It’s always so easy to tell the loser what he did wrong. But you can’t do that to Atal Behari Vajpayee. He packs just too much charm, old-world decency and dignity as also personal popularity and magisterial control over public opinion for you to raise questions like that about him. His party, and his strategists have so cruelly denied him the great trysts with destiny he had scripted if there was to be another term, peace with Pakistan, settlements with China and our own Nagas, even the national highway programme. That he brought us so far down this road in such testing circumstances is by itself a compliment to one of our tallest leaders. Admiration for him, as young Rahul Gandhi so generously underlined in his post-victory chat with the media on Thursday, cuts across the political divide.
It is rare to have a man approaching 80, after six decades in public life, with so many friends and so few enemies. So, let’s not speak of him in the past tense. Vajpayee has to contribute even in this Parliament, as the leading voice of the Opposition as well as its most distinguished senior citizen.
The wise man will have his own take on how a leader with such sweeping personal ratings could get his party — and coalition — wiped out so comprehensively. Rent-a-quote analysts and pseudo-socialists are out of the woodwork already. They call it the revenge of Bharat on India, the message from the poor to the feel-good classes and so on. The import of this election is more intricate than just that. If it was so simple, how come the greatest beneficiaries of feel-good economics, in South Bombay and New Delhi, the mall-multiplex crowd in Gurgaon, have voted exactly the same way as the debt-strangled farmer in Vijayawada, the jobless graduate in Hazaribagh, or the petrified Muslim in Mehsana?
Also read: To understand Vajpayee’s economic worldview, look at his first choice for finance minister
This dramatic verdict is as much about anti-incumbency as about the rising expectations of our voter. As reform pulls more Indians above the poverty line, they are moving the bar of their expectations higher. From roti, kapada aur makaan to bijli, sadak, paani and then education, health, social dignity and security, all quality-of-life issues. This voter is more unforgiving, demanding, tougher to fool. It would then require something extraordinary to blunt his almost compulsive rejection of the incumbent. Vajpayee had it in him to do so. There were times when he rose above his party in the national interest. A pity, the party failed to rise with him and when it went out seeking votes in his name, there was a disconnect. As if he did not belong to them, or they did not deserve him.
Vajpayee would, therefore, rue the few occasions he allowed pressures from the same party to hold back from what he knew to be morally correct and politically prudent. He stopped short of sacking Narendra Modi and was then forced into that suicidal alliance with Jayalalithaa. His instinct said one thing, he let his party force him to do the opposite.
This, however, is in the past. The reality of today and tomorrow is Sonia and her coalition. Even in this heady moment, she would know the meaning of carrying the faith — and future — of a billion people. She wasn’t born among them. But she has adopted them as so many of them have accepted her. It’s a formidable challenge, morally, politically and intellectually. While she may do well to learn from her predecessor the art of managing a rainbow coalition, she also has to understand what denied him a place in history that should have been his for the asking. In the national interest, it is not good enough to rise above your party’s interest most of the time. You have to do it all the time. And when you blink, people will be brutal.
The legacy of the family and the party she inherits is both mixed and complex. Her test lies in deciding how much of it to build on, how much to revamp—and how much to bury. The agenda is already formidable, from comforting the markets and writing the budget to picking up the thread with Pakistan and China, figuring out America, a complex world and India’s place in it. There is no time to lose. For, if there’s one thing Verdict 2004 tells us, it’s this: the voter wants to see a better future, not tomorrow or the day after but today.
Also read: My encounters with Vajpayee, a statesman who could smile even in a tough situation