news details |
|
|
| UPA must take opposition along | | |
Balbir K. Punj
Victories, they say, have many claimants. The incontrovertible fact is that till last Saturday morning, almost all psephologists and journalists had forecast the two leading political parties to be neck and neck. Even Congress leaders were working on the assumption that their total would come to 160-180 seats. And that is one reason why the Congress leaders were looking for enough allies to get to the halfway mark.
So dramatic was the change on Saturday that the threat of a fractured verdict fell by the wayside. When the Congress’ own tally crossed 200 and United Progressive Alliance’s total went past 250, it was the turn of all the prospective allies to seek favour. Analysts too suddenly found great new virtues in the ruling family of the grand old party and streaks of greatness in its Prime Minister. No one bothered to ask why they had failed to discern these virtues before May 16.
Electoral verdicts are rarely made on one issue alone in this complex country. The Assembly elections between 2004 and 2006 saw the Congress being routed from several states like Punjab, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, apart from Gujarat. This time Punjab and Rajasthan partly and Uttarakhand solidly have gone with the Congress. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) made a sweep in the Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh but within two years it is the Congress, which was marginalised then, that has emerged so successful.
Electoral fortunes alternate and the manner in which the electorate decides cannot be guessed correctly by even the most experienced political commentators. It is best to remember that the same electorate that pushed the Congress of Indira Gandhi out of power in 1977 brought her back two-and-a-half years later, and the electorate that gave Rajiv Gandhi a stunning two-third majority in 1984, threw him out of power in 1989.
Of course, the basic ethos of democracy is that the people are supreme and wise enough to know what they want. To some of those wise men, who now claim that had L.K. Advani ticked off Varun Gandhi after his controversial speech the result could have been different, one may ask in all humility: How do you explain the fact that Mr Varun Gandhi won from Pilibhit with a thumping majority of over 2.60 lakh votes and his mother from the nearby constituency (with much less margin), while in the same state the BJP did not do as well as was expected? And why did the Marxist citadel in West Bengal and Kerala crumble? Did the Muslims in these two states consolidate behind the Congress because of Mr Varun Gandhi’s alleged hate speech? Nothing could be more absurd than this suggestion.
Those who praise Rahul Gandhi for his political insight would find it difficult to explain why that insight did not work in Bihar but worked in adjoining Uttar Pradesh. The Congress has just two seats in Bihar while it captured 21 in Uttar Pradesh with the same strategy of going it alone. If there are different, and sometime contradictory factors, at work in different parts of the country in the electorate’s decision-making process, to club all of them together and to ridicule the loser would be to ignore the reality. And the reality is that a complex electorate, like that of India, cannot be understood through one single formula.
There is every possibility that the constant strain of fractured verdict must have scared the electorate into deciding in favour of a stable government. The UPA also had the advantage since it has roots in all states, whereas the National Democratic Alliance’s lead party, the BJP, has virtually no presence in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh, which together account for 144 seats. So "stable government" is a slogan that gave the Congress, with its pan-India presence in large numbers, an inherent advantage.
Whatever it is, to the extent that the election has resulted in a consolidation rather than fragmentation, is a welcome feature. Most of the Third Front partners have been virtually eliminated or defanged. Worst of all is the plight of the Left and its leader Prakash Karat. He was planning to dictate to the next government, as he had done to the previous one for four-and-a-half years, though his party had influence only in two major states, and two-seat Tripura.
In the outgoing Parliament too, the BJP-led NDA was the main Opposition. But the Congress, which was leading the UPA government with its blinkered view of the BJP, considered it "politically untouchable". The Left, elevated on the shoulder of the Congress like the old man of the sea in Somerset Maugham’s short story, egged on the Congress to practice this "untouchability" to an irrational extent.
In democracies, parties fight on differing agenda but the system needs mutual cooperation to work smoothly. In the next elections roles could reverse and that consideration should prompt the ruling party to take the Opposition along. "Political untouchablity" is a Communist-led plot to muddy Indian politics and achieve a critical role for itself even though its actual grassroot strength in the country is miniscule.
The lost game for the BJP would naturally induce it to start the process of review and reform because that is the way the self-correcting forces of democracy generate change, including governmental change. The BJP rules six states by itself and two more in association with others. No other non-Congress party has this claim to advance. It is also the second most powerful party in two other major states.
That should settle the argument — it is in the interest of the country that the government and the Opposition should come together on crucial issues such as long-term economic reforms and foreign policy initiatives like links with Israel in defence and technology, on confidence-building measures with Pakistan and on fashioning a policy in view of the volatility in Nepal and Bangladesh. In a healthy democracy, political rivals are opponents and not enemies. Enemies only exist in dictatorships and communist regimes.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
