports that the November 25 vote is a referendum on its government, but not too long ago, instances have abounded when it has called for the central government's ouster, basing such demand on an adverse electoral outcome, the most memorable one being in the aftermath of the 1988 Tamil Nadu elections when the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam put it across to the Congress party.

Luckily for our political parties, public memory has been not only short but it has also been very accommodating, so no one really takes such things seriously anymore. However, parties that are girding their loins to defeat the BJP government on the floor of the Lok Sabha will do well to remember that even if this government goes, the sharp divisions of this House cannot be cemented over, and tomorrow, the shoe may well be on the other foot -- after all, there are quite a few assembly elections due between now and 2003. Rather than contributing to further weakening Parliament, and trying to shift the polity's course midstream, reason requires that parties that claim to be committed to the welfare of the nation contribute positively by knitting together a consensus. The initiative for this need not always come from the ruling party.

Apart from that, what has lent an air of piquancy to the political atmospherics has been the emerging warmth between the Congress party and the Communists, a development that is as significant as it is misleading.

Significant, because this détente between the two political forces represents a bridging of ideologies. In a sense, the first stone at the Congress was thrown by the Left parties, who in their zeal to contain what they perceived to be a party of class-enemies, contributed to the rise of the BJP. Obviously, the era of blind opposition is over, but try telling that to our Communist friends. Today, they are on the verge of repeating their mistake, by their singular resistance to the BJP.

The Communists' motivation, of course, is easy to read. Since the fall of the United Front government, and the subsequent demise of the pan-Indian alliance of regional parties they midwifed, the left has been rootless, and even voiceless in the matter of policy formulation. Power, it is often said, is a heady potion, its narcotic quality increasing manifold when it is not accompanied by responsibility -- something the Left realised during the regimes of I K Gujral and H D Deve Gowda. It pays to be a king-maker, or in the case of the Congress, queen-maker.

But what is puzzling is the Congress's apparent haste to forge ties with the Left. For any such accommodation between the two parties can only come after a price -- in this case the scalp of Manmohan Singh who piloted the economy through the choppy seas of liberalisation and reform. Since Singh was widely perceived to head the next Congress government, offering him as blood money seems to make little sense.

Unless, of course, Congress president Sonia Gandhi is sending out the message that she has finally shed her own reservations about heading a government which, given the state of this Lok Sabha, will be even more rickety than the present one, even more susceptible to the whims of ideologically fixated allies like the Left.

If this is indeed the case, it marks some major developments, of the kind that independent has not witnessed so far. Not only will Sonia Gandhi be the first foreign-born to head the Government of India, she will also be, equally more significantly, the first non-Hindu to become prime minister.

For the Congress party, given its vocal commitment to a peculiar brand of secularism that appeals to its band of prospective allies, that last-mentioned factor may not seem significant, but in a country that still marches to a beat that the urbanite does not perceive, leave alone understand, it will be a watermark.

Moreover, if the new government does come about, it will also be the first minority government headed by the Congress party. And, in the final analysis, I think that even if Sonia Gandhi overcomes all other inhibitions about government-formation, this is one factor that she will not be able to overcome: make dubious history for the Congress party. I think when pull comes to shove, Sonia will prefer to wait it out, till the next round of elections, and to what she may expect to be a clear majority for her party.

Saisuresh Sivaswamy