Three steps backwards

Even through differences in ideology, our politicians never lost their sense of conduct. Now, when maturity is needed within parties, it is replaced by an unprecedented bitterness.

A file image of Congress leader Sonia Gandhi with Sushma Swaraj flanked by Rahul Gandhi and former PM Manmohan Gandhi | Photo: Ravi Batra

You do not have to be a political pundit to guess what Sonia Gandhi will be asking herself once the dust of Jharkhand, Goa and Bihar settles: how did a set of state elections that should have brought some feel-good for my party, become such an embarrassment? How come she was left, instead of savouring success, controlling the damage?

The how, who, why of this remarkable self-goal in the week of a very decent budget. Just what did she do to deserve this, who is responsible for her party suffering this entire series of self-inflicted reverses, so bad these now threaten to rub away the halo that was hers after her remarkable renunciation?

It was smart of her government to cut its losses in Goa. With the governor having already sworn in Shibu Soren, a total retreat will be messier in Jharkhand. But so immoral and so unconstitutional has been the conduct of the governor in Ranchi that even the most loyal Congressmen are refusing to justify it. I have personally heard from several cabinet ministers in deep embarrassment, and if our understanding of the prime minister’s style, personality and political beliefs is even halfway accurate, he really couldn’t be sleeping peacefully this week. No amount of self-serving distancing, spin-doctoring with the help of loyalist journalists to say that the governor acted on his own, is going to take this blot away.

Frankly, in the past three days, since the enormity of this outrage became evident, you have not seen a single Congressman, not even one of the great behind-the-scenes manipulators who devote their full time and attention to running intrigues and conspiracies after losing their own elections, has dared to to defend this. Poor Sibtey Razi has been hung out to dry, humiliated (deservingly so) by the president, collecting that rarest of dubious distinctions of having to explain his actions to the media on the steps of Rashtrapati Bhavan.

In our political history post-1971, every government has had an inflexion point in its tenure when the honeymoon ends. What follows is a logical process when a downhill movement starts, the opposition sharpens the knives and people begin to think change. It happened to Indira Gandhi with the Allahabad High Court verdict setting aside her election (1975), with Rajiv Gandhi on Bofors and V.P. Singh’s rebellion (1987), Narasimha Rao with Harshad Mehta (1993) and, to a lesser extent, with the BJP on Gujarat, 2002.

Please mark the fact that this point always comes almost neatly midway through a government’s tenure. It is something that our politicians know and worry about. But it is only the less serious governments that allow such crises to build so soon. The first is the type that does not believe it is in power for too long anyway, like V.P. Singh with Mandal in his first few months. Second, the foolhardy ones like Gowda going after Sitaram Kesri, probably because some astrologer told him to go ahead, just do it.

This government, and this Congress leadership, should have been smarter than that. The Congress had acquired power after a long time, particularly under the Gandhi family. The last thing it needed was such political crisis so early on. The logical theme of Congress politics today should have been to treat the ascent of the Manmohan Singh government as a semi-final victory and to prepare for the final, under Rahul Gandhi if this coalition lasted five years. Or even under Manmohan Singh, if the next elections came before Rahul was ready.

It follows, therefore, that the first pillar of Congress politics post-May ’04 should have been stability and a clutter-free environment, at least for a couple of years, for this government to make some impact. If, instead, it is now caught in such a mess, retreating three steps a day with its bloodied nose, somebody has blundered.

That somebody, or more likely a bunch of nobodies, has to also answer for bringing back the old, seventies’ Congress instincts back so soon, and when their party has barely a fraction of the kind of majorities it had then. It is a different matter that these instincts did not pay even in the seventies, leading to the Emergency and also the beginning of a more evened-out politics and the end of Congress monopoly over power.

Sonia is far too astute not to know that, having brought her son into politics, the last thing she can afford is to leave the party under the care of these losers. It would also be short-sighted to blame her problems now on a Sibtey Razi or Jamir. This blundering phase was initiated by whoever advised her to break away from Laloo, her most loyal ally. It opened up a contest that was in her pocket (Jharkhand), and another where she would have had no option but to go with Laloo anyway.

Could anyone have argued before the Bihar elections that a scenario where Paswan and Congress would have enough seats to form a government without involving Laloo was even remotely possible? And if it wasn’t, where was the need for the Congress to break away, expose its irrelevance, and then snuggle right back into Laloo’s contemptuous embrace?

Surely, the Congress has plenty to think about, once this infamous chapter in its history is over. But we also need to worry about one more turn our politics has taken lately. In the past, howsoever bitter the differences, our political class had the ability to keep pretty good equations at personal, social and even political levels.

Even after Indira Gandhi put so many opponents in jail, and they jailed her in retaliation, communication between the two sides never stopped. Through increasingly bitter differences of ideology and personal ambition, our political class never lost its sense of humour and social conduct.

You saw them chatting and joking in the central hall in the course of a tough day in Parliament as Indian and Pakistani cricketers would after a hard day’s game. They visited each other’s homes socially, attended weddings of each other’s children, and made common cause in Parliament and elsewhere whenever national interest so required. Both the BJP and Congress have been mature enough to help the other pass bills that even their own coalition partners would oppose. At this point, in completely fractious politics, when this kind of maturity is most needed at least within the two largest parties, it is being replaced by an unprecedented bitterness.

A story I always cherish is Nawaz Sharif asking me, most incredulously, how Rajiv Gandhi could welcome V.P. Singh with folded hands to the prime minister’s chair, after losing to him in the winter of 1989. “I saw it with my own eyes, on TV, ” he said, “how could he do it, that man in Jinnah cap used to call him a thief, Bofors chor.” I explained to him that’s how politics in mature democracies was. He said, sadly, that he and Benazir did not even say dua-salaam if they met at an airport. I told him, grandly, be patient. Your democracy will also mature, like ours.

If he is reading this on the Net in Jeddah as he usually does, he will note that I was wrong, that India has regressed since then. If he is also watching what’s happening in our Parliament, where abuse has replaced debate and adjournments make the headlines rather than legislation, he would also think it is a bad advertisement for democracy. If our national politics begins to echo the bitterness of Mamata versus the Left, Laloo versus Paswan, Mulayam versus Mayawati kind of equations, we would have come a long way even from December 13, 2001, when the first call Vajpayee received after the attack on Parliament was from Sonia, asking if he was okay.