THIS column is being written at that awkward moment when the elections in Delhi, Rajasthan, Mizoram and Madhya Pradesh have already taken place but the results have not been announced. But I am less concerned with what has happened in them than in what could happen in their aftermath.
Exit polls in Delhi suggest that the BJP is likely to lose to the Congress. Pre-election opinion polls had suggested that Rajasthan was likely to go the same way, despite having one of the best chief ministers in the country. If these predictions come true, then regardless of what happens in Madhya Pradesh, the Congress rank and file will start demanding that the party move or support a vote withdrawing confidence from Mr Vajpayee's government. Till as recently as three months ago, one could have relied on Mrs Sonia Gandhi to turn their pleas down. At the AICC meeting at Panchmarhi, the party had been firm in its resolve to fight and come back to power on its own. Today one can no longer be sure that this resolve will hold.
In the intervening months, the Congress has allied itself firmly with the new caste-based alliance of Laloo Yadav and Mulayam Singh Yadav. Only a fortnight ago it accepted the support of the Communists. A new "secular" coalition has thus emerged, which is perfectly capable of unseating the BJP-led government, with only a little help from the outside. That help could easily come from the likes of Smt Jayalalitha.
Before Mrs Gandhi succumbs to the temptation, she would do well to ask herself two questions: will unseating the BJP and forming a government help the Congress party? And will it help the nation? A moment's cool reflection will show that it can do neither. By forming an alliance to unseat Mr Vajpayee the Congress will display an unseemly haste to come to power. The electorate will conclude that nothing has changed in the party, and that for it power remains an end in itself and not the means to an end, which should be good governance. The country desperately needs the latter and not the former. For three years it has had no growth whatever: agriculture, industry and, if the statistics are not fudged, the services sector have all stagnated. Three generations of job seekers have left schools and colleges only to find that there are no jobs out there for them. What makes it worse for them is that for four years between 1993 and 1996 this was not so. Ever so briefly, the country had tasted seven per cent growth, a doubling of employment generation and a decline—the very first ever—in the number of job seekers on the live register of the employment exchanges. A new era of hope had dawned, only to be proved false. Today the country is desperate for progress. Every other party has failed it, and people remember with growing nostalgia the stability and hope that the Congress had brought back to them till only three years ago. The Congress needs to build on this yearning and to feed it with responsible promises of action. It needs to remind people over and over again that coalitions, by their very nature, cannot deliver a firm and stable government. Hurrying into another coalition will be a sign that the party's promise to fight for the peoples' mandate on its own was so much hot air, and that even the confidence that Mrs Sonia Gandhi has instilled in it is hollow.
The Congress' choice of partners will only compound the damage. For these are the very parties that, as members of the United Front, were so decisively rejected by the electorate in 1998 because they snuffed out the hope of a better future that the Congress awakened in it between 1992 and 1996. Were the Congress to form a government with their help now, it would become their prisoner. Between them, the CPI(M), the Rashtriya Loktantrik Morcha and the AIADMK would ensure that the present paralysis in government would continue. In as little as a year, both the Congress and its president would be irredeemably discredited.
THE damage that toppling the BJP government would do to the nation would also be considerable. Ever since the end of the Congress dominance, it has been apparent that stability and good government will return to the Centre only when two stable coalitions or parties emerge, that is, when dominant party democracy gives way to bipolar or binodal democracy. The BJP came to power as rank outsiders to the governmental system, and made a huge number of blunders. But in the past eight months they have gradually come to terms with the compulsions of government and the need for continuity in policies. Today they are at the final stages of extremely important negotiations with the US on India's future place in the world order. They have learned the hard way that the crackpot economic theories espoused by diehards in the Sangh parivar can only lead to ruin. And have taken up the task of economic reform with vigour if not as yet with a sense of direction. Lastly, the BJP is slowly but surely marginalising the Hindu fanatics within the saffron hold. The actions of the VHP and the Bajrang Dal need to be seen as the outbursts of people who see themselves being sidelined and not as reflections of some deep and sinister "Hindu" design to change the pluralistic nature of Indian society.
It is important that these many processes of learning and governance remain undisturbed for some time longer. I say this despite my personal, certain commitment to vote for the Congress in the next general election, because for the party, coming to power is less important than doing so in the right way and for the right reasons.
