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Let not Ravana get a whiff of Sanjeevani!

This is by far the most peculiar festival season that I can remember. The calendar tells me we have celebrated Navaratri, but when I look at Patna I see that Ravana is still enthroned and not burned as is the norm.

On second thought, I take that back. The master of Lanka was a great scholar and superb administrator, one so learned that Lord Rama advised Lakshmana to seek his blessings as he lay dying on the battlefield. Have you ever heard a kind word on Rashtriya Janata Dal president Laloo Prasad Yadav's administrative talents?

However, the former Bihar chief minister has outdone Ravana in one respect -- he didn't need a long war to reduce his realm to ruin. (Though there has been quite enough bloodshed in Bihar over the last eight and a half years). Yet we are told that despite all the corruption and violence, despite driving the state into bankruptcy and being charged over one thousand times with contempt of court, the RJD regime cannot be dismissed.

If so, what is the use of such a provision? Article 356 is a dead letter if a legislative majority offers blanket protection against any and all crimes. What happens if a state government decides tomorrow that it wants to secede from the Indian Union and gets the assembly to back it? Must the Union government sit back helplessly or negotiate partition? That is the logical end of what we hear today; that Article 356 cannot be used if a ministry has a demonstrated majority in the House.

Mercifully, that is a hypothesis, one that may never come to pass. Turning to the present, what are the likely consequences of Laloo Yadav getting a reprieve?

Well, for one thing it has the unintended effect of giving the Atal Bihari Vajpayee ministry a little breathing space with troublesome allies. All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazagham chief J Jayalalitha, to name the most prominent of the lot, cannot insist on dismissal of the Dravida Munnetra Kazagham ministry in Tamil Nadu. If it is so difficult to deliver Bihar from the tender mercies of Laloo Yadav and his family, it will be utterly impossible to prise Karunanidhi out of Madras.

Secondly, the episode has thoroughly exposed the hypocrisy of the anti-Bharatiya Janata Party forces. The Communists thumped their chests loudly, declaring principled opposition to Laloo Yadav when he was charged with corruption. But Communist Party of India-Marxist general secretary Harkishen Singh Surjeet was the first to denounce President's rule in Bihar.

More recently, the Congress conclave at Pachmarhi ended by proclaiming a resolve to offer an alternative to the Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar. But senior Congress leader Sharad Pawar was almost as quick off the mark as Comrade Surjeet. The law and order situation in Bihar, he intoned solemnly, was no worse than in Maharashtra.

There were honourable exceptions, Ram Vilas Paswan of the Janata Dal brusquely said his colleagues did not know what they were talking about. Former agriculture minister Chaturanan Mishra of the Communist Party of India said Bihar was the worst administered state in the country and requested the Union government to take over the state's finances. Jagannath Mishra, the last Congress chief minister of Bihar, demanded President's rule.

But there is one major difference between these three and the likes of Surjeet and Pawar. Ram Vilas Pawan, Chaturanan Mishra, and Jagannath Mishra are Biharis. They know just how badly off that state is. The ones loudly trumpeting support for Laloo Yadav spend most of their time in Delhi and Bombay. They did not see the Union Cabinet's recommendation as a chance to relive Bihar from its suffering, but just something to embarrass the Vajpayee ministry.

You cannot even grant them the virtue of being consistent in opposing the use of Article 356. Parties like the DMK and the Akali Dal have always asked for scrapping that law. But can you say that about the Congress and the rest?

The Congress abused the provision over a hundred times to dismiss unfriendly parties. The Communists were the first to applaud when BJP ministries were toppled in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Himachal Pradesh in 1992. And it was a Janata Dal prime minister who recommended dismissal of a BJP government in Gujarat after then chief minister Suresh Mehta proved his majority.

Tradition says the siege of Lanka lasted 18 months, it was, perhaps asking too much for the Vajpayee ministry to do the same cleansing act in a mere six months. I just hope the script shall not be rewritten so that it is Ravana who gets a whiff of Sanjeevani!

T V R Shenoy