A month or so ago, it appeared that the days of the UPA government were numbered. Politicians and pundits were forecasting early polls and for the first time ever, a Congress-led government looked set to fall before it completed its term. It would have been humiliating for Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had this occurred. Even if the UPA did manage to hang on, its credibility was at an all-time low, with allegations of corruption as well as inefficiency dogging it. The Prime Minister became the butt of jokes and ridicule and the commentariat declared that this was one of the worst-ever governments in independent India’s history.
Today, the Congress and the UPA are back on top. Dr Singh is being hailed for his reforms and his government is being hailed for taking bold decisions unmindful of the political consequences. The other parties, from the biggest and the noisiest BJP to the angry and rebellious Trinamul Congress, appear confused. Technically, the government is in a minority but no one is predicting its immediate demise.
The BJP has accused the government of announcing reforms to divert attention from all the corruption charges it was facing. If so, this ploy seems to have worked brilliantly, and not the least because the Opposition itself has got diverted from its sustained campaign on coal block allocations and other so-called scams. As soon as the policy changes were announced, the BJP dropped the issue of Coalgate and turned its attention to FDI in retail, calculating that voters were angry about letting in big supermarkets. If the main Opposition party has such a low attention span, how can it hope to fashion a cogent strategy to bring down this government?
The case of the allies, current and former, is even more pitiful. The Trinamul Congress and its mercurial chief have come to be known for objecting to everything. For the past year and a half, Mamata Banerjee has railed against the UPA on a whole range of issues, from a water treaty with Bangladesh to the raising of diesel prices. She seems to be permanently on a short fuse. By the time the presidential elections came, it was clear that she had a game plan — she wanted to distance herself from the UPA so that the latter’s low credibility did not affect her party’s electoral fortunes. Amidst rising talk of a third front, she wanted to keep her options open.
How poorly she handled it became clear when, ignoring Mulayam Singh’s well-known track record of flip flops and perfidy, she joined him to oppose the Congress nominee for the presidential elections, only to look foolish barely 24 hours later. Instead of selecting her battles, she chose to lash out indiscriminately, with the result that she now looks lonely and forlorn. Which party will join her, knowing her past record?
Instead of looking weak and vulnerable with one crucial ally gone, the UPA seems to have found new reserves of strength. Not only is it sticking to its unpopular policies, it is now letting its other allies know that it can do without their blackmail. Sharad Pawar, who had expressed his unhappiness with the UPA after Pranab Mukherjee became the President, soon quietened down and the DMK’s support to the Opposition’s bandh barely created a ripple. Now, Rahul Gandhi is taking on chief minister Omar Abdullah in Jammu and Kashmir.
The drama in Maharashtra is a good indicator of the Congress’ new tactics. Former deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar was kept on tenterhooks for months by chief minister Prithviraj Chavan, who has promised a white paper on the corruption and inefficiencies of the irrigation ministry, which was headed by the former for a decade. Meanwhile, other Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) ministers are also facing serious allegations of corruption. When Mr Chavan was sent to Maharashtra, he was seen as an affable and somewhat out-of-touch politician who would be outsmarted by the wily players of the state, especially by the NCP’s Sharad Pawar. Instead, Pawar senior has made it clear that there is no question of destabilising the Maharashtra government. Notch it up as another victory for the Congress. It cannot hurt that BJP president Nitin Gadkari, too, has been singed by the accusations of an RTI activist that he was not keen to pursue the irrigation scam because of “close relations with Sharad Pawar”. The BJP immediately claimed the activist was a Congress agent — it turns out she comes from an RSS family.
Things do change swiftly in politics so the Congress cannot afford to be sanguine. Nor will the allegations of corruption go away — they need to be investigated. But a combination of good luck and a new-found assertiveness in the UPA government to push ahead with its agenda have all combined to give the Congress an edge. The anti-UPA media fire seems to have subsided; the overwhelming support to the reforms is a clear indication that the government is on the right track. There are those who will say that the media is nothing but the reflection of the mood of the middle classes; if that is so, then the middle classes have given their approval to the government’s policies and this should worry the other parties, especially the BJP.
The non-UPA parties — the BJP, the Left and the regional outfits — seem unsure about how they should deal with this situation. The BJP has tried everything, from not allowing Parliament to function to organising a bandh by the trader community. But these are negative tactics — it has not offered an alternative programme to the country. The Left doesn’t know whether it should be with the BJP or with the Samajwadi Party. The latter, meanwhile, is supporting the UPA but at the same time would like elections at the earliest, something the others don’t want. The Trinamul Congress continues to sulk but it is clear that it is now a loser. And most of all, with NDA partners like the Akali Dal backing FDI in retail and the Shiv Sena refusing to toe the BJP line, the BJP will have to work on keeping its flock together. General elections are still some time away and much will happen between now and then. But the Congress — and the UPA — which were considered gone cases till the other day, continue to be in the game and may yet pull off a surprise.
The Opposition parties should now stop dreaming of mid-term elections and sit down to craft a coherent and clear plan to win over the electorate if they do not want to hand over power to the UPA by default.