The Hindu : The crisis in Maharashtra

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Friday, Jun 07, 2002

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The crisis in Maharashtra

THE DEMOCRATIC FRONT in Maharashtra, consisting of the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) apart from a few regional outfits and Independents, seems to be cracking. The fissures that appeared a few months ago, when the CPI(M) announced withdrawal of support and the Peasants and Workers Party (PWP) deciding subsequently to withdraw its Ministers from the State Cabinet, now seem to have widened and are threatening to pull down the Vilasrao Deshmukh dispensation. The events in the past couple of days, culminating in at least four MLAs belonging to the NCP announcing withdrawal of support to the Government, had left the Governor, P. C. Alexander, with no other option but to ask Mr. Deshmukh to prove his majority on the floor of the Assembly. The ruling combine has been reduced to a minority and a confidence vote is only in the fitness of things. It is another matter whether the PWP MLAs (as well as the couple of MLAs belonging to the CPI-M) would cast their votes against the Government in the Assembly. The two parties have, after all, been consistent in their opposition to the BJP-Shiv Sena combine (despite having walked out of the Democratic Front) and it remains to be seen what position they will take particularly if faced with the prospect of a BJP-Sena combine managing a majority and staking claim to form a Government in the event of Mr. Deshmukh's Cabinet being voted out.

Be that as it may, the crisis within the Democratic Front is only the culmination of a long trajectory of events following from the inability of the political leadership of the NCP to commit itself to secular and democratic values. Sharad Pawar himself is to be blamed for this. That Mr. Pawar refused to lead his own ranks (and more importantly his party's MLAs) in the campaign against the majoritarian challenge is obvious. The presence of at least four of the NCP MLAs along with the BJP's Gopinath Munde and the Shiv Sena's Narayan Rane (when they met the Governor) is indeed a reflection of the fact that Mr. Pawar's approach to party-building did not go beyond a personalised campaign against Sonia Gandhi and in this sense was bereft of any ideological commitment. It is another matter that the NCP leader is now having to bend over backwards to keep his flock together (including herding his party MLAs away from Mumbai) and ensure that more MLAs from his party do not walk over to the BJP-Sena camp between now and June 11, when Mr. Deshmukh moves the confidence vote in the Assembly. The statement by Mr. Munde that the four NCP MLAs were part of a group of 17 (all belonging to Mr. Pawar's party) who were sympathetic to the BJP-Sena cause over the years is indeed a comment suggesting how brittle the NCP is as a party.

It is this aspect that raises concern and the reality is as harsh in several other States as it is in Maharashtra. The fact that the BJP leader was willing to be so brazen about his plans is only one more instance (after the party reduced ministerial berths to rewards for support in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly in 1997) where the party has shown its contempt for the party system. It is the same game that the two sides in Maharashtra's political discourse are playing now. While the Chief Minister, Mr. Deshmukh, sought to shore up the ruling combine's strength in the Assembly by inducting three of the Independent MLAs into his Cabinet, the BJP-Sena leaders' response to it is clearly a loud message to those who missed the bus (from the NCP) that they can look forward to Cabinet berths if they help the combine form the Government. The party system which is of critical importance for democracy to sustain is being dismantled and destroyed in the process. One cannot but see the developments as they unravel in Maharashtra with a sense of deja vu for it was such a course that the members of the political class resorted to in such States as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar that contributed immensely to the weakening of civil society in those States over the years.

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