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What a choice!

I was wrong, totally wrong. So were all those like me who thought the Congress was an invertebrate. A yellow belly that slithered and crawled in front of every leader who hijacked it for his or her own personal gain.

I was also wrong when I thought that Sonia Gandhi would remain the party's supreme leader for the next decade or two, till she either met with an unfortunate accident like the Gandhis are prone to or handed over her crown to one of her not-exactly too bright children like the Gandhis are also prone to, having deluded themselves into believing that they and they alone are destined to rule India, in dynastic succession, even though the quality of political competence they have shown has steeply slid in every successive generation.

By raising the banner of revolt against Sonia, couched albeit in polite and politically correct language, Sharad Pawar, Purno A Sangma and Tariq Anwar, the smartly designed secular troika, have made it known that the party can no longer be treated as a private fiefdom of the nation's first family. The Congress will have respect, yes, for the Nehrus and Gandhis and will allow Sonia to retain her control over the party as its president, at least for a while. But fighting the forthcoming election as its prime ministerial candidate is a clear no-no. As a result, the Congress gains. The very fact that a prime ministerial candidate who reads her lines in a peculiar, sing-song Hindi from a ghost-written script in Roman alphabets is no more acceptable to the entire party returns the Congress to the mainstream of Swadeshi politics. As a born-again nationalist party.

Will it bring khadi and the Gandhi topi back into fashion after almost two decades of political exile? No one can say for sure, given the fact that (barring the Narasimha Rao years when MPs were bribed to keep the Congress in power) the last true-blue Congressi government was led by Rajiv before Bofors brought him down.

Sonia's game plan was simple. She wanted to revive memories of those magic years and sweep the poll. That is why she was in such a desperate hurry. A couple of years and she knew that they mystique would have vanished. That is why she refused to support a coalition or head one led by the Congress. She wanted an absolute mandate to rule. Like husband, Rajiv. Like mom-in-law, Indira Gandhi. Like every Gandhi, she wanted unquestioning obeisance from the entire political system. Respect was not enough. It was not enough that 7, Race Course Road diverted every visiting dignity to 10, Janpath. She wanted absolute power. Nothing short of that was ever acceptance to her.

Sharing power was never on the cards. Even though she may have initially given that impression to Jayalalitha or Subramanian Swamy. Deliberately or otherwise, who knows? That is why a furious Sonia unleashed her dogs of war on Mulayam Singh, who refused to cover before her and, what is worse, messed up her entire game plan by showing everyone else how easy it to defy her. Rumours are that Mulayam is now readying to gang up with the dissidents.

There are actually multiple options before them. But the most obvious one is to split the Congress and move away with a substantial number of Congressmen to head a third front. People like Pawar and Sangma are strong enough to demand a commanding position in any coalition that is now formed. If nothing else, they can displace the Deve Gowdas and Sharad Yadavs and lend the third front infinitely more power, strength and legitimacy.

The alternative is equally obvious. To form a strong enough group that can negotiate a deal with the BJP which is currently desperate to grab a few more seats in the next election. Exactly what George Fernandes and Ramakrishna Hegde tried to do a fortnight ago and failed. They described it a homecoming for the socialists but could barely put together a motley crew capable of going beyond the numbers they already had.

Pawar at last count controlled 45 MPs. Sangma, 25 from the North-East. Between them and Tariq Anwar, a surrogate for Sitaram Kesri, as the whole world knows, they can bring in valuable numbers. For they have clout, money, enough political reach. At a pinch Tariq can bring Laloo in given the Kesri-Laloo news in Bihar. Together, even in the worst possible scenario, such a group can win more seats than George, Hegde and Mamta put together. So what stops the BJP from negotiating with them? They would be easier to handle than the hotchpotch coalition it struggled with for 13 months.

The other option is to stay within the Congress and cut Godzilla down to size. Can they do that? Unlikely, if you ask me. Congressmen are like Dobermans. To show their loyalty, they have a habit of attacking all dissidence and killing it. That is why few dissidents have stayed back in the party and survived, after raising the banner of revolt. So my guess is, now that the die has been cast, Pawar, Sangma and Anwar will have no option but to quit. Sonia being Sonia, the Congress will remain with her. As dowry.

No, there are no permanent friends, no permanent allies in politics. No permanent enemies either. So where does this leave the Congress? In the doghouse if you ask me. For none of Sonia's pets can win an election. In fact, most of them can only hurt the official Congress candidate. So even if Sonia puts together the best candidates from the party, the ones most likely to win, her advisers will jeopardise their chances in the hope of retaining control in the new, much weaker Congress that will emerge in the post election scenario.

What happens to the BJP? If it dumps its old allies and joins hands with new ones, it will go through its own identity crisis. As it is, the BJP in power has lost its original shine. It looks, behaves, sounds like the old Congress and is so full of ideological inconsistencies today in its search for naked power that it will continue to alienate its original supporters even as it attracts and more and more people from other parties. People in search of an alternative route to power. In fact, it is already trying to push out poor Bansi Lal after Om Parkash Chautala joined them. It is wooing Mulayam Singh in secret, why should it not grab Sharad Pawar and dump some of its other allies? It could make perfect political sense for them.

What does this mean? That Indian politics has wished goodbye to ideology and principles. The BJP is no longer the BJP. It is capable of aligning with anybody and doing anything to grab power. So is the Congress. Its new friends are Laloo and Jayalalitha and, given half a chance, it can prove that it is more communal and casteist than any other party. Criminalisation and corruption have also taken their toll. It is now looks and behaves like the Mob. Led, by curious coincidence, by a person of Italian origin masquerading as Annie Besant, no less.

The third force? It is the last resort of every political reject. Anybody who wants to hunt with the hounds and run with the hares reaches there. Where Harkishan Singh Surjeet, the chief deal-maker of the self righteous CPI-M, stands as a towering monument to cheap compromise and slippery short cuts.

It is from these three groups or a coalition of any two of them that India will choose its next government. Sad, na?

Pritish Nandy

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