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Beyond the Lucknow battle
By Harish Khare
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Both the BJP and the Samajwadi Party are deeply and conspiratorially in cahoots with unwholesome economic interests and socially undesirable individuals.
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HARKISHAN SINGH Surjeet and Vishwanath Pratap Singh, two high priests of our secular orthodoxy, have been reported to be of the view that the National Democratic Alliance regime in New Delhi would collapse after the BJP gets routed in Lucknow later this month. Both are also of the view that Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party is the only effective instrument of an anti-BJP offensive in Uttar Pradesh. Both propositions are wrong because both are premised on the flawed assumption that the State is witnessing a secular versus communal battle. A corollary of this flawed assumption is the fond hope that should the BJP lose in Uttar Pradesh there would be an "exodus" from the NDA. Nothing of the kind is likely to happen.
Whatever the outcome of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, the ruling arrangement in New Delhi would remain undisturbed. The objective conditions would remain largely unchanged and would not admit any change in the regime in New Delhi. The reason is simple and has to do with the nature of the Vajpayee Government. For the first time, there is a Prime Minister who has put together a Government based entirely and unapologetically on the principle of expediency. The departure — and, later, the return — of the Trinamool Congress and the PMK from the NDA fold was an unparalleled exercise in opportunism. But it works and there is no reason to believe it will stop working once the votes get counted in Uttar Pradesh. It is sine qua non for the anti-BJP voices to describe the Vajpayee arrangement as a "communal" Government, but there is no getting away from the fact that the NDA regime is hardly different from its predecessors in terms of commitment to providing policy breaks to the known economic crooks and corporate offenders.
Indeed, if anything, should the BJP suffer a setback in Uttar Pradesh, the ruling arrangement in New Delhi would become more precariously dependent on the allies. That should work to the advantage of the Prime Minister and would enable him to ward off the lunatic fringe in the Sangh Parivar. A BJP drubbing in Uttar Pradesh would also add slightly to the influence wielded by the Mandalites such as Sharad Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan. The Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister too would relish the larger elbow room. In any case, Mr. Vajpayee knows that the corporate interests that sustain his regime would not permit that the Mandir crowd runs amok. In other words, the secular interests may not be worse off either way. But the large question is whether abiding public good would be served should the Samajwadi Party "win" in Uttar Pradesh.
Because the secular custodians have been singularly indifferent to the Samajwadi Party's hobnobbing with the worst kind of moneybags and power-brokers. There has been this touching faith in Mulayam Singh Yadav's "secular" credentials that no one wants to examine closely the company he keeps. There is, in fact, considerable merit in the Congress (I) argument that the Samajwadi Party has been the source of most comforting stability for the NDA regime because Mr. Yadav's lieutenants hobnob with the same economic interests and forces which want the "moderate Vajpayee" in the saddle.
Nor is anyone interested in confronting the unvarnished truth that criminals have been systematically allowed to make inroads in this outfit. Once the criminals acquire respectability in the secular company of Mr. Yadav, they farm out to greener pastures in other outfits. And so consuming have become the demands and slogans that are manufactured in the "secular" battle that Mr. Yadav's history-sheeters become secular soldiers against "communal" criminals who have crossed over to the BJP or the BSP. It is precisely this bogus and entirely insincere invocation of the "secular" spirit that has levelled the playing field between the communalists and the secularists in and beyond Uttar Pradesh.
And it is this indulgence shown by the likes of Mr. Surjeet and V.P. Singh to the Samajwadi Party as the "secular" mascot that has now encouraged the incrementalist takeover of the party by Amitabh Bachchan. Let there be no mistake. Mr. Bachchan is not another star campaigner like Rajesh Khanna (for the Congress-I) or Shatrughan Sinha (for the BJP). Mr. Bachchan is a representative reminder of the cronyism that grew like a cancer at the core of the Rajiv Gandhi regime; his failed essay into entrepreneurship is well known as are his problems with the tax man.
True, the cine star once mesmerised an entire generation of Indians as an angry young man who would not live with an insensitive system; the same rebel is now in search of political patrons and platforms. Not content with having resurrected himself with the help of political and corporate crooks, he has chosen Mr. Yadav's "secular" outfit as the instrument of his suppressed public fantasies.
It is pathetic enough that Mr. Yadav, the so-called mass leader, is now reduced to relying on the fading charisma of a fading cine star to gather a crowd. And, it is doubly pathetic that the secular high priests are unable to do anything about this hijacking of a political party by a bunch of corporate sharks. Even assuming the BJP is routed in Uttar Pradesh, the great secular battle would end up providing legitimacy to the latest Bachchan outburst of dubious entrepreneurship. It is anyone's call whether such a pyhrric victory would advance the secular agenda or would merely bring comfort to the corporate "entrepreneurs" who cleverly spread their friendship equally between the BJP and the Samajwadi Party.
The battle in Uttar Pradesh is no referendum on the Vajpayee Government; and, in any case, to begin with, the BJP did not have a mandate to rule in the State. An adverse vote will merely confirm that the Uttar Pradesh voter remains unenamoured of the BJP. But it would be unwise and unviable to conclude that a "secular" victory in Uttar Pradesh has given a license to dismantle the NDA regime. In recent years, Governments have fallen in New Delhi not because they lost a "mandate"; the Gowda Government had to go because someone thought the Central Government's coercive powers could be used to harass the Congress (I) leadership; the I.K. Gujral regime went because Sonia Gandhi and her entourage had decided to capture the Congress (I) organisation and had to trigger a process of destabilisation; the Vajpayee Government fell in 1999 because two ladies, Jayalalithaa and Sonia Gandhi, allowed themselves to be convinced that both would be acceptable as Prime Minister.
The requirement would be to prevent another group of buccaneers from using the Uttar Pradesh election results to make another set of miscalculations. Resident and non-resident crooks love nothing better than a power vacuum at the Centre. Once the fake ideological labels are peeled off from the outfits, the electoral manoeuvres in Uttar Pradesh are about "leaders" pretending to be in touch with the people; whereas both the BJP and the Samajwadi Party are deeply and conspiratorially in cahoots with unwholesome economic interests and socially undesirable individuals. Unwillingness on the part of the "secular" crowd to come to terms with the contours of this unholy convergence has made it very easy for the BJP to keep on creating a war psychosis besides manufacturing a national security mood in the country. And it is this mood that generates legitimacy for the anti-minority sentiments.
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