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People are fed up with Laloo Yadav!

Before the current session of Parliament, I asked former prime minister Inder Gujral who would form the next government. The rumour mills were grinding swiftly. A large chunk of grist had been provided by Congress president Sonia Gandhi's statement that the BJP-led coalition could fall any time. Gujral felt the compulsions of different political parties were such that the Vajpayee government would survive.

That it won the motion on the Bihar government's dismissal by 29 votes confirmed Gujral's reading. It appears that the interests of various parties are so balanced that no other result is possible in the Lok Sabha for the time being. In other words, the constituents of the coalition are reconciled to staying with the BJP, which leads them. It suggests that the government will possibly survive the Budget session.

The next danger point may be in November when the election in Andhra Pradesh, Assam and Karnataka are due. Much will depend on how the BJP fares. The party faced similar pressure a few months ago when it was defeated in the Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan election. The absence of an alternative, among other thins, sustained the coalition.

It is clear now that the Congress made a mistake when it chose Bihar as an issue to test the waters. No doubt, Laloo Yadav's crimes were obscured by the Centre's authoritarian action of dismissing a popularly elected government. But he was a wrong person to back. No rationalisation or even the explanation that the Congress was not serious about the trial of strength in the Lok Sabha can erase the stigma of defeat.

Sonia Gandhi's initial reaction was correct. She should have stuck to her statement that the Bihar government was morally responsible for the massacre of dalits at the hands of the Ranvir Sena. It was a principled stand. Whether Sonia Gandhi was pressured into deciding something that she did not like is difficult to say. I believe that certain Congress leaders persuaded her that support to Laloo Yadav would help the party open doors, which are closed to it at present. What they suggested was that the Muslims and backward classes would be placated in Bihar if the Congress were seen to be on Laloo Yadav's side.

This is not true. People are fed up with him. They realise that they have been reduced to penury and helplessness during his rule and that of his wife, Rabri Devi. And they have known from their experience that he was the most corrupt chief minister the state has ever seen, looting billions of rupees in public funds. His misgovernance was seen as having institutionalised the mafia raj.

There are no two opinions on the Centre's dismissal of the Bihar government. The use of Article 356, which relates to the failure of Constitutional machinery in states, is reprehensible. UP is no better than Bihar. But the Vajpayee government took action against a person arraigned before the court for corruption and gangsterism. This time the President too did not return the Cabinet's request as he had done a couple of months ago.

If Sonia Gandhi wants to rehabilitate the Congress, she must go back to its noble standards of the past. Before Indira Gandhi came to power, the Congress seldom separated morality from politics. Accepting Laloo Yadav fitted into the traditions that Indira Gandhi had set. The Congress has to depart from them if it wants to recover.

Congress stock goes down when it extends support to such a politician. It is concluded straightway that there must have been a political deal. The party took a principled stand when it said it would go it alone at the polls. The argument went home: An alliance with a political party demanded compromise and the Congress was not willing to do so. But the support to Laloo Yadav showed that when it suits the Congress it is prepared to join hands with any political organisation, be it the Communists, Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party, Laloo Yadav's Rashtriya Janata Dal, the Janata Dal or the DMK in Tamil Nadu.

After the defeat on the Laloo Yadav issue, the Congress has gone back to its earlier stand to go it alone. It has to make up its mind once and for all. It cannot ally with the regional parties one day and shun them the next. If, in its scheme of things, they do not count, it should stick to that. However, the realities on the ground are such that the regional parties cannot be wished away in some states.

It is possible that some day the people may go back to the Congress and give it an absolute majority in the Lok Sabha because they are increasingly exasperated by weak, halting and non-performing coalitions. They may also come to feel that one-party rule is necessary to take decisions which the deteriorating economic situation demands.

What this entails is reconciliation by the Congress to its role of an Opposition party for the rest of the Lok Sabha term, a little more than four years. Such a scenario is not without risk, because the BJP-led government is systematically dismantling the educational and social structure, which has sustained pluralism in the country. There may be more and more doses of Hindutva injected into India's body politic, which already shows deformity in the shape of communalism and parochialism. Can the Congress allow it to happen? And will it not be too late?

The BJP realises the advantage of staying in power. It will go to any limit to be in office. Its coalition partners have only to express their wish for it to be carried out in no time. AIADMK chief Jayalalitha wanted the Centre to abolish the special courts, hearing cases of corruption against her. The Vajpayee government complied with her wishes, at the expense of annoying the Supreme Court. Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Banerjee demanded a package on railway lines in West Bengal. The Railway Budget took care of that. The Telugu Desam pressed for money and it was allocated.

But then the BJP has never claimed to link morality with power. Even before the Lok Sabha vote on President's rule in Bihar, the party officially said, 'that the coalition it led would have the moral right to continue in power even after the defeat of the resolution.' It was further argued that the resolution would not constitutionally warrant the Vajpayee government's resignation.

The BJP's somersault on Bihar Governor Sunder Singh Bhandari beats all norms. Home Minister L K Advani was justified in announcing that an apolitical governor would replace Bhandari, who repeatedly said in office that he was an RSS man. But then how could the BJP refuse a fiat of the RSS, which ultimately controls the party? That Advani had to eat humble pie is not so bad as is the unquestionable rule of an RSS man over Bihar, one of the largest states in the country.

Little does the BJP-led coalition realise that even correct actions by the governor against Laloo Yadav may become suspect.

Kuldip Nayar