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Can the UPA project be salvaged?

Harish Khare

Competence, vision and stability are needed in any ruling arrangement at the Centre to protect the Indian state's short and long-term interests.

Last week B.G. Deshmukh, a former Cabinet Secretary, chose to write a newspaper article advising the Nationalist Congress Party to retain its independent identity rather than consider the option of merging with the parent Congress party, and to follow the Tamil Nadu model of using its Lok Sabha numbers to get a better deal for its leaders and the State of Maharashtra. Curious, to say the least, that a man who once presided over the entire Indian bureaucratic establishment should now find virtue in a regional outfit and should be willing to extol parochial sentiments and identities.

Three days later, the Prime Minister exhorted the babus of the All India Services to retain and nurture their "national outlook" even when serving in the States. If the Prime Minister's becoming advice underlines the perspectives, attitudes, memories and perceptions needed to operate the Indian state, Mr. Deshmukh's counsel seeks to garner respectability for the preferences and priorities which, ipso facto, distract from making the Indian state a cohesive and efficacious proposition.

This intentional juxtaposing of two views is designed to draw attention to the vastly depleted collective energy that characterises the working of the United Progressive Alliance. There is no glossing over the fact that even after three years, the UPA is yet to coalesce as a joyful political formation; the allies wear their grudging attitude on their sleeves. And the equation between the UPA and the Left has degenerated from a relationship predicated on some common understanding and perceptions into a joyless, even sullen, engagement. It is clear to one and all, inside and outside the ruling coalition, that the UPA project has run out of steam.

The question, then, becomes: what will it take to reinvent the UPA project? The working assumption is that the project retains its raison d'etre and that it needs to be salvaged and re-energised.

The UPA project hinges on a harmonious sum of three sets of political chemistry: one, within the Congress; second, among the alliance partners; and, three, between the Congress and the Left. All the three relationships have soured up. And, all the three are in need of immediate attention and repair.

The primary reason for the petering out of the UPA project is to be located within the Congress. As the principal and leading component of the ruling coalition, it was up to the Congress to provide the political and ideological leadership, consistent with the obligation to the immediate and long-term interests of the Indian state. This leadership was conspicuously missing. All that can be said in defence of the Congress leaders is that they had found themselves in the unaccustomed situation of a division of political power (Sonia Gandhi) and the constitutional and administrative authority (Manmohan Singh).

Unhappily, from the very beginning the prima donnas failed to hide their reservations and unhappiness over having to serve under Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister. Taking their lifelong loyalty to 10 Janpath as a licence, several Cabinet Ministers could not bring themselves to act as members of Team Manmohan. In and out of the Cabinet meetings, these self-styled loyalists exposed the Prime Minister to similar encroachments and liberties from others. A Prime Minister who felt he could not crack the whip on his party colleagues could hardly expect to make non-Congress Ministers fall in line.

Ms. Sonia Gandhi was either slow in realising the damage these prima donnas were inflicting on the Congress image and interests or, if she did decipher these loyalists' design, she was disinclined to act because she was distinctly reluctant to be seen as an empowered match referee. The BJP-led NDA had kept up the "extra-constitutional" centre of power chorus, restraining her from playing the normal and legitimate monitoring role as the party president over the Congress government.

Even after three years as the party president, Ms. Gandhi has failed to impose the requisite discipline, unwilling or, worse, afraid to move against those who have engaged in a war of attrition against the Prime Minister.

In the process, the Congress has frittered away its historic opportunity of reinforcing the virtues of pan-Indian values, working style and Nehruvian Weltanschauung needed to energise a sub-continental polity. Unless Ms. Gandhi is willing to repair quickly and efficaciously the fault-lines created by the Congress colleagues, the UPA project will keep losing its political usefulness and end up as a footnote in history.

Among the political parties that came together to form the UPA, none had any basic political compatibility with the Congress; each joined the bandwagon because the Congress was the only alternative to the BJP. The fiction of a secular coalition was grafted on the coalition, but this expedient stratagem did not — and could not — obliterate the fact of an intense political and electoral rivalry in each of the States. The allies had — and continue to have — an interest in keeping the Congress weak and incapacitated; the Congress wants to regain its old all-India glory. Starting with the first Bihar election when the Congress and the RJD became bitter electoral foes in Patna while sharing power in New Delhi, the pattern of political disharmony and distance at the State level set in; the UPA allies have no compunction in providing aid and comfort to the Congress' foes in State after State. The happenings back home have unwittingly prevented any joyful coalescing at the Centre.

Neither had the Congress the magnanimity to let the allies play big brother in the States nor had the allies the foresight to help the Congress consolidate and expand the centrist/ liberal political space. Matters have not been helped by the Congress' durbar syndrome nor has the non-Congress parties' proclivity for fragmentation helped.

Massive depletion

The result is a massive depletion in the UPA's political capital. There has been no celebration of the moral content; wholesome impulses have been resisted. The allies have refused to be tutored in the importance of institutional etiquettes and manners. Cabinet decisions have been rolled back or taken under pressure from this or that ally. Purely expedient calculations have forced decisions and policies, which in turn have diminished the Centre's credibility and respect vis-à-vis other institutions as well as unhelpful non-state players, as also in respect of the external world. Regional leaders remain regional in their preoccupations and predilections even when they continue to play the Central Minister, and continue to nurse prime ministerial ambitions.

Lack of inner UPA cohesion and synergy has impacted relations with the Left. To begin with, the Left had ideological reasons to support the UPA project — restoring to good secular health the constitutional system that had been done irreparable damage during the NDA era.

Soon, the political realities asserted themselves. The Kerala and West Bengal Assembly elections accentuated political rivalries between the Congress and the Left; this inevitably exaggerated the otherwise manageable differences. The CPI (M)'s junior partners did not allow it any elbow room, and kept on stoking the decade-old anti-New Delhi impulses. These partners are now asking for the return to the good old accustomed role of all-out opposition. There is a silver lining, however. In the post-Nandigram period, the CPI (M) leadership is trying to figure out for itself the nature of difficulties in making and selling innovative policy choices.

Yet the bottom-line remains that there has to be a government, a political dispensation at the Centre to carry on the Indian state. And this state no longer has the luxury of building up impregnable nationalistic or protectionist walls to keep the demanding and meddlesome foreigner out. Nor can we any longer pretend that the world owes us a free pass on our way to global status and economic prosperity. At the same time, the outsider — whether operating from Washington, Islamabad or Beijing — prefers a deal with a stable, strong and creditable New Delhi.

The burden of operating the Centre has to be necessarily borne by centrist forces. The onus is on the Congress leadership to get its act together; to state clearly and boldly what is desirable, what is good for India and what can be accomplished. The Congress needs to remind those who remain infatuated with the third front ideas that such non-functional arrangements have historically paved the way for right-wing regressive regime. The Congress leadership also needs to tell its allies and supporters that if they continue to weaken the UPA, they would be creating conditions for the middle classes and the business entrepreneurs to shift attention to the only alternative — the BJP and its aggressive cultural nationalism.

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