Spinning Centre makes UPA, Opp dizzy

Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Banerjee’s walking out of UPA-2 alliance has caused a political hurricane in the country. A tottering government, whose position may worsen after Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh elections, and a divided Opposition make it difficult to predict what may happen in the coming days.

The Congress is surviving on life support from an unpredictable partner. The latter has a long history of changing its stand. Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav prevented Sonia Gandhi from becoming Prime Minister in 1997 but helped the UPA-1 to survive during the nuclear debate in Parliament. He campaigned vigorously against the Congress during the recent Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh. And now when Congress is reduced to a minority government, he is providing it life support. During election to the office of President he went along with Ms Banerjee to propose candidates that were not acceptable to the Congress. Within 24 hours of causing a political earthquake he changed his stand. He announced his support for the Congress official candidate to that high office. In 1997 he was within a whisker of becoming Prime Minister. Of course it is only natural for a political leader to have prime ministerial ambition. He cannot be faulted for that.
Mr Yadav is a shrewd political leader who knows how to manoeuvre through the labyrinths of politics; he got the desired financial package for Uttar Pradesh from the Centre. He may appear to be hunting with the hounds and running with the hounds, but he has his reasons. Protesting against FDI and diesel price, he extended support for the aam aadmi and was also preventing communal forces coming to power. Thus his party’s votebank was kept intact. The real reason may be that he wanted to consolidate a Third Front with him as the prime ministerial candidate. It may not suit him to wait till 2014 as anti-incumbency may gain currency in Uttar Pradesh, adversely affecting his party. Thus it may be more prudent for him to pull the rug from under the feet of the Congress after a few months, forcing an early election. He has already been asking his party cadres to be prepared for that.
After a long period of silence, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh chose to address the nation. Had he shed his silence and done this earlier when a booming economy had started sliding downhill and mind-boggling scams had started erupting one after the other, he would have got better response. No one in the government has taken moral responsibility for the scams. In 1956, the then railways and transport minister Lal Bahadur Shastri had resigned owning moral responsibility after a railway train accident at Ariyalur in Tamil Nadu. With all the taint on the government and with the government tottering, Dr Singh’s long-awaited intervention came too late to enthuse the people.
No doubt in 1991 he had pulled the nation out of economic doldrums. The credit for that has to be shared between P.V. Narasimha Rao who took the bold decision and Dr Singh for executing that decision efficiently. In 2009 he was highly regarded for his unimpeachable integrity, commendable humility, and great strength in piloting the nuclear bill despite strong opposition. In fact, the Congress performed well in the 2009 polls primarily due to him. The situation has now changed immensely. His promise to bring down prices within a hundred days of his second term proved to be a nonstarter and things have been only getting worse. The scams greatly undermined his leadership in public eyes. His plea regarding compulsions of coalition politics did not cut any ice, and the assertion by his ministers and party spokesmen about presumptive or no loss sounded hollow. Their constantly harping on corruption in the Opposition parties to defend the scams in UPA-2 regime has not helped either. An accused pleading that he is excused because others are also guilty of similar scam cannot be exonerated.
The Prime Minister is an eminent economist. His belated measures for economic recovery may be sound but there are also contrary credible arguments against them. The nagging question remains, why did he as the nation’s helmsman not act earlier? The financial extravaganzas at the instance of the National Advisory Council have added to our economic woes. Rajiv Gandhi’s warning that only 15 paise of development funds reach the beneficiaries and the remainder gets siphoned off was ignored. The mention of money not growing on trees has invited jibes of its growing in coal mines. The appeal to the people to tighten their belts when our political leaders and officials are not made to do the same is strange. During the depression of the Thirties, the then colonial government of India had imposed a ten per cent cut in salaries of all officials. When the nation faced a food crisis, the then Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri skipped eating one meal a day. In France, the President and all officials have had a 30 per cent cut in their salaries. In India emoluments of MPs have increased phenomenally and one sees five-star trappings at official and even private functions at the taxpayer’s expense. Shouldn’t the dignitaries not also tighten their belts?
The BJP, the main Opposition party, is in disarray. The common perception is of the RSS backseat driving and senior leaders squabbling. It is not being viewed as a credible alternative, in spite of having some outstanding political leaders. The two widely acceptable possibilities within the party for prime ministership are L.K. Advani and Narendra Modi. The former is the most experienced political leader in the country with impeccable integrity and considerable administrative experience. His advancing age is held against him, even though he is physically fitter than many half his age. Ronald Reagan, Winston Churchill, Paul von Hindenberg in their countries held power while in their eighties and till recently we had M. Karunanidhi in power in Tamil Nadu. Bhishma commanded the Kaurav army in the battle of Kurukshetra at the age of 114, and Mahapurush Shankardev, a contemporary of Guru Nanak, was a unique religious leader, social reformer and literary genius who lived up to the age of 120. His most productive years were after he was 100 years old! Mr Modi is a dynamic leader with the best-proven record as an administrator. However, his acceptability among the minorities and those who wear secularism on their sleeves is low. Unless the BJP can win a majority on its own, he may not be acceptable to lead a coalition government.
The Third Front does not appear to be a viable option after the experiment with the Deve Gowda and Gujral governments. A coalition of regional parties with their conflicting regional agenda may not be viable. Strong regional parties exercising autonomy in their states as per the Constitution are welcome but not regional parties that hold the Centre to ransom as in the case of Teesta waters or human rights violations in Sri Lanka. India can get reduced to later Mughal days when the subedars had become all powerful.
National interests demand that we have a strong national ruling party and a strong national Opposition party at the Centre. Our two national parties must rise to the occasion and fulfil these roles.

The author, a retired lieutenant-general, was Vice-Chief of Army Staff and has served as governor of Assam and Jammu and Kashmir