Tuesday, February 25, 2014

The 18 year Itch

by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group

The 18 year Itch
By:- Harish Gupta


Only a few months back, as Narendra Modi was declared BJP's choice as the next prime minister, predicting his success was no-brainer. He looked confident, and the hoopla was extraordinary. But, from the way the cookie crumbles, it looks a bit different now.
The two issues of corruption and mis-governance that dogged the Congress-led UPA Government particularly in its second term are still in the forefront. Nor has the economy been anywhere close to the tunnel's end after four years of floundering. Few think that Congress has the capacity or the goodwill to get yet another mandate to rule. But, with barely seventy days before the general election, Modi seems not ready yet to build the kind of national consensus that is the all-important glue to put together a large coalition afterwards. No doubt, the hype about him is still on. 

In fact a little application of hind-sight should underline the obvious similarity between today's pre-election scenario and another general election eighteen years ago, in 1996. In public perception, the ruling Congress then got as scarred as it looks today. The messiah of economic reforms, Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao was embroiled in one scam after the other beginning with Harshad Mehta. The relation between him and the nucleus of Congress at 10 Janpath was strained, and that is an understatement.

Unlike Rao, present Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has thankfully not been a victim of character assassination. But it is evident that his equation with 10 Janpath, started in 2004 with a rousing fanfare, got no less icy than with his Congress predecessor. Tension between the government and the party left its mark on policy issues, leading to a long holiday from reform and, most tragically, signalling an abrupt end to the optimism that grew in the first decade of the 21st century that it could indeed be "India's Century" (it is in fact the title of a book that Congress member of the Union Cabinet Kamal Nath wrote in this period). The policy paralysis combined with rampant corruption, internal mistrust and conflict turned UPA into a house of cards that would collapse with the slightest breeze. 

However, between Congress and BJP, it is anything but a zero-sum game. Congress is dwindling but BJP is not proportionately gaining on its acceptability by other parties, at least before the poll. It is difficult to speculate if BJP could gather more magnetic power without Modi at its helm. It is true that the 2002 riots in Gujarat have left a stain on him politically, if not legally yet, and that makes it difficult for most potential coalition partners to accept him as the future team leader. And that shows the commonality between this year's election and 1996. In that election, the post-Babri communal clashes provided the backdrop, and BJP patriarch L. K. Advani was as much the face of militant Hindutva in those days as Modi has become, willy-nilly, since 2002. Net result, BJP was friendless and Advani untouchable. 

The BJP got 161 seats against Congress' 140. Sushma Swaraj declared that once the BJP was sworn in, allies will line up. Alas ! A "united Front" came into being following the election, with no less than 192 seats. It was a mishmash of ideologies and interests, with communists speaking in Oxford accent like Indrajit Gupta sharing table with H. D. Deve Gowda, the self-proclaimed "humble farmer" from Karnataka, and N. Chandrababu Naidu, regional satrap of Andhra Pradesh. Faced with deficit of supporters on one hand, and, on the other hand, Advani being implicated (he was exonerated later) in a graft case, BJP still wanted to have a go by putting the non-controversial A. B. Vajpayee in the saddle. But the smaller parties refused to support a BJP-led government. Vajpayee's cabinet fell in 13 days. The regional bosses picked up Deve Gowda, a most unbecoming candidate, who made it to the PM residence on Race Course Road. With Congress craftily offering support, the combined number came to a highly comfortable 332. 

It was comfortable only on paper. The intrigue and manipulation that raged, both within the so-called UF and from Congress, led to three prime ministers being sworn in within two years. BJP could only twiddle its thumbs until the 1998 mid-term poll that brought it to power for six years. However, it was the anarchy that prevailed in the 1996-98 period, with Mayawati and her BSP then emerging as a focal point of lawlessness in northern India, that forced smaller parties to swallow their pride and accept BJP in power in 1999. 

Its flip-side is that the small parties got a taste of realising the grave vulnerability of Westminster democracy in a poor, large and multi-ethnic nation like India. The more fractured its parliament gets, the easier it becomes for the local headman to strike bargains with other groups and climb the top chair in exchange of 'remunerative' ministries. 

Eighteen years later, the crop of the Deve Gowda clones—Mamata Banerjee, Jayalalitha, Mayawati, even Lalu Yadav—are waiting for history to turn a full circle. Mamata has brought regional forces’ aspiration to the fore as she has said in a recent interview, “The Congress has lost all credibility, accountability and morality to rule...But BJP is not the alternative to Congress and Congress is not the alternative to BJP”.  She is not alone. At least half a dozen state leaders will now announce, as triumphantly as Napoleon, “l’etat, c’est moi”.

Advani was
untouchable in
1996. So is Modi in
2014. Many fronts
are readying to fill
the vacuum


(The author is National
Editor of Lokmat group of
newspapers based in
Delhi