The wisdom of fools

When was the last time the Congress thought through its strategy? Even if politicians are stupid, the people aren't. They know who really calls the shots.

Attendees hold a Congress banner during an event in New Delhi (Representational image) | Photo: T. Narayan | Bloomberg

If only the Congress party was half as smart as some of its opponents are stupid, it wouldn’t have been in such a sorry mess. The “opponents” in question at this point are Sharad Pawar and his Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), technically, happen to be its allies.

The announcement of the arrest of Balasaheb Thackeray was supposed to be Pawar’s great masterstroke, played through his favourite pinch-hitter, Chhagan Bhujbal. He thought this would precipitate a Sena versus The Secular Forces row, and force the Congress to go along with the policy even if it meant complete mayhem in Maharashtra. As a consequence — the main consequence if he had his way — this would expose once again the inadequacy of “foreign” Sonia’s leadership, leaving him perfectly positioned to take over the Congress.

Right through the build-up to the so-called arrest, the BJP-Sena sympathisers were expecting a Pawar-BJP deal. But the chair he was after was something other than a mere cabinet berth in Delhi. Until a magistrate moved at supersonic speed and left him so hopelessly stranded.

What did the Congress do, meanwhile? First of all, it allowed itself to be taken by surprise by Bhujbal, who officiated as chief minister in Vilasrao Deshmukh’s absence and moved the Thackeray file. Then, it did not know which way to look. To not back Bhujbal would have seemed like cowardice. To go along with him was not only politically silly it was also, more or less, legally untenable. Or so all the legal minds advising the government said, only to be overruled by Bhujbal’s “Hum choodiyan pahan ke nahin baithe hain” (We are not sitting here wearing bangles) shouts at cabinet meetings.

The Congress can now happily present him with the most ornate pair of bangles. But if his haste and unprecedented magisterial alacrity had not changed the script, where would the Congress have ended up in this game? If Bhujbal had succeeded he — and Pawar — would have got all the credit. If, on the other hand, Mumbai and Maharashtra burnt, communal riots broke out again and the financial markets crashed, the Congress would have taken the blame. If they have been able to get away with such tactical bankruptcy, it could only be because in politics, fortune obviously favours the fools.

For the Congress, the Maharashtra situation raises two questions. One, does this now mean that it has to put up with Thackeray forever as the òf40óde facto ruler of Mumbai even if his party is out of power? Two, what does it say of its higher strategic decision-making bodies, its so called tactical experience, if it could let Bhujbal, a failed Shiv Sainik, hijack its agenda so easily?

 

The first question is simple to answer. If Thackeray is really such a bad guy as the Congress and its allies believe then, surely, he must have committed a graver crime than provocative editorials written seven years ago. Any state government that knows its job half as well as it should can build a real dossier of crimes on someone supposedly as malevolent as him. Even, that is, if you are targeting Thackeray the individual. That should please Bhujbal and others who are driven by motives of blood feud rather than ideology.

But if you wish to destroy Thackeray, the phenomenon, you have to forget him for the moment and target the widespread Sena network of patronage, hafta, captive unions, extortions and so on. Almost everyone in Maharashtra politics — and police — claims to know all about it. Yet nobody moves against it. Is it because far too many of them are themselves involved in it? Or is it because some of them would rather build extortion mafias of their own?

The saddest part of the Thackeray episode this week was the way Bombay responded to it. The so-called spirit of the city, that brought it back to work the very morning after the 1993 serial blasts, seemed to die without a whimper. People, most of whom voted resoundingly against the Sena, pulled down the shutters on businesses so willingly that it seemed as if a national holiday had been declared. The MTNL network went to sleep. The city was paralysed, waiting for rioting to erupt as though awaiting slaughter. All this before Thackeray had even been taken to any jail.

Even if politicians are stupid, the people aren’t. They know who really calls the shots. The Congress-led alliance, in spite of its majority, is seen as transient in Bombay while real power vests in Thackeray and his Sena. If the Congress had any brains or commitment, it would have by now done something to change that. It should have very systematically gone about dismantling the Sena’s patronage network, collecting evidence of “real” crimes, if any, against its leaders rather than wasting its time chasing after minor contracts and deals. What is one to say for a political party that doesn’t have the courage or the sense to reopen such an awesome can of worms as the Srikrishna Commission report because it has something critical to say about their alliance leader, but lets the same ally lead it into a near disaster with such a ridiculous case and a time-barred one at that?

If only the Congress had the sense to reopen the Srikrishna report it would have put both, the BJP in Delhi and the NCP in Mumbai, on the defensive. But when was the last time the Congress thought through its strategy? Or can you really expect better from a party that let the Jain Commission leaks first talk it into toppling a friendly government and then Jayalalitha walk it into an election?

That brings us to the second question, on the quality of the Congress party’s higher strategists and tacticians. But, in the light of the bankruptcy it has shown in Maharashtra, must we waste time looking for answers to that question?