SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA
ARCHIVES

Women are the bane of Vajpayee's life

Married men will vouch for the immense difficulties involved in handling one woman in their lives. Married men can hence fully empathise with the travails of the prime minister of India, as he is buffeted by a trio of feisty women.

Nobody, including Atal Bihari Vajpayee, presumed that he would have an easy run when the Bharatiya Janata Party announced its pre-election tie-ups with Jayalalitha's and Mamata Banerjee's outfits in Tamil Nadu and Bengal. In fact, one school of thought had it that when the party's spearhead, Lal Kishinchand Advani, offered to step aside in favour of his colleague, the intention was not entirely noble: wise man that he is, Advani realised the inherent pitfalls of dealing with women with a reputation for going ballistic at the drop of a hat.

The interregnum between the election results and the swearing-in of the BJP-led government gave enough insight into the terrible times that lay before the new prime minister. But if Vajpayee thought that handling two irascible women was possible, he reckoned without the third angle in this political triangle. The post-election scenario introduced some piquancy into the life of this bachelor, with the Opposition rallying around Congress president Sonia Gandhi and urging her to make a bid for the prime ministership.

Whatever be the reasons for Sonia Gandhi not playing ball, it is obvious that Vajpayee's tenure is founded on the sufferance being displayed by the three women -- for the Hindutva-based party, such a twist to Shakti, the concept of woman being the supreme power, must surely be galling.

Of course, it is anybody's guess as to who among the three will sink the knife in first, but my own perception is that Sonia Gandhi will be the last to do that. Compared to the expectations of the All India Anna DMK and the Trinamul Congress, her view is slightly more long-term.

With her tempestuous nature and near (her opponents say total) megalomania, Jayalalitha is the prime bet to destabilise the BJP government. Her decision to enter into an alliance with the BJP was prompted as much her desire to cock a snook at the other parties that spurned her on election-eve, as her implicit condition that the new government will dismiss the Tamil Nadu government, and have fresh elections which she will hopefully win.

Jayalalitha's expectations concern the immediate future. With virtually no presence in the state assembly, the Rajya Sabha election from the state would significantly reduce her party's presence in Parliament, and show up her inability to return even a single MP to the Upper House. This is the immediate provocation for her temper tantrums, and nothing would give her more joy than seeing the state government go before the election.

Perhaps the BJP will concede her demand some day. But so long as the DMK government retains its hold over the law and order situation, yielding to a woman's whim on Article 356 is not enough to take the case past the courts.

Mamata Banerjee is a lot like Jayalalitha, there is only one thing she wants from the BJP government, and certainly right away, and that is for Jyoti Basu to be shown the door. Both Jaya and she have been biting at the bit quite a lot these days, pointing to their growing disenchantment with the government they agreed to support.

But the best insurance for Vajpayee, ironically, is being held out by the third woman, Sonia, who is at once tormentor and saviour.

So long as she remains unwilling to stake a claim on behalf of her party, for reasons too elaborate to go into here, Vajpayee is safe. Jaya and Mamata could threaten him with withdrawal of support, but so long as there is no opposition formation in place to step into the void, their effort would be futile. Who knows, in that case, the central government could find some unexpected support from other quarters, as was hinted at recently by the Tamil Nadu chief minister.

It is evident that Vajpayee did not expect things to start pulling apart so early on. I suspect that he anticipated at least a year of peaceful reign, and his unpredictable allies to start acting up simultaneously with the public's honeymoon with his government starting to fray. The bomb was the ace up his sleeve, which he was forced to play early on to paper over the tatters in his coalition.

Today, he is left with little to defend himself against the marauding female of the species. Sure, he could, if the heat gets too unbearable in the kitchen, take the honourable way out, but I really don't see the BJP giving up on hard-earned power all that easily.

It has already taken out an insurance policy against such an eventuality, now that it has been forced to dispense with the nuclear option. The under-construction Ram temple, the BJP calculates, will restore a measure of confidence among its rank and file, who have been wilting under the Congress-esque manouevrings of their party's government.

Actually, that gives it a neat twist in the tale. The Hindutva party turning to Ram to counter Shakti...

How readers reacted to Saisuresh Sivaswamy's recent columns

Saisuresh Sivaswamy