July 13, 1998

Assesing the performance of the other half that runs our democracy

Mani Shankar Aiyar

I am fed to the teeth, as perhaps many of you are, with newsmagazine report cards of how the Government has performed in its first 100 days of office, complete with twee little items about how Atal is a good boy but should pay more attention to the economics tutor. Why not also ask the other question: how has the Opposition fared?

After all, this 18-headed monster called the BJP-led Government got formed only because the dozen or more parties that wanted nothing of the BJP could not decide whether they liked the BJP less or disliked each other more. The elections had thrown up a confused verdict, not for any fault of the voter's but because the voter was offered a fractured choice which differed in every state. The outcome was thus not the expression of any opinion on the part of the electorate but the mathematical consequence of differential calculus bringing about an integrated result. It would have taken a Ramanujam to make sense of the outcome.

Only one thing was clear in March. Which was that, notwithstanding BJP claims to the contrary, no one had received any mandate to rule. Who would rule depended not on whom the people had expressed their confidence but on which party could cobble together a majority. Such a government could have authority. It could not have legitimacy.

The Government that won the confidence vote on March 26 was, of course, legitimate. But to be legitimate before the law is not the same as legitimacy in the eyes of the people. For instance, the people in Tamil Nadu voted for J. Jayalalitha and, to the extent she directed, cast their vote for a substitute BJP candidate. There was no vote worth counting for the BJP as such. Which simple fact escaped the BJP's attention, leading to the contretemps in which the party now finds itself. The same was true of Bihar, where it was a Samata vote masquerading as a BJP vote; in Punjab, an Akali vote masquerading as a BJP vote; in Orissa, a Biju Patnaik vote masquerading first as a Naveen Patnaik vote and next as a BJP vote; in West Bengal, a Mamata vote masquerading as a BJP vote (or was it the other way round?).

The confusion of the first 100 days of governance has been the consequence of the unravelling of the essential illegitimacy of Vajpayee's Government.

The contrast with the Opposition is instructive. Where, on election-eve, the BJP united with the most unlikely partners to present a joint front to the electorate, the parties of today's Opposition divided from their most likely partners to present as fragmented a choice as possible to the electorate. In consequence, a huge number of seats were lost by default to those whom the people would have been loathe to vote for if there had been a viable secular alternative on offer.

The division in the secular ranks was only accentuated as the results came in. H.S. Surjeet was, as is his wont, the first to shoot his mouth. He stated the obvious truth that secular governance was possible only by sinking differences with the Congress. He was immediately howled down by his own kind. Reduced to a rump of six, the Janata Dal continued to talk the language of 1989. Others continued to gabble the illiteracy of being "regional parties with a national outlook".

Miraculously, all this began to change as Vajpayee was invited to convert his pathetic minority of 170 seats into a workable majority. He managed it by getting the chairman of the United Front (UF) to defect, so much for the integrity of the UF. And so much also for the credibility of N. Chandrababu Naidu. The strategem demeaned the office of Lok Sabha Speaker but did confirm Vajpayee as prime minister.

That perhaps was the moment of truth. It began injecting some realism into the non-BJP, non-collaborator segments of our polity. The fragmented Opposition of the election scenario started speaking in the vote of confidence debate with if not one voice then at least compatible voices. It was as if a page in history were being turned, the vain anti-Congressism of 25 years being written into the past.

That solidarity was helped by two subsequent developments. One, the inept handling of the diplomatic and strategic fallout of Pokhran II. Two, Yashwant Sinha falling on his face in the attempt to prove that joining the BJP had made him a better finance minister than he had been as Chandra Shekhar's moneyman seven years ago.

The growing unity in the Opposition's ranks has been matched not only by growing dissension in the Treasury benches but, much more significantly, a yawning gap between the BJP front bench (read Vajpayee and Jaswant Singh) and the Razakars of the Sangh Parivar, starting with Ashok Singhal and extending to L.K. Advani, now no longer in hot pursuit of the Pakistanis but in hot pursuit of the succession to the Dilli durbar.

However, the sense of solidarity now becoming evident in the Opposition would not have begun to even sprout if the Congress had shown the least desire to topple the Vajpayee Government. Just like a standing Babri Masjid was once upon a time the BJP's trump card, so also is a standing BJP-led Government now the Congress' trump card. The Congress does not need to bring down Vajpayee; he is doing so very nicely on his own.

The author is secretary, AICC. The views expressed here are his own.

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