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A mirror to oneself

That there was a faultline running right through the 12th Lok Sabha was well known, but what was not known equally well is that it rendered the House so precarious that all it took to be brought down was one over-ambitious member of Parliament.

Not only did Subramanian Swamy's machinations bring down the House, but more importantly, it held up a mirror to politicians' double-speak, their vanity, their self-perception, and the stark differences that separated them even as they were jointly working to bring down an elected government.

In the bargain, a shocked nation found that there was really no alternative to the Vajpayee government within the 12th Lok Sabha, never mind the braggadocio that one would be in place in just five minutes. After all, Swamy showed, when it comes to ambition, he is not the only one to be drunk on it.

After 10 days of intense labour, Swamy also showed the nation just how fractious the Opposition camp was. When he started out on his demolition job, with verbiage that would have brought a blush to Messrs G R Khairnar and Arun Bhatia, he seemed like he would succeed in breaking up the tenuous links between the BJP's allies. Jayalalitha walking over was a blow, but he had promised worse things to the ruling alliance. And when the government was run out for a single, Swamy had almost arrived.

Today, however, the outcome is not what he must have prayed for. The BJP camp has held on to its own, and worse, a crucial ally like the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam has shown its willingness to ally with the BJP. Despite claims, the TDP remained with the BJP as long as its government lasted, as did the National Conference, Trinamul Congress, Akali Dal, Lok Dal.

But a look at the other side shows the real effect of Swamy's semtex. The so-called Third Front is in splinters. The DMK, over which it was willing to gamble away a federal government, has been ejected for the sake of 'the mother of corruption'. The Rashtriya Loktantrik Morcha, is almost no more, with the two Yadavs having a free-for-all. The monolithic Left Front has deep cracks in it, and the Communists, who were holding on to the moral high ground all around -- no thanks to the shammarxists in the media -- have been exposed for what they really are: power-hungry anti-nationals who will not hesitate to burden the working class with another election even while mouthing homilies on fighting for their interests. The Congress's leadership has been exposed like never before.

A remarkable achievement, if you consider it, and all of it in just 10 days. Perhaps it is time someone gave Dr Swamy an award for this bit of work. At least the BJP should honour him and make him MP emeritus, considering that it has come off in flying colours only thanks to him. A party struggling to come to terms with the task of federal governance, and would have, in the ordinary course of things, struggled to retain its numbers in the 13th General Election has suddenly become the punters' favourite, while the combined Opposition will go into battle as much against themselves as against the BJP.

But Swamy's real achievement is mind-boggling still. In a couple of days' time he has managed to lend respectability to a politician universally reviled by the Opposition, and made her the fulcrum of its plans to dislodge the government. None of the main players -- not the Congress, not the Communists, not the other assorted parties who gleefully destroyed the BJP government -- thought it fit to wonder how it was that overnight they agreed to jettison their long-standing ally, the DMK, in favour of Jayalalitha.

The quid pro quo between the two foes turned friends should be clear to anyone now, with the AIADMK leader pushing Swamy's candidature for, no laughs, the prime ministership. The realisation was stark, when H D Deve Gowda stood up in the Lok Sabha on April 16 to oppose the confidence motion, and who can blame Swamy for aspiring to the top job after that? If it was Deve Gowda's once, then what rules out Swamy?

For the rest of the crowd, however, the issue was nothing so grand as bringing down an inept government and providing the people with a stirring administration in its place. In fact, if a straw poll were to be conducted about the performance of the Vajpayee government, and its prognosis, the findings would surprise many, most certainly the perpetrators of last week's political charade. The issue that brought together politicians as disparate as Harkishen Singh Surjeet and Sonia Gandhi, Mulayam Singh and Mayawati, Moopanar and Saifuddin Soz, was the prospect of federal power, which had been denied to them last year by the electorate. Thwarted ambition may have corroded Swamy's perspective, but it has not prevented him from perceiving the situation for what it is.

He knew that the same parties which were viscerally against Jaya last year would, blinded either by their hatred for the BJP and/or proximity to power, would welcome her back into the fold. The only area where he erred was in his miscalculation of the parliamentary numbers: where he said the BJP would get 256 votes, with 271 votes against, the actual count on April 17 was much closer.

Swamy also erred in his calculation that the Opposition could sink its differences, post-Vajpayee, while even a novice could have told him that there was no way Mulayam could accept death in Uttar Pradesh, the DMK in Tamil Nadu, or constituents of the Left Front in Bengal and Kerala. Perhaps it is easier on him to lay the blame at any one person or party's door, but the actual blame, in my opinion, is Swamy's. He got into a venture fully aware of the consequences, took the Opposition on a bull-run, and finally let the market crash when the paper foundation he had laid gave way.

In that sense, he is the Harshad Mehta of 1999.

Saisuresh Sivaswamy