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Thackeray gets ready for Y2K

Lessons, it seems, are hard to learn in politics.

If not, the Shiv Sena would not have replaced Manohar Joshi with Narayan Rane as Maharashtra chief minister in the hope that he would lead it to victory in the state election due next year. After all, precedent is still fresh in one's mind: last year, the Sena's alliance partner tried the same trick in Delhi, only to learn that even its great white hope could not deliver the goods in the assembly poll.

The lesson was clear then, as it is today. In normal times, the people do not vote for faces; performance, or the lack of it, is the criterion they follow in deciding whether a party should be allowed to continue in power. It is seldom a positive vote, which is hardly surprising, given that the times the voters have actively chosen one party over another has led to their all-round disappointment. Now, the popular strategy is clear: vote on the basis of performance of the present administration, not on the basis of a political IOU.

And given this simple, yet exacting, yardstick, there can be no two opinions on how the people will vote in March 2000. The Sena, which came to power on a negative vote, has squandered a golden opportunity to end the Congress hegemony in Maharashtra and dealt a body-blow to its chances of emerging as a viable alternative to the party, at the state level to a great extent and the central level to a lesser degree.

The Sena's four-year reign has left hardly any positive trace, and the outgoing chief minister himself was candid enough on occasions to admit that his biggest achievement was 'survival'. Being the political executive of a sensitive state like Maharashtra, never easy at the best of times, was lent an extra air of piquancy by the remote control wielded by Bal Thackeray. The manner of Joshi's ouster, even if a little unsavoury, did not raise many eyebrows, primarily because it was common knowledge that Joshi, or any other Sena chief minister after him, would hold office only at the pleasure of the party chief, who has demonstrated his capriciousness time and again.

Much as one may grieve for the manner of Joshi's removal from office, it was very clear that the former chief minister had a premonition of his impending replacement. He ought to have lost his job last year itself, but he was spared the ignominy owing to some deft political tap-dancing. Whatever his means of dissuading Thackeray against the latter's predetermined move, he only managed to buy temporary reprieve.

One year, of course, is a longer time than what Sushma Swaraj was given by her party to wreak a miracle, and who knows, perhaps Narayan Rane may fare better than the former did in Delhi. Still, even a cursory glance at the reasons why there is tremendous disenchantment against the Sena government in Maharashtra, and what the party leadership -- meaning one man -- has in mind as solution, should show how uphill the climb is.

Corruption must be the biggest bugbear for the ordinary citizen in Maharashtra today, and so far there is no indication that the administration has woken up to the extent of the menace. There were two reasons that the public voted overwhelmingly against the Congress and Sharad Pawar four years ago: official venality and criminalisation of politics. It was not that these two factors were wholly absent from the state prior to Pawar's last days in office, but what got the collective goat was their prevalence.

Fed up with the decline in public probity, the people primarily voted Pawar out -- they did not vote Thackeray's men in.

That was both an advantage as well as a disadvantage. Since the hitherto powerless party -- its only stint in administration was in running the Bombay municipality -- had no real baggage, it could have made a clean break with the past, disowned the Congress legacy, and instead focused on providing a clean and able administration. Rather, it gave in to the overwhelming urge to play a game of political one-upmanship, and worse, ended up making enemies with its long-serving electoral ally, the BJP.

In fact, the squabbles between the electoral partners will figure among the main factors that will have led to the rout of the Sena-BJP next year. What has been happening in the state the last couple of years is not the kind of ally problems that Vajpayee has been facing, but open, public disagreements between two equal partners in power. The BJP wants one thing, the Sena another, and the ugly fact is that both are eyeing the same vote bank which they are trying to conceal with their unconvincing talk about serving the people.

What Thackeray's party failed to do during its stint was deliver on its pre-poll promises, and not just on the one about providing 400,000 free houses to slum-dwellers. Rather than provide a responsive administration, which alone would have convinced the voters of the party's commitment and ability to govern, it has focused on irrelevancies, whether it is being in the forefront of the anti-Pakistani protests or lauding the lawless protests against Fire or the vandalism at the residence of M F Husain. The obvious effort is to don the garb of a moral custodian of the masses, in the hope that it will pay political dividends in the next election.

It is a misplaced hope, rather on the lines of expecting Indian batsmen to score 12-odd runs for a Test victory. People expect the government of the day to govern, to implement the law in letter and spirit, and not go about violating the law of the land. The latter is a tempting proposition, no doubt, but it does not delineate the line between the opposition and the ruling party. By resorting to these gimmicks, the Sena has demonstrated its inability to overcome the Opposition mindset. Its rank and file, the cadres, may be enamoured of such measures and may send back glowing reports of the success and appeal of their various moral campaigns, but it is there for all to see that the Sena's cadre votes are not enough to push the party to power. It needs a lot more votes from the middle-of-the-roaders whose only concern is an able administration, which translates into safety, security and a life sans hardships.

This, the Sena has failed to ensure, for which it will have to bear the cross, Narayan Rane and Thackeray notwithstanding.

Saisuresh Sivaswamy