Commentary/Saisuresh Sivaswamy

With Gujral's selection the Congress has been denied a convenient target

The Tamil Maanila Congress may beg to disagree, but the selection of Inder Kumar Gujral is the best thing that has happened to the United Front government.

Hazarding a guess, however informed, about the outcome of any political development is, well, hazardous -- there are far too many wheels within the deals. But with Gujral's selection as prime minister, one can safely state the Bharatiya Janata Party's hopes for a mid-term poll will remain only a hope, and the Congress plans of sabotaging the government will remain on paper.

In fact, it would hardly be surprising if the government is able to survive its full term with Gujral at the helm. And if it is able to achieve that, it will be because of Gujral's survival instincts. He is inoffensive, so the Congress has little to fear from him; he is non-controversial, so his allies have nothing to worry; his style is one of inclusion not exclusion, so his political foes have little to make an issue of.

If memory serves one right, among his early statements soon after being projected as the UF candidate for the top job was that he believes in consensus. "Democracy means consensus," he had said, and for all practical purposes the tumultuous 11th Lok Sabha will now on witness less rancour aimed at the Opposition benches than it did under H D Deve Gowda.

How much leeway the other constituents of the many-sided UF allow him in extending an olive branch to the BJP, especially as their much-tomtommed aim in coming together was to keep the saffrons out of power, is hard to say. But being the prime minister, he should be able to have his way on critical issues.

The Congress, much to its combative president Sitaram Kesri's chagrin, will find it hard to gripe about the government under Gujral. Thanks to the prime minister's years in the former ruling party, the equations between the two sides are good, and the kind of issues the Congress found handy when Gowda was around will not be handy anymore.

The details of the coordination committee that will serve as a trouble-shooter between the two sides are yet to be announced, but Gujral has made it clear that it will only look after floor coordination between the UF and the Congress -- he will personally discuss the real issues with the Congress president. Which, while pointing to the personalised style of functioning he plans to introduce, as compared to the Gowda's hands-off style, also indicates the importance that will be given to Kesri in the new political order.

The conclusion is remarkable. Which is that Kesri has been given what he wanted when he threatened to dislodge the UF government on Easter day.

But the future is going to throw up some difficult questions for the Congress, and Kesri will be hard put to find answers. Trouble will arise at the time of elections to various state assemblies, like Karnataka where the Janata Dal and the Congress are the main combatants, with the BJP just a distant runner-up.

How do you fight a party at the local level even while supporting it at the Centre? How do you explain the rationale to the electorate, most of whom are simple folk? And, quite a few assemblies will be facing elections before the next round of general elections, and there will be greater tension on the UF-Congress equations at the centre.

Another tension area for the UF will be the pique displayed by the TMC. It is clear regional sentiments have been hurt at the manner in which TMC leader G K Moopanar was kept out of the reckoning. The UF cannot afford to forget its major area of strength lies in the south. With the BJP showing major signs of resurgence, especially after L K Advani's acquittal and the spat between the UF and the Congress, the north and the west will not be easy battle for UF constituents.

It is the South, given the BJP's weakness there, that will bring in more seats in the next elections, and obviously the TMC is a chink in the armour which, if not addressed properly, could work to the UF's disadvantage.

But the stakes are high for Moopanar as well. After being in the prime ministerial sweepstakes -- despite his claim he was only the media's candidate and no one else's -- he cannot settle for anything less, certainly not the deputy prime ministership. (Perhaps, the UF will do well to emulate the Uttar Pradesh example at the centre as well, given the number of prime ministerial aspirants!) The thwarted ambitions of regional satraps is something that Gujral will have to be extremely mindful of.

For Kesri, besides the question of sorting out the mess that will arise over the assembly elections, there is also the one about Congress' political revival. He has demonstrated the Congress cannot be taken for granted by the government, but how comes the next step of revitalising the cadres, most of whom have virtually thrown in the towel following the party's support to the UF and the BJP's aggression at the grassroot level?

Sooner or later, Kesri will have to come around to the fact that the longer it supports the UF, the sooner its move towards political extinction. Leader writers may equate its support to the government to supporting democracy, but everyone knows leader writers do not go out and vote. And even if they did they will hardly amount to a hundred or so votes.

It is not the intelligentsia Kesri will have to bother with, but his own party rank and file. The acuteness that came into the equations between the two sides when Deve Gowda was the prime minister, given the latter's style of functioning, at least served to enthuse the rank and file. But with Gujral's selection the Congress has been denied a convenient target.

That, in a sense, is the UF's biggest achievement of tying the Congress in knots.

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