Cover Story: Maratha Missile

Anticipating another coalition government Sharad Pawar hopes to use his clout in Maharashtra to bargain for a stake at the Centre.

When Sharad Pawar became chief minister of Maharashtra for the first time in 1978 at the age of 38, industrialist J.R.D. Tata is said to have remarked, "One day this boy will become prime minister." The story may well be apocryphal but Pawar's political career has been one of unrealised potential. Among the few Congressmen with a genuine grassroots following, Pawar has been dogged by constant near-misses. He lost out to P.V. Narasimha Rao for the prime ministership in 1991, to Sitaram Kesri for the Congress presidentship in 1997 and finally to Sonia Gandhi in 1998. Ever in the reckoning, P A Sangma

the No. 1 slot seems to have constantly eluded the Maratha strongman.

It's always been attributed to his inapt timing. The talk of a Pawar revolt in the Congress has been doing the rounds since 1991. It resurfaced in the final days of both H.D. Deve Gowda and I.K. Gujral but never materialised. On May 15, when no one expected it, Pawar devastated Sonia by endorsing the BJP's misgivings over her "foreignness". To the hordes outside 10 Janpath and the Congress Working Committee (CWC) that expelled him, he epitomised treachery; to the nine sitting MPs and 22 MLAs who rallied to his support on May 16, he was the symbol of Maratha asmita (pride).

The calculations are a little more basic. Pawar may believe that he is articulating the hurt of "lakhs of Congressmen" at a "foreigner" bidding for the top job, but his rebellion is an exercise in niche marketing. Says a sitting MP from western Maharashtra: "Deve Gowda became prime minister with 29 MPs, Jayalalitha toppled a government with 19 MPs and Mulayam Singh Yadav stopped Sonia with 20 MPs. What has Saheb got with the 33 MPs he brought to the Lok Sabha? Nothing."

In the age of coalition politics, the Pawar camp believes its leader wasn't sufficiently acknowledged for his role in denying the BJP-led coalition an outright victory in 1998. To cap it all, he was constantly needled in his home state. First, with the appointment of Prataprao Bhosale, a known Pawar-baiter, as PCC chief and subsequently with the encouragement given to Govindrao Adik to undercut his base in the sugar lobby. Says a Pawar loyalist: "Maharashtra sent the maximum number of Congress MPs, yet it had only one CWC member. Compare that with the numbers from Uttar Pradesh where the party didn't win a single seat. The high command has short-changed us." It's a sentiment that has the potential of going down well in a state which still remembers the shoddy treatment of Y.B. Chavan and Vasantdada Patil by the Gandhi family.

Wounded Maratha pride is the central plank of the Pawar offensive. Given the growing disenchantment at the performance of the Shiv Sena-BJP state Government, Pawar feels the time is ripe to appropriate some of the regionalist sentiment that has traditionally accrued to Bal Thackeray. Says Chhagan Bhujbal, leader of the Opposition: "To all those burning Pawar's effigies in Mumbai, I have one question: how many times have they spoken out against Thackeray and burnt his image? Gaddar kaun hai (Who is the traitor)?" In the battle for asmita, a wronged Pawar carries greater emotional weight than an incompetent Sena.

To this is added the weight of electoral arithmetic. Unlike Arjun Singh or N.D. Tiwari, who broke away from the Congress and couldn't even retain their own seats subsequently, Pawar's track record outside the parent party is impressive. In 1984, his Congress (S) polled 12.1 per cent of the votes and won two seats. Pawar was himself elected from Baramati by a huge margin. At the assembly level, his performance was even better. In 1980, the Congress (S) won 47 seats with 20.5 per cent of the popular vote and in 1985, the seat tally increased to 54 despite the vote share coming down to 17.3 per cent.

If Pawar can effect an alliance with the Republican Party, the Samajwadi Party and the Janata Dal, he has the ability to reduce the Congress to a rump. And although the BJP-Sena alliance could have the upper hand in a triangular fight, close aides of Pawar believe his Third Front could win anything between 18 and 24 of Maharashtra's 48 seats. This could dash the Congress' hopes of upstaging the BJP as the largest party in the Lok Sabha.

Not that Pawar will confine his attention to Maharashtra alone. Apart from Mulayam Singh Yadav, he is in touch with Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress, J.H. Patel's Janata Dal in Karnataka and Naresh Agarwal's Loktantrik Congress in Uttar Pradesh. Together with N. Chandrababu Naidu's Telugu Desam and regional parties in the north-east, the combination could win enough seats in the 13th Lok Sabha to dictate terms to either the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) or even the Congress. There is already speculation that Pawar's Third Front will enter into an informal, strategic pre-election arrangement with the NDA to defeat the Congress. Indeed, Congress circles firmly believe that the script of Pawar's rebellion was written by the BJP, with Minister of Information and Broadcasting Pramod Mahajan playing a central role. There is even a sense in some circles of a Pawar-Mahajan deal to undermine both the Congress and the Shiv Sena. Was it a mere coincidence, they ask, that Thackeray was kept out of Atal Bihari Vajpayee's May 11 rally in Mumbai?

At present these may seem fanciful but Pawar is clearly banking on yet another hung Lok Sabha in which he holds the balance of power. If the arithmetic and the stars are on his side, he may yet prove Tata right. Otherwise, there's always the chance of another shy at being No. 2.

INTERVIEW
"The issue is national pride"

Associate Editor V. Shankar Aiyar caught up with Sharad Pawar who was mobilising his forces in Mumbai. Excerpts:

You have been expelled. What next?
This shows which way the party is headed.

Why did you raise the issue of Sonia's Italian origins now? Why wasn't it an issue last year or even last month when the Congress staked claim to form the government?
It's a question of timing. Sonia was never projected as a prime ministerial candidate nor did our opponents raise the issue last year. If I had raised the issue in April it would have affected party unity. But now we were drafting the manifesto and I thought it was the best time to put the concerns of lakhs of Congressmen before the highest decision-making body.

Did you ever expect the party to endorse such a move?
The issue that I have raised involves national pride. It's a question Congressmen are raising at the grassroots level. What answer do we have when they say can't we find a leader among 98 crore Indians? I am surprised by Sonia's resignation. We have not challenged her position as Congress president. There was not even an indirect suggestion that she should quit.

You don't see any conflict? As party president, she is okay but not as PM?
The two are different. After all the Congress has had foreigners or foreign-born individuals as presidents.

But many of the senior leaders backed the call for your expulsion.
There are some people in the party who specialise in posing for TV cameras, who have no rapport with the masses. Sadly these are the people who are advising the president.

You have also been charged with being ambitious.
If I raise an issue that is disturbing so many Congressmen and common people within the party forum how can you call it indiscipline or call me ambitious.

But the CWC has already rejected the letter.
I know this party and its members. I have had calls from AICC members thanking us for raising the issue. I wanted the party to discuss the issue. There can be no compromise when the self-respect of the nation is involved.