UPA-2 goes topsy-turvy

It was one more of those corny messages that do the rounds of zillions of cellphones across the country. It was Rahul speaking to Sonia: “Mummy-ji, after 2G, there was CWG, then KG and CoalG; now this one’s about jija-ji.” The next message came soon thereafter: “Have you heard the new name of DLF? It’s Damaad Leasing and Finance!”
Try as hard as they might, the cheerleaders of the ruling Congress Party just can’t seem to rid the UPA-2 government of the stain and stigma of corruption. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and finance minister P. Chidambaram are desperately trying to place their economic reforms agenda centre-stage. But their best efforts at attracting more foreign direct investment seem to be not changing public perceptions about corruption in high places.
One issue that the powers-that-be are deliberately underplaying is the government’s abject failure to contain inflation, especially food prices, which has drastically eroded the real incomes of the poor and widened inequalities in a society already sharply polarised between the affluent and the underprivileged. A section within the Congress is firmly of the view that India’s “grand old party” is fast losing its popularity because of its inability to control food inflation over the last few years. When stories of scams get added to the grim inflation scenario, the combination can be politically pretty disastrous. This section is, hence, arguing for early general elections. Why?
The so-called Left wing in the Congress is trying to convince the party high command that a slew of populist schemes should be announced in the forthcoming budget in February next year (which will, in any case, be the last budget of the present government even if the 16th general elections are held as scheduled in April-May 2014). Such schemes could include a right to food law and a scheme to distribute medicines free to those living below the poverty line. This section believes the Congress should attempt to “cut its losses” before its popularity plummets further.
The Prime Minister, the finance minister and their supporters who believe firmly in the virtues of economic liberalisation, those who were perturbed that their best friends in big business were cribbing about “policy paralysis”, the section of the population (less than three per cent of 1.2 billion Indians) who avidly track the movement of the sensitive index of stock exchange in Mumbai and those who believe that a high fiscal deficit is at the root of most of the country’s economic ills, are all of the view that the government must complete its full term of five years come what may.
The logic forwarded by this section is that the Indian economy will gradually revive and that the likes of Walmart will ensure higher prices for farmers, lower prices for urban consumers (thus cooling inflationary expectations) and not kill neighbourhood mom-and-pop stores as is being apprehended. When it is pointed out that India has been consistently receiving more and more FDI over the last four financial years, this section contends that we can never have enough of FDI. So what if many of our homegrown capitalists have preferred to invest their surplus funds outside the country?
The adherents to this viewpoint further claim that “offence is the best form of defence” — that the Congress should train its guns on the BJP (some of whose leaders haven’t exactly covered themselves with glory as far as corrupt practices go). This section fervently hopes that the deep divisions in the Opposition will ensure that the Congress strategy of “divide and rule”
will enable the UPA coalition to return to power for a third time in a row in 2014.
The problem with this section of opinion is that it doesn’t have too many takers, even within the Congress Party. In the next general elections, the Congress can realistically hope to gain substantially in only one state, and that is Karnataka, which has 28 Lok Sabha seats. The BJP is almost certain to perform badly in the state with more than a little help from former chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa. The Congress is optimistic that even if its position weakens significantly in Andhra Pradesh (with 42 seats), the party led by Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy will eventually have to support the UPA coalition. Yet, the BJP is not exactly in good shape.
Other than Rajasthan (25 seats) where the BJP hopes to make major inroads into Congress territory, the country’s principal Opposition party is also looking at gaining in Maharashtra (48 seats), Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Delhi. But the BJP will find it tough to hold on to the seats it already has in Uttar Pradesh, not to mention the states where it is in power, namely, Madhya Pradesh (29 seats), Gujarat (29) and Chhattisgarh (11).
If a 1996-like fragmented Parliament is the electoral outcome, President Pranab Mukherjee may play a pivotal role in determining the contours of the next government in Delhi. If that indeed takes place, what may certainly not help the present set of rulers are their recent attempts to covertly criticise the Bengali-babu for some of his decisions in the last Union Budget, notably his decision to retrospectively amend the law to tax transactions of the kind that enabled Vodafone to acquire control over assets in India through overseas transactions and his attempt to discourage the use of Mauritius as a route for foreign investors who don’t want to pay taxes.
The Rashtrapati is a canny politician. But one may be jumping the gun here. A week is a long time in politics. Who could have imagined that in April 1999, the Atal Behari Vajpayee government would lose a vote of confidence in a lower house of Parliament with 543 members by a single vote? Who could have anticipated that H.D. Deve Gowda would become Prime Minister in May 1996? Not he, certainly.
Who could have thought that arch rivals, the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Communists and the Trinamul Congress would find themselves on the same side during the recent presidential elections and that the BJP’s oldest ally, the Shiv Sena, would part ways with the NDA in supporting Pranab-babu?
There could indeed be many strange twists and turns in Indian politics in the coming months.

The writer is an educator and commentator