Race Course Road

India Today, December 7, 1998
Dec 7, 1998

RACE COURSE ROAD
Blessing in Disguise

Post poll Vajpayee plans to rein in colleagues and allies.

Prabhu Chawla

For Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the moment of introspection has finally come. Far from being dismayed, he is in fact looking at last week's verdict as a blessing in disguise. Normally, prime ministerial authority and acceptability are eroded when the ruling party at the Centre is routed in state elections. That is unlikely to happen this time since it is the BJP's image as a party, and not Vajpayee's personal image, that has taken the harshest knocks. Inevitably though, the target of the attack will be Vajpayee and not his party. To deflect this, Vajpayee is under tremendous pressure to undertake a total reshuffle of his cabinet and the top bureaucracy and force a complete purge in the BJP. If indeed Vajpayee resorts to this option, half of his cabinet ministers will either be dropped or transferred to new departments. Politicians are known to ditch a losing leader faster than rats flee a sinking ship, but friends of Atalji (FOA) are preparing to convince the nation that Vajpayee may be down but he is not out.

A buoyant Congress party is gearing up to demolish the BJP's icon, but FOAs are busy formulating a new marketing strategy to project Vajpayee whose acceptability remains undiminished despite the reverses. A home-grown leader like Vajpayee, they say, is a more effective and longer-lasting solution for India's ailments than a foreign-born greenhorn in politics. And though he may have been crippled, Vajpayee still remains the ablest when compared with the bunch that is waiting in the wings to replace him.

What perhaps has pushed the prime minister into repositioning himself is the charge that he has not been paying enough attention to the management of the economy. Belatedly though, Vajpayee has realised that he has been badly let down by those who were trusted with economic and infrastructure departments. Last month, he had ordered a secret report on the performance of key departments, including finance, agriculture, civil aviation, commerce, chemicals and fertilisers, industry, communications and petroleum. The basic objective of the exercise was to replace those who were found to be ineffective and unimaginative. Earlier he had decided to strike soon after the elections results were announced. But with Parliament in session, he has chosen to defer his plans until it is over.

It is too early to say whether the poll results will provoke a realignment of political forces at the national level, but one thing is clear: Vajpayee's equation with members of his own party as well as alliance leaders is bound to change. He will not only reiterate his right to choose his ministers but will even decide their departments, a right which he willingly surrendered to the RSS and leaders of his alliance partners last March. Recently he bluntly told one powerful alliance leader that since it was he who had to bear the brunt of the criticism against the government's perceived failure, he would at least like to exercise the option of choosing his team. It is clear that Vajpayee is preparing for another bout. Only this time the adversaries are not the usual ones, but his own party colleagues and alliance partners. Vajpayee has at last realised that the best way to make his colleagues understand is by differing with them and not by agreeing with everything they say.

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