Vajpayee - winner or loser?

The all-too-apparent limits of the `Vajpayee effect' could embolden the rest of the Sangh Parivar to encroach on the Government, writes Harish Khare.

BY LATE this evening, the country should have a fairly good idea of the winners and the losers in the four States of Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Assam and Kerala, and one Union Territory, Pondicherry. Whatever the voter's preference, in this age of political inter-connectedness, the results would cause reverberations way beyond the limited electoral theatre. If the opinion polls and the exit polls are any indication, then the only States where the BJP could boast of its own or a friendly Government would be Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa, and the smaller States of Himachal Pradesh, Uttaranchal, Haryana and Punjab. It would be a daunting task for the Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, to face the phalanx of non- NDA Chief Ministers in, say, the National Development Council.

The BJP, as the ruling party at the Centre, has very understandably been rather keen to deny that the outcome of the elections would in any way be a reflection on the performance of the Vajpayee Government. The argument has been that in no State was the BJP in power, and only in Assam and Tamil Nadu was it a junior partner with the local ruling party; therefore, in none of the States was the voter asked to accept or reject a BJP or BJP- led arrangement.

The Congress(I), on the other hand, has been cock-a-hoop about its expected good performance and is looking forward to forming Governments in Assam and Kerala, and to being a part of a winning coalition in Tamil Nadu, and hoping to do reasonably well with its alliance partner, the Trinamool Congress, in West Bengal. Should the Congress(I) expectations come true, the party would be entitled to view the outcome as an endorsement of its policies, priorities and its leadership, especially its stance of unbridled aggression towards the Vajpayee Government in the post-tehelka period.

As it were, the State-level electoral battles have invariably given a fair idea of the nation's political mood. The 1987 Assembly elections in Haryana, for example, did demonstrate that the country's honeymoon with Rajiv Gandhi was over. Similarly, the Samajwadi Party-BSP combine's 1993 victory in Uttar Pradesh punctured the air of inexorability that the BJP sought to appropriate for itself and its Hindutva platform after the Babri Masjid demolition; or, the Congress(I) defeat in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh in 1994 sent out a message that the Manmohan Singh-Narasimha Rao economic reforms package was not paying political dividends.

Inevitably, the outcome in Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Assam and Kerala will hasten the thawing of frozen equations in and outside the Lok Sabha. Even though the BJP was the least important player, it would nontheless be the biggest loser. The results would merely confirm the infectious sense of disenchantment with the Vajpayee Government. The BJP strategy was simple: deny any advantage whatsoever to the Congress(I). In fact, in both West Bengal and Kerala where the BJP could help it, its effort was to strengthen the Left Front candidates at the expense of the Congress(I).

In West Bengal, the innermost wish of the BJP brass was to deny Ms. Banerjee the satisfaction of a victory; no one could just walk away from the BJP and do better. Inversely, the BJP cannot take any satisfaction from its alliance with the AGP; the much- vaunted ``expansion through alliance'' strategy appears to have run its course. The bottom line for the BJP is uncomfortable: the party is not taking off. It is the continuation of the 1999 message when the party failed to make any substantial addition to its 1998 tally.

If the Vajpayee BJP is no more an asset in local battles, would the regional allies find it politically worthwhile to continue their alliance relationship with the NDA? Fortunately for the BJP or unfortunately for the Congress(I), it is only the Telugu Desam that can re-arrange decisively the equations in the Lok Sabha, and the Congress(I) happens to be involved in a zero-sum game with the TDP in Andhra Pradesh. For now, there is precious little that the Congress(I) can do or say to induce the TDP to part company with the NDA.

On the other hand, it will not be all that easy for the Left and the Congress(I) to put behind them the bitterness and rancour of electoral spats in West Bengal and Kerala. In any case, Ms. Banerjee can be relied upon to sabotage any Congress(I) stance of cooperation with the Left. Nor should one under-estimate the NDA's capacity to build on inherent contradictions and resentments that the Congress(I) politics of dynastic invincibility invokes.

At the same time, the all-too-apparent limits of the `Vajpayee effect' could embolden the Sangh Parivar to try to encroach upon the Government's policies and personnel. As it is, the Prime Minister finds himself increasingly forced to contend with the ambitions and absurdities of the Sangh Parivar establishment. Should a feeling of political isolation set in, the Vajpayee regime may find itself conceding ground to the Parivar in the Ayodhya matter; however, any concession to the VHP hotheads could invite rethinking on the part of the allies, particularly the TDP.

Besides, the realisation that the BJP was not exactly emerging as the alternative to the Congress(I) as the premier centrist party could induce the Advani crowd to force the party to revert to its congenital oppositional reflexes; such a relapse to old habits could see the governmental agencies on the rampage, with totally unpredictable results.

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Section  : Opinion
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