August 10, 1998

Shape the Congress into a constructive Opposition

Tavleen Singh

When she took to the streets of Delhi last week with her first "rally", it looked as if the lady who may yet be India's first Italian prime minister planned to demand the dismissal of Atal Bihari Vajpayee's Government. She stopped just short. The Government had failed totally, was anti-poor, only the Congress could rule India, we were told. "But we are not hungry for power" (ha ha). We will agitate though, and make a big noise every other day.

Sonia's rally reminded me of a similar event in an August long ago when another Mrs Gandhi wanted to "save India" from Morarji Desai's Janata government. The charges against the government were almost identical to the ones Sonia makes today: price rise, mismanagement, anti-poor. Indira Gandhi chose the wrong day though. It rained heavily and only a handful of bedraggled sycophants turned up. India remained unsaved.

If I tell the tale with a sneer it is because I believe this kind of politics is pathetic. It is resorted to only by the kind of political leaders who have nothing worthwhile to say. The kind whose only solution to the country's problems is: make me prime minister. They offer us no new ideas. So they have to come up with agitations and gimmicks which, alas, get reported as major political events.

We had, for instance, several stories on Sonia offering her shoes to one of her fellow walkers. Of course, nobody bothered to tell us what kind of shoes were on offer. Sonia favours those made by Charles Jourdan. The price of one such pair would pay for a poor family's vegetables for a week even at today's rates.

Maybe I'm being a little harsh on poor Sonia. After all, it must be quite hard to be a politician in a foreign country especially when your only political experience is what may have rubbed off from husband and ma-in-law. But when you consider that India has not had a proper government for three years, you may understand why the opposition parties need to offer us not agitation but something more constructive.

Since 1996, every Union government has been on daily wages. Within months of H.D. Deve Gowda's taking office, Congress circles began to buzz with rumours of his imminent dismissal. He didn't survive a year. To this day, nobody knows for sure why Sitaram Kesri decided to topple him.

The Congress then handpicked sweet, mild-mannered Inder Gujral. But it kept him on daily wages too. Gujral finally lost his job when he refused to accept the Jain Commission's proposition that the entire population of Tamil Nadu -- and definitely all of the DMK -- was responsible for Rajiv Gandhi's assassination.

When Vajpayee became prime minister, it seemed we had at last got ourselves a government that would not be on daily wages. But within days it became clear that between Jayalalitha and Sonia this hope was going to be belied.

True, Vajpayee's regime has been ineffectual, unimaginative and akin to a sad little clone of the worst kind of Congress government. But equally, Vajpayee has not been given much of a chance. Nearly every day since he took office there has been speculation about his Government's survival. Now that Sonia has taken her demand to the streets, the speculation will almost certainly intensify.

What chance does even the best government in the world have to achieve anything at all if it can't be sure it will last a month, leave alone a year? This is why it is vital that we consider fixed, five-year terms for governments. Instead of wasting time on constitutional amendments to reserve seats for women, the BJP Government should try to rally support for an amendment that will ensure fixed terms for governments. Since it seems unlikely any political party will be able to get a majority soon, support for the law may not be hard to find.

Amid the toppling game we have been witness to for the past three months, no opposition party seems even slightly concerned about the country's problems. We may not be as bankrupt as Pakistan but the economy is not in good shape. It could end up being a lot worse if American sanctions really start to bite.

The opposition parties appear unaware of the need to deal with the fallout of Pokhran II. For instance, what will be the consequences for us if Pakistan really begins to collapse and a semi-acceptable Nawaz Sharif is replaced by one of those peculiarly Pakistani conglomerates of mad generals and madder mullahs? They have been dangerously radioactive even before they became officially nuclear.

Every day the newspapers report that Sonia has met some new emissary of Jayalalitha or conferred once more with some unnamed senior Marxist leader. These meetings have been interpreted to mean that she is about to make a bid to cobble together an alternative government; and not once has she denied it.

On the contrary, when Sharad Pawar tried to point out recently that toppling the Government at this point would lead to chaos, Sonia's spokesmen announced that the people were "raring for a change at the Centre". The most destabilising aspect of Sonia's toppling game is her endless dithering. If she is so certain she wants to be our first Italian prime minister, then she may as well go for it and put poor Vajpayee out of his misery.

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