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

The Three Wise Men

Well begun is half done!" runs the old proverb. If so the Vajpayee ministry has reason to be happy. It has tasted success in its first test of strength in Parliament -- the Speaker's election.

Sections of the Congress and the United Front were bent on using the occasion to embarrass the new government. They wanted to impose their candidate on the House, making the Speaker a highly visible symbol of the Vajpayee ministry's impotence. However, Chandrababu Naidu finally got tired of being a pawn used by Harkishan Singh Surjeet, Mulayam Singh Yadav, and some other short-sighted souls. The rest is history.

But the ramifications of the Telugu Desam president's decision to snap ties with the United Front go well beyond the choice of a new Speaker. It could have brought an end to the United Front itself.

To begin with, the Telugu Desam wasn't alone in moving away. The National Conference and Asom Gana Parishad also jettisoned the old policy of sterile anti-BJPism. Cynics may argue that this is relatively unimportant given there are only two National Conference MPs in this Lok Sabha and none at all from the AGP. This would be a shortsighted response.

Let us begin with the National Conference. Fifty years ago, the party played a large role in disputing Jinnah's pernicious 'Two Nation Theory'. Today, it could help in guiding the country away from the hackneyed debates on 'communalism'.

Jammu and Kashmir is India's only Muslim-majority state and Farooq Abdullah is the only Muslim chief minister today. When he breaks with the self-proclaimed 'secular front' and implicitly allies with the BJP, a message goes out to the country at large.

The remnants of the United Front won't like that one hit. But there is more bad news in store for them. In a single month, the political map of India has changed to the detriment of the United Front. As late as February, Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Meghalaya, and Jammu and Kashmir had anti-BJP governments. Can you say that today?

Now take a look at the condition of some state governments that are still vehemently anti-BJP: Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Orissa, and Karnataka. These are not, to put it mildly, advertisements for the benefits of strident negativism!

The rickety Rabri Devi regime exists at the mercy of the Congress. In Madhya Pradesh, due for assembly polls later this year, dissidence in the ruling Congress plumbs new depths every day. In Orissa, most of Janaki Ballabh Patnaik's ministers have quit after the Congress's disastrous showing in the general election. In Karnataka, Janata Dal MLAs vie to be the first to join the BJP-led alliance.

Tamil Nadu is something of an exception amongst this lot, as Chief Minister Karunanidhi enjoys a healthy majority. But the cracks are widening in his alliance with the Tamil Maanila Congress. On the first day of the budget session, the TMC MLAs staged a walk-out.

The problem in all the states named above is that the BJP and its allies did exceedingly well in the Lok Sabha poll. The voters sent out a message loud and clear: mere anti-BJPism doesn't work.

The problem is that the United Front doesn't have any other reason to exist. If we go back to May 1996, when 13 parties hurriedly patched up a post-poll arrangement, we find the United Front making just one promise to the people of India: "We shall keep the BJP out of power!"

They didn't promise good government, or national economic policies, or novel defence arrangements, or even radical reforms in the federal system. They promised only that they would do their best to keep Vajpayee away from the central secretariat and other leaders away from power in the state capitals. That is why they supported Romesh Bhandari's mischief in Lucknow and Krishna Pal Singh in Gandhinagar.

Truth be told, even the professed anti-BJPism of the United Front was a sham. It was simply a way to legitimise taking support from the Congress. At the time, the Congress, fresh from huge electoral losses, was in no position to stake its claim. Today, that position doesn't exist any longer.

Chandrababu Naidu, Farooq Abdullah, and Prafulla Kumar Mahanta are honest enough to accept the verdict of the people and shift into the BJP orbit. Their former partners have a similar choice: make an honourable peace with the BJP, or become courtiers at Sonia Gandhi's court. How will they choose?

T V R Shenoy