March 22, 1999
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BIHAR Congress: Only Short-Term Gains Sonia's calculation that she can appease Laloo and buy his support in the Lok Sabha may backfire. By Sumit Mitra and Javed M Ansari
The fortunes of the Congress have been on an upswing recently because the party showed restraint in its attitudes and avoided unprincipled alliances. This policy paid rich dividends in the assembly elections in Rajasthan, Delhi and Madhya Pradesh last year. Sonia gave further evidence of her dignity of conduct in political life when she steadfastly refused overt and covert offers by leaders of the so-called Third Front to pull down the Vajpayee Government on some pretext or the other. She had address at the Pachmarhi conclave last September, by saying, "our stand of not rushing into bringing this government down has been appreciated all round." The strong value-content in her politics was again in evidence when she unhesitatingly removed J.B. Patnaik, an able and experienced Congress chief minister, by fixing on him the responsibility of the murder of a Christian missionary. However, her handling of the Bihar episode shows the first sign of a leader losing touch before achieving her primary target-that of putting the Congress back in glory. She had her instinct in order even on February 10, a day after the carnage of 12 Dalits at Narayanpur, when she said that the RJD Government "had lost the moral authority to govern". But between then and February 22, when the Congress Working Committee (CWC) decided to vote out the statutory resolution under Article 356 in Parliament, the party had relapsed into its old pattern. At the CWC, the argument Sonia made was that it would be suicidal for the party to support President's rule engineered by the BJP. Only three of the committee's 22 members-Sushil Kumar Shinde, Pranab Mukherjee and Rajesh Pilot-clearly said that they'd like the party to support the resolution. The majority opinion obviously swayed Sonia's visit to former Congress president Sitaram Kesri, a trusted ally and valued well-wisher of Laloo. Partymen read from it which way the leader's mind would be tilting. In the bargain, the Congress lost sight of the fact of the increasing fragility of the BJP's upper caste support base. Such shifting of loyalty had been evident from the assembly election results in the three mainline states. In Bihar too, both BJP and Samata have fared poorly in the recent assembly by-elections. Finality is not the language of politics, but the Congress failed to appreciate it. As if it were not enough, it also alienated the Dalits by aligning itself with an exclusive preserve of the Yadavs. For the centenarian party, it now looks like a clear policy to appease Laloo and, through him, the Third Front elements who might support a governmental change-over within the 12th Lok Sabha. That move is indeed baffling, for Sonia has often predicted that the BJP-led coalition would come down under the weight of its "internal contradictions". The Congress appeasement policy towards Laloo seems to have begun too early, without waiting for the crumbling-down process to start. It seems more a product of the philosophy of carpe diem, seize the opportunity. It is hinted at in Sonia's own utterances. In the February issue of Congress Sandesh, a journal brought out by the All-India Congress Committee (AICC), she was quoted as having told party workers that "the challenges in the new year will be of a different nature" and that "the country's responsibilities will fall on the Congress sooner rather than later". She said during her visits to south India earlier this year that "the BJP Government will fall any moment", adding that the Congress would not "shun the responsibility" when it comes. The party's decision to bail out the RJD government is actuated by the necessities of the makeshift alliances required to form a government at the Centre soon. CWC member Manmohan Singh, a neo-convert to the creed of obtaining power through a rough-hewn alliance, thundered at the CWC that the support of the 37 MPs under the two Yadav formations, RJD and Samajwadi Party, was a dire necessity for the Congress to take over. In the long term, it will be disastrous for the party. It will give a go-by-to Sonia's earlier schedule of reorganising the party by completing all organisational elections before August 31 and by transforming the public face of the 113-year-old party with reservation of a third of office-bearers for women and with democratisation of the ticket-distribution process for both assembly and parliamentary elections. These processes, which have just begun, will get derailed if the Congress seeks power within the present Lok Sabha. A political quid pro quo with Laloo or Mulayam Singh Yadav or Jyoti Basu means writing off the party in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal respectively. That amounts to forsaking the party's future interests in Lucknow, Patna and Calcutta for a short-lived place in the sun in Delhi. The ministry-making efforts will also drive the BJP's slippery coalition partners most of whom have scores to settle with the Congress' potential allies, to close their ranks. It may give a new lease of life to the Vajpayee Government. Besides, how will Sonia live up to the task of recapturing the party's lost social bases in the caste cauldron of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar? That'll be squaring quite a circle. |
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By playing the
pivotal role in bringing the RJD back to power in Bihar, the Congress under Sonia Gandhi
has proved its inability to regain its old stature as a party above caste and communal
divides, and above realpolitik. It is precisely by allowing itself to become a party of
convenience since the '80s that the Congress lost its supremacy at the national and the
state levels. At a brainstorming session at Hardwar in Uttar Pradesh in February, this
failure was admitted in the Congress document which lamented that the party had
"destroyed itself on the three critical fronts of class, caste and community".
Within a month of making the confession, the congress by actively committing itself to the
defence of Laloo Prasad Yadav's archcasteist RJD, has once again walked into the booby
trap of politics of convenience. It might have scored a short-term victory by making Prime
Minister A.B. Vajpayee beg for Sonia's help, but it has been a loser in the long term. 
