Atal’s oddity

If india was looking towards the general elections to clear some of the uncertainties that cloud the political horizon, it could not have been more baffled. The single largest party that derided the shaky coalition of 13 regional parties which preceded it as a "khichdi government" is now in power with the strangest of coalition partners and a truly fractured mandate.

While the United Front government had a common minimum programme, a reasonable claim to representing regional interests and a commitment to the basic tenets of the Indian Constitution, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government is on a different turf altogether. It does not believe in the pluralistic cultural and national ethos enshrined in the Indian Constitution. The BJP has never fought shy of proclaiming its commitment to "Hindutva" though it has now toned down its shrill accents in deference to some of its allies. To confound confusion, it has been joined by some of the very United Front constituents which had vowed to fight its coming to power because of its declared pro-Hindu biases.

Following the general elections, the BJP loudly thumped its chest and said the people had given it a clear mandate to rule. But it won only 178 of the 539 seats declared. Though it increased its share at the hosting, the BJP still has only a fourth of the total votes in the country. Despite working hard at wooing Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and the Muslim population before the elections, the BJP did not win a significant following among them. The BJP and its allies got 56 percent of upper caste votes and 42 percent of votes from "Other Backward Castes". But the SC/ST vote was only 25 percent, with the Muslim vote even lower at 7 percent. The SC/STs account for more than 22 percent of the countrys population, while Muslims make up 12 percent.

As for the allies – they include the imperious J. Jayalalitha and her followers, the firebrand erstwhile Congresswoman Mamta Bannerjee and her loyalists, the maverick trade unionist George Fernandes Samta Party, Punjabs Akali Dal, Ram Krishna Hegdes Lok Shakti, Navin Patnaiks Biju Janata Dal, the discredited Congress leader Sukh Rams Himachal Vikas Congress, the Shiv Sena of Maharashtra, Subramaniam Swamys Janata Party, and some prominent independents like Maneka Gandhi and Buta Singh. This coalition is made up of a virtual army of prima donnas that the bjp appears ill-equipped to manage.

Already, the partners have begun to extract their pounds of flesh. Jayalalitha has key ministries in her bag, including Law, with her protege who picked up that portfolio faithfully proclaiming that the dozens of corruption cases against his leader are politically motivated. The others, including some independents, have important ministries vastly disproportionate to their strength in the house. The Telugu Desam Party, one of the architects of the earlier United Front government, tilted towards the BJP, and got itself a Speaker in the House in the bargain. From the Kashmir Valley, Farooq Abdullah of the National Conference broke away from the UF, deciding to support the BJP.

The National Agenda for Governance brought out by the new ruling alliance reads like a patchwork of platitudes rather than a plan of action. This may be the wages of managing an unwieldy 18-party set up, but there was no reason why a common, minimum, non-controversial programme could not have been framed.

Say some, the BJP is learning to be accommodating, to carry along its allies under a wide umbrella of support. The hawkish Hindutva agenda is a thing of the past, they say. But then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, endlessly touted as the most acceptable face of the party, could not get his candidate sworn in as Finance Minister. The Sangh Parivar, or to be more specific, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh muscled in at the last moment, and Prime Ministerial protestations were of no avail. It surely will not be long before the Parivar imposes its agenda on key areas of governance.

Already the BJP Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, who also happens to be the partys only successful Muslim candidate, has announced his intention to introduce a new international channel of Doordarshan "to counter anti-Hindu propaganda by the foreign media". He says, in blinkered arrogance, "The Channel will not term Hindus as terrorists or fundamentalists, unlike the BBC or the CNN." Naqvi also says he wants private satellite channels to uplink their programmes from India (this is not allowed so far) so that the government can control what they show. One can only wish well for the rest of South Asia as it watches these across-the-border shows.

It is anybodys guess how long this set-up will last and what is to follow. The Congress has yet to revitalise itself, Sonia Gandhi notwithstanding, and the United Front appears depleted and defeated. The political scene is even more confused than before, and the ideological underpinnings blurred. Isnt this where we first came in?