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The People's Backlash

We will form an alternative government in five minutes," was the collective refrain of the Congress, the CPI-M, the AIADMK, the Rashtriya Janata Dal, the Samajwadi Party and all those who stood up to declare their opposition to the confidence motion moved by Atal Bihari Vajpayee in the Lok Sabha on April 15. Forever the jester, Laloo Prasad Yadav declared that it would take a minute to replace the incumbent regime with an alternative government.

Those promised five minutes stretched into 10 days and no alternative government could be cobbled together by the Congress and the hastily resurrected "Third Front". Sonia Gandhi nee Maino, authorised by her minions who constitute the Congress Working Committee and the Congress Parliamentary Party to take all necessary steps to form a government, first sought 48 hours. Those 48 hours were stretched through the past week. From a Congress-only government the party shifted its stand to a coalition government. From that it was back to a Congress-only government.

Meanwhile, Comrade Harkishen Singh Surjeet, general secretary of the CPI-M, exerted to get a reluctant Mulayam Singh Yadav to back a Congress-only minority government. The RSP and the Forward Bloc, smaller but ideologically stronger members of the Left Front, were first cajoled and then threatened to extend their support to the Congress. They refused. So did Mulayam Singh Yadav.

A story doing the rounds of Delhi’s chattering classes has it that, snorting at the proposal of backing a Congress-only minority government, he told his colleagues, "Can you imagine what will happen? Gandhiji ke tasveer ke saath Mussolini ki tasveer lagani padegi. (We will have to place Mussolini’s picture next to that of Gandhi.)"

Comrade Jyoti Basu, who not so many months ago had regretted the fact that "the 112-year-old Congress has come to such a pass that it has to fall at the feet of Sonia Gandhi" and that "no one, not even an angel from heaven, can save the Congress because it has become rotten to the core", camped in Delhi, ostensibly trying to secure support for Sonia Gandhi nee Maino, but secretly hoping that in the end his name would be proposed for the top job.

A desperate CPI-M finally suggested Comrade Basu as the head of the alternative government. Sonia Gandhi nee Maino did not waste a minute to spurn the suggestion. Such was her fury at not being able to secure the support of more than 233 MPs, she proclaimed that she would "not pardon" those who had refused to become her running dogs.

The end result of the vote against the confidence motion, the political shenanigans of these past 10 days: Dissolution of the Lok Sabha and the imposition of a Rs 1,000-crore mid-term general election on the country. It can be argued that in a democracy this is the best way to settle as contentious an issue as who should govern India. With Vajpayee riding the crest of a popularity wave and popular sentiment ranged against those who conspired to bring down his government, the BJP and its allies are naturally raring for an election. In fact, the sooner a poll is held, the better – the scorching heat of May-June is no dampener for them. The Congress, on the other hand, will try and push back the election till September-October, hoping that popular sentiments will subside by then.

That is one reality of the situation. The other reality is that no member of Parliament is gleefully looking forward to contesting a mid-term general election, primarily because elections are an expensive affair and finding sponsors willing to fund you twice in less than two years is virtually impossible. The impossibility is heightened by the economic instability induced by the political crisis that has resulted from the fall of Vajpayee's government.

More than Rs 400 billion have been wiped out from the stock markets in the past fortnight with blue chip shares plummeting. The rupee is under pressure, forcing an increase in India’s debt burden. The Budget has lost its fizz and industry is feeling bleak and despondent about a recovery after more than two years of stagflation. The confidence of both internal and external investors is fast evaporating with resurgent India looking not so resurgent any more.

In a sense, the national economy has been the worst casualty of the "political earthquake" brought about by the decision of J Jayalalitha (aka AIADMK) to pull out of Vajpayee's government. The setback suffered by the economy in the past fortnight has put India's economic recovery on the back burner. A question mark has been put on crucial legislative initiatives like the Insurance Bill and the Patents Bill. It is a textbook example of India taking one step forward, two steps back.

The other casualty is India's foreign policy. The post-Pokhran II gains, the initiative to improve relations with Pakistan and the ongoing crucial talks on CTBT have disappeared from the list of national priorities. The emerging new construct to India's foreign policy must now necessarily suffer a setback. Ditto the initiatives to meet the challenges to our national security.

The third casualty is popular faith in politicians and the very system of governance. Opinion polls conducted by various agencies in this past fortnight clearly indicate mounting popular disgust with the machinations of power-hungry politicians. In recent years, the average Indian voter has come to see the average Indian politician as a person solely interested in the perks and privileges of office. A politician is no longer seen as the nation’s conscience-keeper but a book-keeper of his or her ill-gotten wealth.

In one of my columns, I had written about an opinion poll conducted in Goa, a state which has been under central rule after the elected government fell following defections and cross-defections. The opinion polls shows that the voters are perfectly comfortable and happy without an elected government since there are no politicians interfering with the administration of the State; that they do not want elections to be held in the near or distant future; that they are not too sure that democracy as practiced by Indian politicians is good for the people. The mood of the people of Goa, right now, could be taken as symbolic of the mood of the people of India.

That Vajpayee’s government should have been brought down for no other purpose but to try and get an illegitimate government into place, could not but have added to the popular disgust and distrust of politicians and politics. What hurts more is that at the end of the day, so much was destroyed for so little. So, there is little reason to look forward to enthusiastic voter participation in a mid-term general election.

There are three lessons to be drawn from the present crisis and the resultant political conundrum.

Lesson one: There is an urgent need to formulate constitutional provisions that will facilitate the survival of coalition governments in an increasingly fragmented polity – India cannot afford governments in quick succession.

Lesson two: The President has to be more cautious in future while directing a government to seek a confidence vote – he should leave such initiatives to Parliament.

Lesson three: India's political parties will have to start looking beyond the compulsions of their leaders if they want to remain in the business of elections – voters do not take kindly to those who do not think about the people.

To turn our faces away from these lessons, to refuse to learn from mistakes of the past, would be fatal for democracy and democratic institutions.

Kanchan Gupta is a political analyst based at the Bharatiya Janata Party headquarters in Delhi and editor of the party's official organ, BJP Today.

Kanchan Gupta