Vajpayee brings back the PM

By Harish Khare

INCREASINGLY, MR. Atal Behari Vajpayee appears to be nursing back to reasonably good health the authority and prestige of the office of Prime Minister. This institutional recuperation, even if partial and still tentative, could be crucial to restoring the Constitutional equilibrium that must sustain the political order, at a time when the Indian state is being tested by a host of inimical forces, both internal and external. Mr. Vajpayee's Prime Minister's Office has its task cut out for it - to reclaim the efficacy of the Prime Minister as the chief political executive.

It is not that suddenly Mr. Vajpayee has metamorphosed from an amiable non-performer into a superb administrator. Nothing of the kind has happened; septuagenarians do not easily turn a new leaf at that age. Yet a new lightness is discernible in his steps and there is a suggestion of assertiveness in the exercise of the authority latent in his office. No other development underscores this assumption of the leadership role than his unwavering advocacy, inside and outside the Government, of the new economic policies of reducing subsidies. Mr. Vajpayee has been willing to stay the course, steel up the resolve of his own Finance Minister, face down the demands of allies and the Opposition to roll back these ``anti- people'' policies, and, lastly, has spoken up in defence of these harsh and tough decisions from public platforms.

In his second innings as Prime Minister, Mr. Vajpayee is the beneficiary of a change in a number of crucial equations. First, Mr. Vajpayee has recovered the leadership of his own Cabinet, in sharp contrast to the 1998-1999 prime ministerial innings. Mr. George Fernandes is no more the prima donna that he was the first time out; Mr. L. K. Advani pretends to be more than a number two but has come to terms with the limits of his own political savvy and with the extent of prime ministerial authority; Mr. Jaswant Singh has to depend upon Mr. Vajpayee's countenance and indulgence for all his foreign policy initiatives and so-called doctrines; and, poor Mr. Yashwant Sinha seeks prime ministerial protection as he gets a bitter taste of the medicine called the ``Public Interest Litigation'', a medicine that his party colleagues in Bihar have so insistently administered to Mr. Laloo Prasad Yadav. And, both Mr. Ram Jethmalani and Mr. Sharad Yadav have reason to be thankful to Mr. Vajpayee that they have not been stripped of their respective ministerial portfolios.

A corollary of the above is that the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) has regained, to a very large extent, the initiative over power, policy and patronage. The Cabinet Secretary has cheerfully surrendered the initiative to Mr. Brajesh Mishra, Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister; the Foreign Secretary finds it expedient and helpful to keep Mr. Mishra in the loop. Various Secretaries have discovered for themselves the usefulness of seeking the PMO's help in pushing their Ministries' projects and polices in the Cabinet. It need be noted that Mr. Vajpayee has not yet felt the need to have a Minister of State (a la Mr. Bhuvnesh Chaturvedi during the Narashimha Rao era) to help him in running the PMO, nor has he been tempted to replicate the disastrous experiment of having a political secretary. The centrality of the PMO is best attested to by the ``peace initiative'' in Kashmir.

Second, Mr. Vajpayee has redefined - to his advantage - the relationship with the BJP. The new equation is best exemplified by the fact that the election of new party president has been postponed by a month just because he is preoccupied otherwise. As luck would have it, Mr. Vajpayee is free to indicate his preference between the lacklustre Mr. Kushabau Thakre, the thoroughly uninspiring Mr. Jana Krishnamurthy and the ambitious but remarkably amenable, Mr. Venkaiah Naidu. None of these three gentlemen or any other thoroughbred from the sangh parivar stable can hope to restore the organisation's upper hand. Like on many other counts, the BJP has been made to see the correctness of the Nehruvian postulate that the party organisation cannot be allowed to meddle in the Government's choice of policies and personnel. There is no more any misplaced talk of ``coordination'' panels. In the recent Cabinet expansion/reshuffle, the BJP aspirants have been left to lick their wounds.

A corollary of this changed equation is that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh establishment too can no longer pretend to dictate to the Government. This means that disgruntled elements such as Mr. Madan Lal Khurana would not be entertained with any sympathy should they choose to cross swords with the Prime Minister. The new RSS chief and his team appear to have come to terms with their ignorance and irrelevance.

Third, Mr. Vajpayee can now be deemed to have the upper hand vis- a-vis the allies in and out of the National Democratic Alliance. Admittedly the allies are not totally without their clout. Mr. Chandrababu Naidu can have the satisfaction of publicly rebuffing the Prime Minister's offer of joining his Cabinet. Mr. Naveen Patnaik exercised his prerogative to appoint men of his choice in the Vajpayee Government. Mr. Nitish Kumar's claim could not be ignored with the same impunity as Ms. Uma Bharti's. Yet Mr. Vajpayee and his advisers can and do draw strength from the nature of the 1999 electoral contest in which Mr. Vajpayee's all- India acceptability gave the straggling alliance a reasonable coherence. For example, there is precious little that Dr. S. Ramadoss can do about his unhappiness over shifting his nominee in the Union Cabinet from the Health Ministry to Ministry of Coal.

A corollary of this new equation is that Mr. Vajpayee becomes an accepted umpire among the allies and the BJP. The BJP-Trinamool Congress tiff over sharing of seats was resolved only after the Prime Minister sent his emissary. The new equation was best reflected in the deft manner in which the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, Mr. M. Karunanidhi, was brought around in the matter of intervention/non-intervention in the Sri Lankan imbroglio; there was also a confidence that the PMO had a correct and more realistic assessment of the sentiments in Tamil Nadu than some of the Tamil political parties.

Fourth and last, the Prime Minister is fortunate enough in the kind of Opposition he faces in and out of Parliament. Fortuitously enough, the principal Opposition party, the Congress (I), is distracted inwardly; and, as the Leader of Opposition, Ms. Sonia Gandhi is the best thing that could have happened to Mr. Vajpayee. On their own, the other Opposition parties are handicapped in making life difficult for the Prime Minister.

The inevitable corollary of this enfeebled Opposition is that the Prime Minister does not have to depend upon the partisan support of the BJP or the NDA allies; instead, he is able to garner the requisite parliamentary numbers for the ``harsh, hard'' economic measures from all sides. This absence of unrelenting opposition enables the Prime Minister to blunt the partisan demands of the hawks within the BJP/NDA; inversely the Opposition parties' inability to stampede the Government into decisions against its preferences give the Prime Minister just the confidence to deal with the Opposition Chief Ministers in a spirit of ``live and let live''. For example, Mr. Vajpayee is most unlikely now to give in to demands such as invocation of Article 356 against the RJD Government in Bihar.

Mercifully, Mr. Vajpayee has acquired only the bare minimum control over institutional authority vested in his office. He has not become an insufferable overlord who can ignore the constitutional parameters of his authority; he is not even in a position to roll back the encroachments the judiciary and Rashtrapati Bhavan have made on prime ministerial's authority. But he has used his acceptability to retrieve just about enough power to lend credibility and efficacy to the governing arrangement at the Centre.

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