By Allabaksh New Delhi (Syndicate Features): Despite some odds, the government has managed to sail through the crucial budget session of parliament without its vital legislative business receiving a fatal blow. But that can hardly be of much comfort to the ruling combine of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance as it will now have to brace itself for a tough electoral challenge, maybe within the next six months but certainly before May 2009, to elect a new Lok Sabha.
Despite the façade of unity in the UPA that came to power in 2004 there are signs that it may start showing some wide cracks in the coming months. This may not be so much because of a sudden fit of ‘conscience’ or some such thing among some partners in the alliance but because the scenario for UPA’s return to power does not look very encouraging at the moment. When grabbing power is the first and foremost goal, matters like ideology and conscience play incidental role in the alliances that All political parties seek or forge.
The third front may have been rejected as a ‘non-starter’ by many pundits but its leadership-drawn from Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party and a few regional satraps-seems to be working in the belief that some of the UPA partners will cross over after the announcement of the Lok Sabha polls. The UPA will find the Left parties as its adversary whenever the next general elections take place. The Left parties are getting warmer to the idea of a third front. The Left has acted more in opposition than support of the UPA. In the event of UPA defeat at the hustings the third front will be the only avenue for Left’s continuous dalliance with power-without responsibility.
The very flexible ‘conscience’ of most politicians allows them the freedom to interpret their ‘ideological’ beliefs quite casually. Those who joined the UPA to keep the ‘communal’ Bharatiya Janata Party away will do a double somersault and swing to the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance while still claiming allegiance to ‘secularism’. Some of the NDA constituents maintain that their ‘secular’ sheen has not eroded despite long years of association with the BJP.
Of course, chances of some of the partners in the NDA deserting it cannot be ruled out either. But their destination is more likely to be the third front, not the UPA. The Left will have no objection to the entry of such elements in the third front because it has, after all, worked closely with ‘communal’ parties during some previous exercises of government formation at the Centre. The problem is that the third front may look like a political force initially but it then hurries to tear itself down by the impetuosity of its highly ambitious leaders and their mutual incompatibility.
People of India have seen the so-called third front letting the country down on two previous occasions. That impression is the biggest handicap in reviving the third force as a political heavyweight. A weak third force will obviously mean that the main contest in the next elections will in the end be again between the UPA and the NDA. Any weakness in the third force, however, will not automatically translate into an advantage for the Congress or the UPA.
There is no denying that ‘anti-incumbency’ is a big factor at election time. The price situation has made that a bigger factor. The combined Left-BJP attack on the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal may become another important factor along with ‘perennials’ like corruption and terrorism. The Congress and its partners will have to adopt a strategy that counters these pulls. Undoubtedly work on that strategy must have begun within the UPA. But there is something that the strategist in the Congress or the UPA might not have cared to mull.
Before it found the virtues of arousing majority passions to garner votes the BJP had appealed to a lot of ‘floating’ or uncommitted voters because its morality-based claim to be ‘a party with a difference’ was found credible. It is a different matter that power corrupted the BJP at lightening speed and today it flaunts all the ills of its rivals.
The BJP leaders are under illusion when they say that their party continues to be ‘different’ from others. Yet, the country does need a party that is ‘different’ and works to retrieve at least some of the values in public life that have been lost over the years. To define all that is needed for a party to be ‘different’ will be very exhaustive and it will be foolhardy to expect any political party to claim legitimate high moral ground. But some of the efforts to become a ‘different’ party should be evident and perhaps not impossible to achieve.
A ‘different’ party should have the courage of conviction. Its policy may not find universal approval but should follow from a thorough in-house discussion to rule out tepid public defence by insiders. If, for instance, the civilian nuclear deal with the US is good for the country the least that one would expect from the ruling dispensation is to vigorously ‘sell’ its benefits to the people. The half-hearted defence of the deal by the Congress and some of its UPA allies has alienated not only the Left but perhaps many ordinary people too who do not mind a warrior going down but only after putting up a fight.
Defections continue to plague politics in the country and the disease reaches its peak around the poll time - just before it when disgruntled elements of one party cross over to the other or after the polls when the lure of power attracts them like a magnet. If it still remembers some lessons from last year’s Gujarat assembly polls, the Congress should as a matter of policy refuse to admit ‘top leaders’ from rival parties. The Gujarat election showed that ‘rebels’ are only a poll liability. A political party that has its ears close to the ground should know it well.
‘Anti-incumbency’ looms larger than it is because when under attack the ruling party goes into a completely defensive mode when a bit of aggression may even turn the tables. The effort to question the attackers is missing--their premises, their facts and their solutions, if any. It is curious that some economists and columnists have said that inflation will be contained but the government is not able to convince the people. They have spoken about the international dimension to the price rise phenomenon and have suggested that the skyrocketing oil prices in the past few months have derailed many economies in the world. The food riots witnessed in many countries indicate that the era of ‘cheap food’ is over. How will India be an exception?
No one is suggesting that the government has done wonderfully well on the price front or that it needs no stick for adding to the miseries of the people. But if a party wants to be ‘different’ it has to take on its critics with conviction and confidence and not give up a fight tamely. The first few steps towards a moral agenda for a party that wants to be ‘different’ should not be difficult. It could, for instance, begin by keeping away candidates with known criminal background and discourage defections. If there is a risk of poor electoral prospects with these steps it is perhaps worth taking, especially when there is no guarantee that with its old image the party’s chances will be bright. (Syndicate Features)
