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Resolving the Congress-Left stalemate

Harish Khare

THE CONGRESS party finds itself at its wits' end on how to resolve the stalemate between the Manmohan Singh Government and the Left Front on the BHEL disinvestments. The Prime Minister is reported to be concerned that should the United Progressive Alliance regime give in to the Left Front on the BHEL disinvestment issue, it would send a "wrong signal" to the reforms community, at home and abroad.

As a man who once piloted India's historic paradigm shift in the post-1991 period, the Prime Minister is deeply mindful of the perceptions of the investment community about his Government's capacity and authority to stay the policy course.

There is a recognition within the Congress that the BHEL issue has been badly handled by Finance Minister P. Chidambaram. Even though it was a Cabinet decision, the inclination is to believe that better political judgment and more sensitivity on his part could have avoided the matter coming to this pass.

Of course, there is no acknowledgement within the Congress that the party's managers, on their part, failed to exhibit the requisite political skills of anticipation and neutralisation of concerns and doubts of allies and supporting parties. The episode has again brought to light the persisting problem of lack of synergy between the political establishment presided over by Congress president Sonia Gandhi and the executive branch headed by the Prime Minister.

There is also a belated realisation that there are vested interests who are out to instigate, first, an estrangement and then a confrontation between the UPA and the Left; those who argue in favour of pushing forward with economic reforms — irrespective of the commitments made in the National Common Minimum Programme — are precisely the ones who till last year were tom-toming the NDA dispensation. To that extent the Left leaders have exhibited political maturity and have been quick to add that their support to the UPA Government would continue, notwithstanding the disinvestment fracas.

The larger choice before the Congress leadership is to weigh the relative merits of two perceptions. First, can it afford to be seen as "giving in" to the Left bloc? The question that the party and government functionaries are asking is whether the Left Front "will taste blood" in case its views are accommodated in the matter of the BHEL disinvestment? Can the Prime Minister go to the United States and deal effectively with his American interlocutors if his Government were to be seen as so critically dependent on the Marxists and their goodwill?

The second perception the Congress leadership has to consider is whether the Manmohan Singh regime can benefit in any way from a perception of a split in its "support constituency"? And the Left Front is the most honest and most principled element in that support constituency.

Any perception of a consequential estrangement between the Left and the UPA would immediately bring into play the "third front" entrepreneurs. It is no political secret that a section of corporate India is quite happy to egg on Mulayam Singh Yadav and the Samajwadi Party in this venture; nor is there any secret that the Bharatiya Janata Party will be equally happy if a "third front" can destabilise the UPA arrangement. For the BJP, dislodging the Manmohan Singh Government remains the first and the only priority.

The Congress leadership has reportedly acknowledged that perhaps the BHEL decision was in violation of the NCMP. On their part, the Left leaders are aware that since it is a Cabinet decision, any backtracking would involve a serious face of loss for the Government.

The Congress leadership seems to have no choice but to take a political decision to cut its losses. Rather than totally jettison the BHEL decision, perhaps the proposed disinvestment can be diluted to five per cent, backed by an unequivocal declaration by the UPA Government that there will not be any disinvestment in future in profit-making public sector units, including the navaratnas. The Left should have its point conceded without having to make the Government eat crow. The challenge would be about how to package the decision without inviting serious doubts about the direction and contents of the Government's economic priorities and policies. On his part, the Prime Minister can decide to invite the Finance Minister to join his entourage to the United States, if he wants to address the international investment community's misgivings.

One idea doing the rounds is that there can be a parliamentary resolution, reaffirming the inviolability of the public sector navaratnas.

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