Uncertainty is the key

Post polls in UP, its time to bring out the calculators

Harish Khare New Delhi

On April 23, 2007, the Samajwadi Party (SP) leaders, Mulayam Singh Yadav and Amar Singh, free at last from their pre-occupation with  the Aishwarya-Abhishek wedding, brought together on one platform in Allahabad all the major third-front hopefuls and aspirants. It was quite crowded on the stage. Almost all those not aligned with the NDA  the TDP, AIADMK, AGP, INLD, etc. were represented. But it was  the formidable, J Jayalalitha, who  stole the show with her Hindi speech, and led the chorus in denouncing Sonia Gandhi, her son, her party, her party-led government. It was all music to Mulayam Singh’s ears.   

At the end of the four rounds of assembly elections, the consensus among pundits and pollsters is that Mayawati’s BSP was leading the pack, and Mulayam Singh’s SP has been knocked off by a resurgent BJP  from the ‘second largest’ slot. Having seemingly lost the battle of Lucknow,  Mulayam Singh will be free to do a ‘halla bol’  on the  UPA’s  already rickety apple-cart in New Delhi. The Allahabad show would have bolstered up his sagging spirit, if not his political fortunes. In any case, since the SP leadership has become the lynchpin for a very significant number of unhealthy forces and interests, it is absolutely imperative for Mulayam Singh to want to retain his rutba.

The third-front calculus depends on whipping up sufficient political energy on an anti-Congress sentiment which should necessarily be larger and more persuasive than the alternative set of anti-BJP attitudes. And, of course, the calculus must appear to be a winning formula, with a potential to yield a bigger slice of power and patronage than would accrue to anyone in either a Congress or a BJP-led alliance. The likes of Sharad Pawar, Chandrababu Naidu, Jayalalitha, the DMK bosses and Ram Vilas Paswan have all made this kind of calculation in the past, and can be relied upon to do the numbers again in the future. Nothing is permanent in Indian politics except expediency and self-interest.

The strategic moves, however, will belong to the BJP, the Left and the Congress.

Take the Congress, first. Though the Congress is likely to remain at the fourth position in terms of the assembly seats, the UP poll has already brought about a qualitative change in the party: the full-fledged induction of the young Rahul Gandhi in the organisation. Even if the Congress does not improve substantially over its 2002 tally, the young man’s belated foray in the campaign has prepared the ground for a larger role for him in the All India Congress Committee hierarchy. And, if the Congress manages to do dramatically better than last time,  Rahul Gandhi’s presence would be felt beyond UP.

Notwithstanding all the ridicule and the scorn that have come his way from the cosmopolitan media, the burden of noblesse oblige will propel Rahul Gandhi into an activist role in the party affairs. This could signal the end of the era of the Indira Gandhi-vintage oldies. In any case, should he get projected as the party’s national mascot in the next general election, the  country may witness an interesting contrast between a young leader and old, tired and familiar faces on the other side, as had happened in 1984.

As the 2007 UP election has reinforced the centrality of the Nehru-Gandhi matrix, it is bound to provoke all the traditional sentiments and prejudices against the Congress, both in the BJP and in the ‘third-front parivar’. The resurgence of the anti-family sentiment may see the beginning of erosion of Sonia Gandhi’s most significant achievement: the successful enticement of  some of the hardline anti-Congress voices into a political alliance, a feat that eluded both her husband and her formidable mother-in-law. 

The UP election has also produced its own instigations in the BJP. For the new BJP president Rajnath Singh, the UP battle is his first major test of leadership. He has given a carte blanche to the RSS to meddle in the party affairs, and the Jhandewalan brass has quietly encashed the cheque. It was the VHP-RSS crowd that was pressed in to mollify Mahant Adiyanath; again, it was the ‘sadhus’ and ‘sants’ who reportedly persuaded Uma Bharati to retire from the campaign in favour of the BJP candidates.

Should the BJP manage to improve on its tally and cross into three-digits, the RSS commissars would see to it that the party reverts back dramatically and insistently to the Hindutva mantra. It could also mean an unapologetic replication of the ‘CD’ story-line. The temptation would be an overt anti-Muslim stance, calculated to produce a consolidation of the ‘Hindu vote’. That could see the BJP going after the UPA on issues like Afzal Guru, de-induction of forces in Kashmir and India-Pakistan relationship. Rajnath Singh’s group may see this cranking up as the only way to slow down the Advani/Narendra Modi/Arun Jaitley group’s encroachments.

Left to themselves, Rajnath Singh and Kalyan Singh, the two most important UP players, would be averse to any tie-up either with Mayawati or Mulayam Singh. But it is quite possible that the BJP national leadership, never able to resist a flirtation with clever-clever formulations, may yield to immediate political calculations and support the SP to try to form the government in Lucknow. All, with the idea of causing maximum discomfort to the UPA and the Congress.

The Left, too, will be drawing its own conclusions from the UP results. Before the UP election schedule was announced, the CPI(M) went out of its way to see to it that the Congress did not succeed in its design to bring the state under President’s rule. That, of course, was no endorsement of the Mulayam Singh regime and its crony capitalism, nor any kind of support for  the SP’s  ‘third-front’ theme song. The CPM, therefore, is most unlikely to countenance any politics of the third front, even if the BJP were to emerge as the principal gainer in the elections. By now the Left leaders have realised that the only gainers in a third-front arrangement are the BJP and the crooked business houses.

Still, the CPI(M) is already under rhetorical pressure from its junior allies in the Left Front to withdraw support from the UPA government, even if it leads to dissolution of the Lok Sabha. An unscrambling of the present Lok Sabha is also precisely the top priority on LK Advani’s agenda. However, it can be reasonably assumed that the CPM brass is not likely to be stampeded into such a decision, but then, the party’s inner debate could always be so manipulated. Ideally, the comrades will like nothing better than to have no responsibility whatsoever for happenings in New Delhi as also to have the complete freedom to go vitriolic against the central government.

If the post-UP election scenario produces some kind of working arrangement between the BSP and the Congress, it will be a definite setback to the BJP and its claim to be the party irreversibly on the ascendancy. A BSP-Congress tie-up will make the restive allies rethink any thought of abandoning the UPA.

All these calculations would come into play in the next few weeks in the run-up to the presidential contest. The Congress managers will find themselves under pressure to keep the UPA intact as well as to keep the Left on the right side. But everything boils down to the question: Is Sonia Gandhi willing and able to restore her law and order over the increasingly lawless Congress?

The writer is Senior Associate Editor and Chief of Bureau, The Hindu, Delhi