Watch out: The country is churning

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Two factors have led to the enviable position the Congress is in today – and its popularity is not one of them. The real factors are that (a) the BJP has lost its acceptability in the imagination of the general public and (b) the Left has collapsed as an ideological platform. The prominence the Congress has achieved as a consequence is sure to be a passing phase. India is in the midst of a vast churning process. Uncertainties, shifting alignments and ad hoc patchups are part of such a transition. Two or three more game-changing elections like this and we will have moved from a dynastic system closer to a mature democracy.

That BJP’s sun was setting was clear towards the end of Vajpayee’s term. With hindsight even his critics would now agree that it was Vajpayee who made BJP acceptable to people outside the Hindutva core. He was politically moderate besides being personally popular as writer and poet. By contrast Advani was inextricably identified with hardline Hindutva. He was perhaps the first to recognise this as a liability. Hence his attempt to soften his image with stratagems like the Jinnah-was-secular speech. But it boomeranged.

The spectre raised during this campaign, that Narendra Modi is the one to follow Advani, will have scared more people away from the BJP. The fundamental reality remains that India, which of course is a Hindu-majority country, has not given the BJP blanket victory at any time other than during the Vajpayee interlude. This is because the majority of the people the BJP claims to represent obviously do not subscribe to the Hindutva brand of intolerance. That is the best guarantee of India’s future as a democracy.

For the BJP to regain public confidence, it will have to re-invent itself. This will require visionary leaders of the kind the BJP is not currently blessed with. Those it has are unable to think beyond the likes of Modi. Unfortunately this proclivity prevents the BJP from developing into a balanced right-of-centre party for which a need exists in India.

The need exists for a truly left-of-centre party as well. It is one of the tragedies of India that from the time of the Congress Socialist Party, the leftwing in the country has always lacked coherent, farsighted leadership. With the 1948 Communist Party policy of “armed revolution now”, the Left lost ground across the country. The base it retained in Bengal and Kerala have been steadily eroded. In three decades of unchallenged power, the Left Front Government in Bengal was unable to address basic issues like poverty and infrastructure. When it finally made an effort towards industrial progress, it was so heavy-handed that it only took an eccentrically led formulation like Trinamool Congress to prick its balloon.

The CPM in Kerala for its part turned into an unabashed corporate enterprise with mafia squads to enforce its power over others, including other leftwing groups. The infighting between the party leader and the party’s chief minister had reached obscene proportions. The party’s arrogant and dictatorial ways were causing perceptible disgust among the people. But the Politburo had no eyes to see what all others could see. The result is that Prakash Karat can no longer save India from the clutches of America.

Can Manmohan Singh? The Congress is in danger of getting entrenched in its dynastic ways and the dealmaking for which its managers are famous. This time it will be directly accountable for its commissions and omissions. To that extent it is on the firing line. By giving a fairly clear mandate to one party, the people have won this election. Whether that party will win remains to be seen.

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Why this Third Front will not work

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If any country needs a new political formulation, it is India. People have lost faith in the existing formulations to the extent that there is a loss of faith in the electoral system itself. For a democracy to be meaningful, it must offer voters a meaningful choice. As the candidacy of Barack Obama did in the US. Between a moribund monarchical party and an anti-modern communal outfit, the Indian voter has no meaningful choice.

Alas, the newly announced Third Front does not offer a choice either. The main reason is that it is an unnatural combination, put together by incompatible leaders, with contrarian objectives, pursued through self-serving methodologies.

Perhaps it is symbolic that the sutradhar of the jamboree was H.D.Deve Gowda, frustrated ever since he lost his accidental prime ministership in 1997. He is described as the sharpest Chanakya of our time. But many of his recent decisions were no compliment to Chanakya. One example will suffice. Although his party is called “secular”, his manoeuvres led directly to the BJP assuming power for the first time in his home state. He is all set to further strengthen the BJP by splitting the “secular” votes he is pledged to support.

Who are the leaders Deve Gowda claims to be with the Third Front? Prakash Karat, A. B. Bardan, Chandrababu Naidu, Jayalalitha, Mayawati and groupings like the Forward Bloc, the Republican Party and the Telangana Rashtriya Samiti. Can a reasonable citizen expect any two of these leaders to agree on anything? Even Karat and Bardan are overseeing a self-destructive cockfight among their comrades over seat sharing.

What is bringing these disparate leaders together is of course the thirst for power. Barring the communists, every leader is keen to become prime minister. The two ladies will settle for nothing less. In other words, the Third Front is a platform for unyielding personal ambitions to engage in mortal combat.

We have seen this before. After the police raj of the Emergency, how excited were the people when Jayaprakash Narayan ushered into being a Janata Party Government. It embodied the hopes of a whole nation. It was as good as a second dawn of independence.

In no time all hopes were shattered and the Janata Cabinet became a circus tent. Not a single national problem was addressed while the ministries became cesspools of corruption, inefficiency and disorder. Morarji Desai insisted that only he was qualified to be Prime Minister. Charan Singh unseated him but could not face Parliament because he had no majority. He became caretaker Prime Minister, a brief interlude that he spent arresting Indira Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi making them martyrs and himself a fool. These petty men with petty minds collapsed into their own filth to become miserable footnotes in history.

We face no better prospects this time, because petty ambitions still reign supreme. In a situation where no party commands the trust of the people, it is possible that the game of numbers may give the Third Force players some space. Post-election arithmetic may even give them, if we want to be generous, a shot at power. For example, they can join with Sharad Pawar, who is itching to serve the country as Prime Minister.

But forming a government will be the easy part. Staying in office for even a few months will be impossible, unless they agree to have a government of ten prime ministers. Our politicians are in politics not to serve India, but to make India serve them.
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