Five Out Of Ten For Gowda

IN the balmy '70s of London, a friend persuaded me to escort her to a 'result-while-you-wait' clinic since she suspected she was pregnant. We went to a rather shady back-street lab (where I was promptly mistaken for the culprit) and after numerous samples had been taken an elderly lady in a blue coat held up a test tube, examined it minutely with a magnifying glass and said looking at me teasingly: "It's too early to tell whether the news is good or bad." She asked us to come back after a month.

If one were to put the 40-day old Deve Gowda regime under similar scrutiny, the diagnosis must surely be the same—it is too early to tell whether the news is good or bad. No doubt much activity is visible and hardly a day passes without some minister making a dramatic and generally sensible policy pronouncement. However, the activity and pronouncements have a slightly fragile air, the feel of impermanence.

The Prime Minister himself is setting the pace. If he is not feeding lemon juice to Sunderlal Bahuguna, he is healing the famously hurt Sikh psyche in Amritsar. Daily darshans for aggrieved citizens are routine, militant leaders from the valley are offered tea and assurances, Benazir Bhutto gets an olive branch (the only jarring note is the uncharacteristic ferocity with which R.K. Hegde has been cut down, but that can be attributed to 'native rivalry'), and the law, says DG, will take its own course. Ministers are not lagging. Mulayam Singh has single-handedly decided to resolve the how-much autonomy problem in Jammu and Kashmir, Indrajit Gupta insists the Babri Masjid dispute must be signed and sealed before assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, Ram Vilas Paswan, besides wanting STD booths in commuter trains, vows to stand rail-way policy on its head, Chaturanan Mishra announces more, not less, subsidy for fertilisers and P. Chidambaram reveals how he will slash Rs 3,000 crore from the public exchequer.

Alas, these gentlemen have had to painfully learn the swift perils of speaking out in a 13-party coalition. It has not been edifying watching Mulayam and others grasping the oldest, most discredited alibi for ministerial foot-in-mouth: misquotation by the press. Add to this ministers sulking, absconding, threatening, due to perceived slights and you begin to believe Atal Behari Vajpayee when he says the United Front is a creature of days not years.

Yet, to be fair, the first month or so in office could have been worse. When you consider the omnibus nature of the coalition and its disparate ideological moorings (witness the fracas over the petroleum hike) one must at the very least concede that the jury is still out debating a verdict on the first days of the Deve Gowda Government. The Prime Minister and his team could come crashing down in a fortnight; on the other hand they could last a couple of years. We just don't know and it would be patently unfair to make any judgement at this stage.

Let me, nevertheless, stick my neck out and predict that this wobbly government may pleasantly surprise us in two areas of supreme national worry. One, they could achieve a breakthrough in Kashmir by persuading a wide variety of political groups including militants to participate in assembly elections. Two, some progress in our frozen relations with Pakistan may be on the horizon. I will go further and assert that in both areas only this fragile Government can succeed where others have so catastrophically and consistently failed.

From the perspective of the Kashmir militants, now is their golden chance. While ministers in this Government may disagree over 'when'—before or after the elections—the quantum of autonomy offered remains 'maximum'. I understand the Americans have told the Hurriyat not to waste time in rhetoric or posturing: The United Front, Ambassador Frank Wisner is believed to have reminded the Hurriyat, represents their best bet—take your maximum autonomy and run. The militants have also been reminded of the United Front's limited life thus giving further urgency to early initiatives.

In practical terms the militants are being advised to contest the forthcoming elections on an ambitious and wide-ranging autonomy platform (just this side of secession), get a government installed in Srinagar on the basis of that platform, and then armed with the people's mandate negotiate with the Centre. Naturally, this would mean a split in their ranks with the hardliners insisting on a poll boycott, but an informal, unpublicised split along these lines has already taken place. The Government must persuade the doves in the JKLF and the Hurriyat to make their intentions public. Every possibility of that denouement exists.

I know a lot of people think I.K. Gujral is a bit of a fuddy-duddy. However, every right-thinking citizen must congratulate him for the political courage and sagacity he has shown in breaking the pernicious doctrine of 'reciprocity' which has plagued the Indo-Pak dialogue. The pettiness with which we have conducted relations with our neighbour is deeply shaming. It is as if Pakistan is our role-model. We have wasted the last four decades in sterile tit-for-tat diplomacy using the argument: "Look what they have  done." Mr Gujral, happily, has broken that mould emphasising that India has an independent agenda which enables it not to just react but to guide the course of bilateral relations. I hope the relaxation in visa rules, improvement in trade ties, invitation to Pakistani parliamentarians are only the first 'unilateral' gestures. We need more. Pakistan cannot but react positively and even as I write the right sounds are being heard from Islamabad.

Meanwhile, it is business as usual in Narasimha Rao's universe. Each day he manoeuvres and manipulates to retain office and each day one more money-making smear nails him. Rao sits Buddha-like unmoved and unaffected by the erosion to his moral and political authority. He expressed surprise to The Hindu last week at being blamed for the drubbing his party received in the elections. He was shocked he was being held responsible. If at all, he had a "constructive responsibility", he conceded. Has this man no sense of shame? Does he have any idea of the deep revulsion many people feel for him and his brand of politics? Anyway, if the Congress goes back to the country with Rao as leader, electoral rout will turn to decimation. For Deve Gowda the travails of Rao and the Congress is extremely good news; it reduces their potential for mischief. Despite hiccups, despite stumbling at some early hurdles, the United Front is still in the race with a chance to win. A fair teacher would give Master Gowda five out of ten in the first test.