Monsoon Divorce

Sanjay Kapoor, Hardnews, New Delhi:
In 2004, as the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) was being cobbled up to stop the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from coming to power, Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Amar Singh finagled a visit to 10 Janpath, New Delhi, home of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, by tagging along with communist leader Harkishan Singh Surjeet. He, however, was brusquely told by the hosts that he was not welcome.

At that time, the Congress, led by Sonia Gandhi, was trying to show the world that it would have nothing to do with the wheeling-dealing ways of Amar Singh and his powerful friends that included industrialists Anil Ambani, ‘Saharashri' Subrato Roy and Amitabh Bachchan. For Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, it also meant they could conduct their affairs without having to compromise their integrity by cutting deals with hucksters.

The solid support of 60 odd MPs belonging to the Left Front meant that the Congress-led UPA did not have to scrounge for support from political mercenaries. "The Left parties allowed us to function without really asking for too many favours. I don't know how it would have been if the SP was with us instead," a Union minister once told .

Although the Left parties did not have any compunction about dealing with Mulayam Singh Yadav and Amar Singh, it was Sonia Gandhi who was guiding the moral compass of her party and the coalition. She found the needle pointing away from them. She did not trust the SP duo as her attempt to form the government in 1999 was humiliatingly shortchanged due to their playing footsie with the BJP. But all this was in 2004, when there was not a whisper about the Indo-US strategic agreement or civilian nuclear deal.

In 2008, the circle has turned round. The reticent UPA chairperson, who in the past, used to shy away from dealing publicly with those people whom she found morally repugnant, was actually seeking out SP. The Congress under Sonia Gandhi had grown up. What was considered moral was being sacrificed on the altar of political expediency.

On May 22, 2008, at Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's official residence when the UPA was celebrating four years of its rule, a special invite was sent to Amar Singh. It was in some way a public atonement by the Congress leadership to the shoddy treatment that was meted out to him in 2004. The meeting was choreographed to ensure that the voluble media-seeking SP leader grabs all the attention so that his hyper-sensitive ego is amply irrigated.

At that time it became apparent that the Congress leadership was desperate to seek his ample abilities to stitch together a consensus over the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal -- a ticklish issue on which the rupture between the Congress and Left was building up. Amar Singh's visit to US, ostensibly on a holiday, became an occasion to connect with the new democratic leadership as well as key players of the energy lobby. Amar Singh, who has been close to Hillary (and Bill) Clinton through his US-based hotelier friend, Sant Singh Chatwal, was keen to seek friends who have been working with democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. Unconfirmed sources also hint at his meetings with some officials of Halliburton, a company closely linked to US Vice President Dick Cheney. Bechtel and Halliburton were key, controversial oil companies who were in the thick of the bloody US occupation of Iraq.

It is not clear whether SP would support the Congress to stay afloat after Manmohan Singh asks his officials to freeze the nuclear safeguard agreement with the IAEA and the Left parties decide to withdraw support. The SP has ditched Congress three times in the past. Ideologically, socialists have a pathological dislike for the Congress and its dynastic politics. But SP has a major problem in UP as it finds many of its leaders and supporters baited away by the pugnacious Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) leader, Mayawati.

The SP has been decisively chastened by the embarrassing debacle that its candidates suffered in the recent assembly bypolls. Four out of five of their candidates even lost their deposits. The SP is also not too sure about its Muslim base. The party could get only 21 Muslim candidates elected to the UP assembly against Mayawati's 29.

Mulayam Singh Yadav realises that support to the nuclear deal could be a win-win scenario. Not only will he have another ally against BSP, he will get many of the ‘irritables', cunningly created by his opponents to put him on the defensive, sorted out. The Congress, too, benefits considerably in the short term by this compact. Besides getting the nuke deal cleared, the grand old party would find greater chances of retaining its seats in UP, where even Sonia and Rahul Gandhi don't seem really safe. An alliance with SP would also help in consolidating the so called Muslim constituency, which, for years, has been estranged from the Congress, especially after the Babri Masjid demolition.

All these calculations are based on -- all things remaining the same. What is not factored is the scenario after the Congress government falls due to the decision of the communists and BJP to vote ‘together' against the nuclear deal. The BJP has been displaying ambivalence on the deal, but no one knows who is controlling the marionettes in the party. The party speaks in different voices. Remarks by the former principal secretary to ex-prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee in favour of the deal shows that the party could do an unexpected pirouette.

Their decision would largely be determined by how their core constituency of upper caste urban constituency feels about the deal. They would want to build on the successes that their party has tasted in the recent past. However, looking at the national political landscape, the electoral reality does not square with the BJP leadership's over-the-top optimism (see analysis by Jai Murg and Anil Verma, Cover Story).

The UPA government is not factoring the welling anger within the Congress party over the fear of early polls. The belief in the Congress is that nothing should be done to hasten elections when inflation is skyrocketing and the beleaguered is living from one daily wage to another. With fuel prices unrelenting and economists suggesting that price rise would dampen only in November, Congress MPs think, quite like the Left leaders, that the prime minister should concentrate on controlling price rise rather than pushing a deal that cannot be sold electorally.

Leaders like Salman Khurshid and Mani Shankar Aiyer have aired their reservations about the deal, but due to the way the Congress party is inherently constructed, the individual angst of MPs don't have a collective platform. "Nearly everyone is opposed to early elections, but no one wants to even initiate a signature campaign, lest they get hurt politically. Dissent is not appreciated in the party," said an angry MP.

Some political observers do not rule out the possibility of leadership change in the UPA government due to the stand-off over the deal. In fact, many saw in the opposition of the Left parties a strategic solution: to compel Sonia Gandhi to remove Manmohan Singh. There were rumors that chief interlocutor on the nuclear deal, Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee, was being accused of playing both sides and shoring up his prospects for the top job. His statement that the deal cannot be pushed by a minority government, among others, was used to convey to all those who would like to listen that he was with the Left parties with whose support he won his first Lok Sabha election in 2004.

After the prime minister decided to push the deal again, irrespective of the fact whether the government has a majority or not, Mukherjee, according to Left sources, is feeling let down. "We were basing ourselves on his assurance that a minority government would not seal the deal -- but it seems he does not enjoy the confidence of his leaders," claimed a CPI leader. Those alleging that Mukherjee has prime ministerial ambitions claim that he has his equations worked out and he could spring a surprise. Similarly, Sharad Pawar's short-lived intervention was seen as another attempt to reconfigure the UPA and prevent early elections.

All this while, the prime minister, confident of Sonia Gandhi's support, is sitting pretty, aware that the genie that he has released could reshape India's secular politics. The last word, however, has not been said on how power politics is going to unveil itself in the uncanny, rather wet months of July and August -- the time when the prime minister pushes his envelop.