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Saisuresh Sivaswamy

This Lok Sabha has some life in it, yet

If there is life after death, then it should come as no surprise if this brain-dead Lok Sabha could still wiggle its tail.

And despite the Congress president's earlier bravado, which is fast paling into a whimper, and despite the prime minister's earlier defiance, which is fast turning into conciliation, the room for manouevre is still not entirely lost.

If it was, we would have already seen the sight of a triumphant Sitaram Kesri marching to Rashtrapati Bhavan to deliver his coup de grace. That would have been on Monday. On Tuesday, we would have seen Inder Kumar Gujral cutting a sorry figure in the Rajya Sabha, announcing that this government was bowing out in the face of Congress treachery.

Since these two scenes remain in the realm of imagination, it is safe to assume for the moment that all is not lost, that sanity may have been lost temporarily but reason has staged a quick comeback.

Was Kesri serious when he delivered his second ultimatium to the United Front about dropping the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam from the Union council of ministers? Were Gujral and his associates aware of the brinkmanship that they were indulging in? In retrospect, both sides appear to have overestimated themselves and underestimated the opposition, a grave sin in chess and worse in politics.

Kesri, since he launched the fusillade first, seems to have lost touch with reality. The most sympathetic one can be towards his plight is to say that he allowed himself to be manouevred by those claiming to speak on behalf of Rajiv Gandhi's widow, but that is no excuse. Even assuming that Congressmen everywhere lose their sense of proportion when confronted with the best-known political address in the country, his sin was that he did not attempt to verify the claims being made on Sonia Gandhi's behalf.

Yes, it is true that the Congress cannot allow this government to last its tenure. For the simple reason that the longer it stays in power, the more it eats into the Congress's support base. Since both the Congress and the United Front claim that they are secular, slightly left of centre parties, it is obvious that one will cannibalise the other. On the other hand, the Bharatiya Janata Party, invoking whose fear the two remain uneasy bedtime partners, does not risk the danger of losing its votebank to either of the two.

What the Congress needs is an issue to break ties with its ungrateful partner, and it presumed that in the Jain Commission report it had found exactly such an issue. Even a cursory glance at the report would have put paid to this belief; Kesri compounding his faults by not bothering to read the report over which he had sought the government's downfall.

The United Front is equally a picture of weirdness. On one hand, it seeks the parliamentary assistance of the Congress party to stay in power, and on the other it has no compunctions about subjecting it to slights and insults. The combination of parties in power clearly believes that the Congress support comes free, refusing to accept otherwise. It is a remarkable attitude, to believe that the world exists for your sake and not vice versa.

If the two had kept at the game they were playing, then there was only one possible outcome: dissolution of this Lok Sabha and another general election. That is also what the public would have wanted, but they may have to wait a little while more before they get what they want.

Right now the politicians are busy providing what they want, which is power regardless of price. So the Congress would prefer a climbdown, never mind if its hardline position had put it out on a lonely limb. The UF would like some more days to see through the things such skirmishes have prevented, and so the two sides are trying to explore a via media.

If it was the fear of the BJP that brought them together, then it is the same fear that has once again driven the two estranged partners to try and find a solution to the problem they have themselves created.

If you have been watching the statements from various sides, you will know when the shift in mood took place. Things were all right so long as the BJP spoke of the dissolution of the Lok Sabha and a fresh election as the only way out of the present crisis. Actually, things were not all that good even here, for widespread opinion had it that the BJP would benefit from the public's disgust at squabbles among coalition partners, but that was a theory that had to be tested. The Congress was certain of its chances at the hustlings, as was the UF.

But what swung the mood was once again the BJP.

When the first-time parliamentarians rallied together, when they petitioned the President not to take a decision without considering their plea against dissolution of the House, the BJP was the first to take notice and to recognise in this chance for another crack at government-formation.

The numbers game was what the BJP was losing in, and here were the numbers willing and ready to be exploited. All the BJP had to do was to provide an umbrella for these MPs to come under, which it did by coming out against the dissolution of the Lok Sabha. By-now familiar meetings with the President, whose appointment book must have been the busiest over the last week, were utilised to drive home the point.

And that is what put the brakes on the Congress's inexorable march towards battle: the BJP's overtures to the first-timers, and the view that the President was not duty-bound by the recommendations of the outgoing Cabinet to dissolve the House, that he could exercise his discretion in the matter.

Things were all right so long as an election was the outcome, but the minute it became clear that a poll was not a certainty when the Gujral government fell, comatose minds suddenly started working overtime to prevent the very catastrophe they had been trying to create. And that is the story of how this government was saved, at the proverbial eleventh hour. If it does not read like the story of how the nation was saved, it means that you are still sane. Unlike most of our political leaders.

Saisuresh Sivaswamy