ELECTIONS '98
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Up to Sonia

This has been one of the most unusual election campaigns I can remember. The voters of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi, and Mizoram seemed sullen and uninterested. It was people from other states who watched the tussles avidly.

There are excellent reasons for both reactions. To the voters themselves, no party or combination of parties appeared to offer any solution for the problems that plague everyday life -- water, electricity, food prices, bad roads, poor health and education facilities. But the rest of India wants to know the answer to another question: Will the results of these polls lead to a change of government at the Centre?

The Congress is champing at the bit to return to the central secretariat. The party is confident that it shall get the Communist Party of India-Marxist's support in toppling the A B Vajpayee ministry. Victories in the assembly poll will strengthen the Congress' chances, but they are not by themselves ironclad guarantees of taking over the Union Cabinet.

So what else is needed? Congressmen themselves admit, off the record, that two conditions must be met. First, there must be no Lok Sabha polls for at least two years. Second, it must be understood by all prospective allies that the Congress shall head the coalition government. There are excellent reasons for insisting on both.

Assume that the Congress succeeds in leading a charge against the Vajpayee ministry. But what if its allies in this venture, the CPI-M above all, then refuse to support it beyond a point? A general election shall then become inevitable. But how many seats can the Congress hope to win under such circumstances?

Speaking privately, even the most optimistic Congressman concedes that 200 seats is the upper limit of what the party can expect. That is because the party shall be approaching the voters staggering under a double burden: unseating a ministry by wooing defectors from the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition and being unable to provide a stable government in turn.

Rather than face this eventuality, Congressmen want the rest of the anti-BJP forces to pledge support in the life of this Lok Sabha. To be honest, I am not sure what such an arrangement shall achieve. The Congress has only 140-odd members in the Lok Sabha. It needs almost double that to reach the halfway mark in a House of 543. That means taking support from roughly 27 different parties. But which parties?

Some are automatically ruled out. Like the CPI-M. And the Telugu Desam's Nara Chandrababu Naidu has already identified the Congress as "Enemy Number One".

Matters would be simpler if the Congress had public vows of electoral support from the Left, the Samajwadi Party, and so on. It could then go to the voters as the head of a monolithic anti-BJP front. But giving such promises would be suicidal for the smaller parties.

If the Congress is serious about regaining its stature as a national party, it must strengthen itself in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, which elect fully a quarter of the Lok Sabha between them. Only five of the 139 members from the two states are Congressmen today. (The BJP and its friends, all pre-poll allies, hold 91 seats.) But taking Uttar Pradesh and Bihar seriously means challenging Mulayam Singh Yadav and Laloo Prasad Yadav at the polls, and not the BJP alone.

Again, a CPI-M-Congress coalition in West Bengal is not impossible. The Left knows the Congress has been all but wiped out in the state after Mamata Bannerjee walked out. But it is a different matter in Kerala. An open understanding between the Congress and the CPI-M will leave the Opposition space open to the BJP. This won't matter in the immediate future, but a long-term view reveals a disturbing picture for the Congress.

The BJP needed to learn that good intentions by themselves are no substitute for good government. But that said, it will be Sonia Gandhi who is going to be truly tested now. Congressmen have been deprived of power since 1996; she can't ask them to undergo another round of "support from outside". The party wants ministerships and Sonia Gandhi can't afford to let anyone else become prime minister. How will she settle that problem?

T V R Shenoy