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Bellary orphaned

It was billed as the battle between the beti and the bahu. And even though Sonia Gandhi managed to retain the Bellary Lok Sabha for the Congress, after warding off a stiff challenge from Sushma Swaraj, things don't seem to have changed for the denizens of a palpably backward region, what with both washing their hands of the constituency, now that their prime objective has been accomplished.

And that motive has always been transparent, despite the hijinks of both the parties. An electorally tentative Sonia Gandhi needed a safe seat from where to make her debut, and Sushma Swaraj, in the dog house since the Delhi debacle needed a boost within the party, almost as much as the party needed one. With the wisdom of hindsight, neither party seems to have been overly concerned about the welfare of an area that is crying for attention. In microcosmic terms, Bellary is India, a large ocean of underdevelopment vying with a small islet of prosperity, and in one stroke we are witness to what politicians -- regardless of profile -- actually mean when they promise development and welfare to their constituents.

Which is a tragedy. For Bellary provided both the Congress and the BJP with a golden chance to prove to the nation their commitment to live up to promises made, and both have blown it. I daresay the Karnataka triumph for the Congress was at least in part owing to a perception among the electorate that with Sonia Gandhi choosing a constituency from the state, it will be the recipient of largesse. If she had stayed with Bellary, her party, which has been voted into the Vidhana Soudha, could have consolidated itself and made a pitch for the rest of south India which remains out of bounds for the Congress.

For the BJP, struggling to establish itself in the Deccan, this was the chance to demonstrate that Sonia or not, Bellary will not slip into its stream of unconsciousness. But by allowing Sushma to voice her refusal, the BJP too has shown that personalities, not policies, have mattered more for it in the battle of Bellary.

What of the people, who out of hope gave Sonia Gandhi an electoral victory that in retrospect she does not deserve, or gave Swaraj the chance to almost beat the Congress president at the hustings? What is likely to happen to them is that Sonia Gandhi will nominate someone close to the family -- someone from the coterie like, say, Mani Shankar Aiyar -- to keep watch over the seat. And all of what Amethi did in 1998 to Captain Satish Sharma, the family retainer charged with the task of keeping the seat warm for the family.

The voters, contrary to what the politicians may think, are neither idiots, nor are they not aware of what is going on the legislatures, who is going with who, who is doing what to who. Capt Sharma realised that in 1998, as did the erstwhile Third Front and its puppeteers, the Marxists, learnt in the previous two Lok Sabhas.

Which brings me to another subject that has been exercising my mind: the Maharashtra electoral sweepstakes, and along with it a sense of déjà vu.

1996, Delhi. 1999, Mumbai. The similarities are glaring.

The first was the year when the general elections produced a well and truly hung Parliament, with the Bharatiya Janata Party for the first time surpassing the Congress and emerging as the single largest party and the rest of the 11th Lok Sabha ganging up to keep the 'Hindu nationalist', 'communalist' BJP out of office. That the administration that came into being after that -- thanks to some deft backroom manoeuvres by that arch destabiliser Harkishan Singh Surjeet and his ally V P Singh -- was critically infirm was proved twice over by a politician on the verge of rude superannuation.

The United Front government, or what little of it there was, was a political chimera. For the first time since 1952, New Delhi was being governed by a formation that was as removed from a popular mandate as the Yamuna was from Yavatmal. It was a government that had not been voted in, but brought in, taking advantage of the inherent flaw of parliamentary democracy as India follows it.

And this realisation must have dawned on the constituents of the UF experiment, since the nucleus from it went with the BJP in the post 1998 election scenario. It had been a clever ploy all along, to paint the BJP as a monster, but it did not work with a large number of parties whose electoral base was not threatened by the former's expanding political base.

And the 1999 election saw further demolition of the anti-BJP theory, which makes one wonder: if the BJP is all right in 1999 for other, smaller parties to ally with it, what was wrong with it three years ago to subject the nation to two rounds of expensive general elections? For the mandate, if at all, in 1996 was for the BJP to govern, and this was shown up in 1998 when no other political party could cobble together a working majority.

As in Delhi, now in Bombay. Just as 1996 saw the coming together of political parties who had fought the elections separately, and who went back to fighting each other in 1998, only to keep the 'communal' BJP out, the recent elections in Maharashtra have seen the Nationalist Congress Party and the Congress --- which fought the election against each other --- joining hands to keep the BJP-Sena out of power. This, despite the two having a pre-poll alliance and despite them falling short by a slender margin. If the mandate from the state were to be taken to be in favour of anyone at all, then it must be for the saffron alliance, certainly not for the government that has taken over.

Now that it is a fait accompli, the two sides are trotting out weak explanations for their coming together, like their combined vote share being enormous, how the BJP-Sena would have been wiped out in both the Lok Sabha and assembly elections if the Congress party had not split etc, which is indisputable.

But the fact is, the Congress and NCP treated each other as principal enemies during the elections, and cannibalised each other's votes. If the two have seen fit to join hands now, it is not for the achievement of any higher ideal, but to simply taste power that has been denied to them for almost five years.

The voters know it too, know an illegitimate alliance or a broken promise when they see it. And will speak their mind through the ballot, whether in Bellary or in Bombay.

Saisuresh Sivaswamy