The Monsoon Session of Parliament, which begins on Monday, comes at a time when different parts of the country have become the site of multiple political contestations. These are likely to have their echo in Parliament and in the political activities of members outside the House. To that extent, an effort by a party or group of parties to mount a sustained political offensive against the government is likely to lack the needed edge. Ordinarily, the ruling side could have been brought under considerable pressure on the three issues of runaway inflation, the talks with Pakistan, and the government’s inability to demonstrate that it has a credible strategy against Naxalism and Naxalites that goes alongside providing development goods to the tribal belt in central India that has spawned the present version of the Maoist insurgency. Cornering the government is now less likely than it may have been a couple of months earlier. Thus, the boycott of the Prime Minister’s pre-session luncheon meeting by the BJP, the main Opposition party, appears to be a sign of peevishness by a single party, not the harbinger of a concerted anti-government strategy by a collection of parties. It is noteworthy in this context that even the BJP’s NDA allies have not seen it fit to back it on the question of the Gujarat minister of state for home being chargesheeted by the CBI in the Sohrabuddin murder case, which is the issue on which BJP declined to break bread with the Prime Minister in protest.
In Andhra Pradesh, TDP chief N. Chandrababu Naidu is girding his loins to take on the Congress, using as his platform the Babli barrage issue. Mr Naidu desires to involve the lower riparian states locked in controversy with their upper riparian counterparts. His planned actions are likely to probe the alliance system in Tamil Nadu, which supplies a key Congress ally, the DMK. Another important UPA constituent, Trinamul Congress leader Mamata Banerjee, is under fire for mismanaging the railway ministry and allegedly being in cahoots with the Maoists. If this is bad for the ruling coalition, Trinamul’s long-running violent battle with the CPI(M)-led Left Front in West Bengal weakens the Opposition as far as the Congress in Parliament is concerned. Apart from the messy Sohrabuddin affair in Gujarat, the BJP is on the backfoot on the issue of the mining mafia in Karnataka, with Opposition parties in the state gunning for the chief minister. In Bihar, the NDA government led by the JD(U)’s Nitish Kumar, who has in recent years earned something of a name for fostering development in a state many thought had retired to the stone age, has suddenly come under fire from the Comptroller and Auditor-General of India for dodgy accounting to the tune of thousands of crores of rupees, triggering a rare unity of Opposition parties in the state.
Since several parts of the country are caught up in strife in which the issues thrown up have a national dimension, these may be expected to consume parliamentary time. To that extent, an anti-government focus may be hard to develop in the Monsoon Session. The government has already been assured the support of the Samajwadi Party, RJD and Bahujan Samaj Party. These entities don’t have a smooth relationship with the Congress these days, but each has its compulsion to back the bills before the House. On the other hand, given the current political developments in Karnataka and Gujarat, it is to be seen if the NDA parties — notionally the main Opposition — can cohere and not let internal contradictions consume them. Although in a parlous state, it will be a pity if the Opposition is unable to pin down the government on the price issue and on talks with Pakistan.