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| Political promiscuity | | Every party fails the test | |
by Inder Malhotra
ON Monday the Madhu Koda ministry of Jharkhand — the third in less than two years, and the fifth in the six years since the state’s formation — was sworn in. Only four men, including Mr Koda, all of them deserters from the previous Cabinet of Mr Arjun Munda, took the oath, which only underscores the new chief minister’s agony. For, no fewer than 28 other members of the tenuous ruling combination are claiming ministerial berths but the law allows a Cabinet of only 12 in a House of 82. At least three “parties”, each having only a single member in the legislature, have laid down elaborate conditions for their support’s continuance.
It is bad enough that in the Jharkhand legislature the two rival sides are so evenly balanced that even a small shift in the notoriously fickle political loyalties can bring the government down. More alarmingly, “independents” like Mr Koda, rather than the two mainstream parties, the Congress and the BJP, or even the dominant state party, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, call the shots.
Some corrective to this ugly state of affairs might have been possible were the two major parties willing to agree at least on the barest minimum rules of the game. But that, alas, is far from being the case in the present polarised and confrontational ambience.
The interplay between the largely venal political class and Big Money, with its own axe to grind, is also worrisome. Industrial houses making enormous investments in the raw material-rich Jharkhand want to be sure of the state’s rulers they do business with. That is where the rub seems to lie. For, the new Cabinet’s first decision is to “review” all the memorandums of understanding (MoUs) signed by the ousted ministry. It looks like a repetition of the infamous Enron affair in Maharashtra.
Sadly, this pernicious pattern might not remain confined to Jharkhand. The way the constantly fragmenting politics is also becoming permissive, indeed promiscuous, might make Jharkhand a role model. A bird’s eye-view of recent developments in some states confirms this.
The case of the most sensitive state of Jammu and Kashmir — about which few bother except when some horrendous terrorist outrage takes place — is most instructive. Past mistakes born of neglect, bad governance, rampant corruption, and unending political chicanery and manipulation, the brazen rigging of elections in particular, created the widespread alienation that made J & K the happy hunting ground for those hell-bent on exporting terrorism to it under the cloak of “freedom fight”.
After the 2002 assembly poll — acknowledged as free and fair by one and all — and the formation of a coalition government by the Congress and the People’s Democratic Front, headed by the PDP leader, Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, there were welcome winds of change. But bad old habits of placing party, factional and personal pursuits above national interest reasserted themselves when, under prior agreement, the Mufti handed over the office of chief minister to Mr Ghulam Nabi Azad of the Congress. The issue was the PDP’s demand for the ouster of its representative in the state Cabinet, Mr Muzaffar Hassan Beig, whom Mr Azad had designated Deputy Chief Minister. But for the belated intervention of the Congress “high command” the coalition could well have collapsed.
In UP, politically the key state, the situation is bizarre. The Congress’ anxiety to regain, in the forthcoming assembly elections, the bastion lost in 1990 should explain the murky manoeuvring on this score, such as the Union Human Resource Development Minister, Arjun Singh’s reckless gamble over OBC reservations. At a different level, the antics of Mr Ajit Singh, the son of the late Chaudhri Charan Singh, are more laughable. Currently in alliance with UP’s Samajwadi Chief Minister, Mr. Mulayam Singh Yadav, he is willing to cross over to the Congress and the UPA, typically, for a price. He wants a seat on the Union Cabinet, a portfolio of his choice and the appointment of one of his associates as a minister of state.
An intriguing addition to this discouraging backdrop was the two-day convention of the Nationalist Congress Party over the weekend at Dehradun. There, this party, led by the Union Agriculture Minister and Maratha strongman, Mr Sharad Pawar, spoke with a forked tongue, with Mr Pawar saying all the right things about the Congress but other leaders of the NCP — and more significantly, its political resolution — sharply criticising the Congress party’s “big brotherly” attitude, ineptitude and infighting. The call for a Third Front was loud and clear. The general secretary of the CPM, Mr Prakash Karat, has also publicly expressed his preference for the Third Front but has admitted that its formation is not feasible at present.
To be sure, there is no danger to the UPA government’s survival for its full term of five years. Its main challenger, the BJP, is in such a pathetic state that it is paralysed for all practical purposes. However, no sensible Congress leader can afford to forget that even when the party used to have a two-thirds majority, it invariably landed itself in acute difficulties at the halfway point in its five-year term. This happened even after Indira Gandhi’s spectacular triumph in the 1971 general election followed by the liberation of Bangladesh.
In two months’ time, the Manmohan Singh government would be reaching that critical juncture in its career. It will therefore have to watch its step and take mid-term corrective action. But that is easier said than done. For, despite excellent relations between Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the relationship between the party and the government leaves a lot to be desired. The Prime Minister faces arguably more problems from his Congress colleagues than from allies content with running their ministries as fiefdoms.
As for the party, it seems to have lost its faculty to think. The only idea that emerges from any Congress conclave at any level — usually in a sycophantic chorus — is that Mr Rahul Gandhi should be assigned a “greater role”. More surprisingly, both Rahul and Ms Sonia Gandhi seem to believe that the sprawling and vital state of UP is but a small corner of Rae Bareli and Amethi, the parliamentary constituencies of mother and son respectively. If either of them or anyone else is doing anything to build up the moribund Congress party across the state, where its stakes are the highest, the country has yet to hear of it.
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