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Wednesday, Jul 05, 2006

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Opinion - Leader Page Articles

Finding new rhythms of coordination

Harish Khare

The search for a new coordination mechanism between the Manmohan Singh Government and the Congress party can no longer be postponed. It should be the clearing house for all major governmental initiatives.

ON SEPTEMBER 2, 1955, Jawaharlal Nehru addressed a conference of Chief Ministers and Pradesh Congress presidents in New Delhi. The theme of the conference was "co-ordination between the Congress organisation and the administration." The conference was held in the context of the worsening relationship between the organisational wing and the governmental wing in province after province. Though by then Nehru had relinquished the office of Congress president, and U.N. Dhebar had (nominally) taken over the organisational leadership, there was no doubt in anybody's mind that the Prime Minister was the tallest leader, not just in the Congress but in the entire country.

Nehru propounded the issue as someone who had had "eight years experience in administration," and focussed on the crux: "The Congress today is in a peculiar position. Ever since 1936-37, when we first took over the Ministry, relations between the Ministries and the PCCs have been a perennial problem. All the problems that arise cannot be rigidly answered. We cannot get on by interfering with each other's activities. Of course, consultation and mutual understanding at each state is essential."

Yet there was no getting away from the simple fact that the parliamentary system of government meant essentially a party government: "... in India it is the Congress Session or the All India Congress Committee which gives broad directives. We have to act up to them. If the AICC asks us to resign, we will do it ... If the AICC lays down a certain policy, either we will have to follow it, or if we cannot do so we will have to go and place our difficulties before the organisation. The AICC gives us a basic approach. Within that, the Government has a large measure of freedom."

All this troublesome history has been recalled because last week's Congress Working Committee meeting has left a lingering resentful taste in everyone's mouth — the AICC functionaries as well as their ministerial colleagues. The party has been seen as being unduly critical of its own Government, an unintended perception that has only detracted from the Manmohan Singh Government's political legitimacy.

As expected, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Left — though for different reasons — have piled it on the Congress for being less than sincere in its professed concern for the aam admi in the matter of prices of essential commodities. On the other hand, an unhappy impression has gained ground that the Prime Minister is somewhat isolated.

This last week's mutual unhappiness would be worth it if both the ministerial and the organisational wings were to understand and come to terms with their unyielding togetherness. There is no separate salvation either for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh or for Congress president Sonia Gandhi. For too long, the Congress has allowed itself to be pushed on to the back foot on the issue of the party's relationship with the government. From the very beginning, the BJP conjured up this image of "Sonia Gandhi is the extra constitutional boss"; and, the Congress president personally and the Congress organisation collectively never challenged this portrayal. After all, the very essence of the parliamentary system is a party government; the notion of "ruling party" means that the organisational wing has a legitimate right to lay down the "line," both in terms of policies and personnel.

The Manmohan Singh arrangement is a novel experience for the Congress party. For the first time in more than 30 years, the party is experimenting with a division of power and authority. After two years, the time has come for the Manmohan Singh Government to stop fighting shy of the relationship with the party. Those party leaders who are outside the Government (and, most of whom secretly want to be in the Cabinet) can be counted upon to keep invoking the aam admi, sniping at the Government, if only to try to impress upon the Congress president their connectivity to the grass roots. Those in the Government are bound to feel impatient with, and at times intolerant of, all this sniping. In fairness, it needs to be noted that those who find themselves in the organisation were not totally without any governmental experience; nor are they stranger to the complex world of modern governance. Differences in perspectives can be — and often are — genuine, without any malice. Under the circumstances, the Congress president, always carrying a self-imposed burden of fairness, will inevitably be inclined to balance things out, and in the process satisfying neither side. As Nehru noted in 1955, even after eight years of running the administration, the Congress and the government had not been able to hit the operational meter of harmony. It should be obvious to one and all that some kind of institutional arrangement needs to be put in place beyond the core group mechanism. Two years of experimentation with the core group has produced neither the synergy nor the mutual understanding. For instance, the core group never came to grips with the recent reservation business. Whatever reservations the group had about the Human Resource Development Minister's intentions or priorities, they were never voiced, leave alone sorted out. If the senior most colleagues do not feel comfortable enough with one another to open up, the problem can only deepen and would require surgical intervention of drastic kind.

The search for a new coordination mechanism between the Manmohan Singh Government and the Congress party can no longer be postponed. Unlike the core group whose membership reflects some kind of seniority in the hierarchy, an effective coordination mechanism will need to blend policy literacy and political street-smartness. A formal coordination panel should become the clearing house for all major governmental initiatives and policies; the governmental functionaries would then be able to elicit the "political" response, while the party operatives can no longer pretend to be clueless as to what is going on in the Government.

It stands to reason that once the organisational wing is taken into confidence about the government's initiative, it will be better placed to anticipate public reaction as well as to join the battle of political responses. Admittedly, a formal, institutionalised coordination mechanism will not solve the Congress' problem of shrunken political space. Nor will it automatically make the Government wiser. But the government-party relationship needs to be liberated from individual leaders and their personality predilections. The Congress is too much of a political institution and its obligations towards the people of this country are only too obvious; there is no scope for pettiness or low thinking.

Relations within UPA

It follows that not only is there need for coordination between the Congress and the Government, there is also need for a much greater understanding among the United Progressive Alliance partners. The relationship, for example, between the Congress and Sharad Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party has become sullen after the recent blame-game over the delay in import of wheat.

A formal coordination mechanism among the UPA allies would provide a forum for airing mutual suspicion and appreciation. As it is, the UPA arrangement has broken down at the provincial level, and it is all the more necessary not to let the State-level disagreements disrupt the national-level coalition harmony.

As of now, there is no forum for any pooling of ideas and impulses among the UPA allies. There has been an understandable reluctance to replicate the United Front-type coordination that paralysed, first, the H.D. Deve Gowda Government and, then, the I.K. Gujaral regime. The Manmohan Singh-led Government, nonetheless, can gain from a formalised interaction by reversing the current style of each ally pursuing autonomy in its Ministries and regional-level politics. This disharmony has allowed the non-UPA players to try to create a wedge between the Congress and the allies.

Operating the Indian state through the mechanism of a coalition government is a precarious job. However, till such time as the Indian polity reorders its factions and frictions, the national leadership has an obligation to explore ways of making the coalition mechanism a maximising arrangement. Two years of together but separate existence has not helped either the UPA allies or the Congress. This disparateness should not be allowed to become a drain on the efficacy and legitimacy of the ruling arrangement at the Centre.

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