One year on, BJP and Congress still can’t figure out the election result

Opposition is out of Parliament almost permanently, as was the case in the last months of Rajiv Gandhi's government. The two leading parties are not even on talking terms any more.

Illustration by Ramandeep Kaur |ThePrint

In a fortnight, when the UPA government celebrates its first anniversary it might be disappointed to note that the mood would suggest it was somehow the election year already. The Opposition is out of Parliament almost permanently, as was the case in the last months of the Rajiv Gandhi government, the two leading parties are not even on talking terms any more. Crucial legislation is stuck in Parliament because the Leftist allies won’t let them get passed, or in committees because the BJP chairmen are boycotting these. And bit players who scavenge so successfully in election-year politics are already out on the prowl.

The Left sends its leaders to attend Mulayam Singh Yadav’s rally in Patna, Sharad Pawar meets Karunakaran, even Jayalalithaa, talks to Chandrababu Naidu who, in turn, is sending feelers to the Left and is not being rebuffed. Laloo is talking to Mamata. The Left is also talking of raising a third front to keep the “two bourgeois parties” out of power as their “final” solution to India’s problems.

The Left distances itself from whatever the government does, the Opposition is hitting the streets already’armed with booklets called Why the Boycott’and the only thing the Congress can do is blame the BJP, or fire South African guns at George Fernandes. In a whole year, it has not let out a whimper against the Left against which it will fight two and a half state elections next year (Assam being the half besides West Bengal and Kerala). It has routinely accepted humiliation by the CPI (not the more measured and mature CPM) spokesmen.

This situation is politically unsustainable. Even when Rajiv Gandhi had 400 plus seats, a parliamentary boycott by the Opposition was a huge embarrassment and forced an early election. Today, when the NDA is out, and when the Leftist allies have usurped the role of the opposition, it becomes a mockery of parliament. This is not to absolve the NDA, particularly the BJP of blame.

They are looking ridiculous, abdicating the responsibilities for which they were elected and, most likely, are also irritating their own voters. But the bottomline is, their stakes are much lower.

Our politics has touched such cynical lows that cutting your nose to spite the neighbour sounds like a very benign expression. While some of their complaints, for example, the persistent heckling by RJD and Left MPs who do not even allow the leader of the opposition to speak and the Speaker’s lack of control have merit, a permanent boycott of the House as well as of the committees is an immoral dereliction of duty. Just as silly is the new trend of vicious personal attacks on one who is after all a very decent prime minister. Invisible, weakest, most incompetent, most ineffective, opportunist’these are not expressions you use for a prime minister in his first year unless you are a bad loser. Worse, these attacks are coming not from the younger storm-troopers but from veterans.

This kind of viciousness was not found after the Emergency, or even in Rajiv Gandhi’s last, Bofors and shilanyas year. There was an occasional gungi gudiya (dumb doll, Lohia on Indira Gandhi) or “sticking to their chairs like limpets” (Rajiv on the Opposition). But those were rare indiscretions. So why are many of the same players who lived through more contentious times with greater decency slipping into this permanent hostility now?

Here is a hypothesis. Both sides, the Congress and the BJP, have read last year’s verdict wrong. The BJP still finds it difficult to accept it lost. It has a feeling, instead, of having been cheated out of power. The Congress, on the other hand, believes it got a resounding verdict for change. Both are wrong. As their comparative numbers (145 versus 138) show, this was no clear verdict one way or the other. But the first fact is that the BJP and NDA lost. The second is that the Congress and the UPA put together a coalition on the basis of, what can, at best, be described in cricketing terms as a Duckworth-Lewis verdict in their favour. If the two sides accept that reality, they might find it easier to co-exist in what is a very fractious house to begin with. Irrespective of who is right or, rather, who is more wrong, it is of greater interest for the government to ensure normalcy is restored.

While the Opposition may pay for it in the course of time, no government can carry on with such a Parliament from its very first year. The entire political system can’t be held to ransom by two blood feuds: Laloo’s with Advani and George Fernandes’s with the Gandhi family.

Or, as it always happens in blood feuds, or the old story of two cats and the monkey, it’s the monkey that wins. So maybe the only thing that could bring the Congress and the BJP to acknowledge each other’s legitimate positions is the prospect of this stalemate resulting in power once again slipping in the hands of a third front of some sort. Remember Gowda, Gujral, V P Singh and Chandra Shekhar and you might figure what it meant for us to actually have prime ministers who were invisible, weak, opportunist, ineffective.