Commentary/Saisuresh Sivaswamy

For the third time in one year, the prime minister of India may be from a state south of the Vindhyas

Even as the Congress and the United Front harden their stand against each other, making it clear that four days from now the polity is in for an upheaval, one thing stands out bright and clear; which ever party makes a bid for forming the next government -- the third in the last one year -- it will have to be a person from beyond the Vindhyas who will occupy the prime ministerial gaddi.

That will also mark once and for all, the decline of the north in conducting the nation's affairs. No wonder that aides of Congress president Sitaram Kesri are so busy pushing the name of Tamil Maanila Congress leader G K Moopanar as their choice over incumbent H D Deve Gowda.

No wonder that the southern members of Parliament are being wooed by the Bharatiya Janata Party which hopes to bid for power another time once this government is voted out on Friday. No wonder there are no names being put forward by the Congress party, which has now altered its stand to anti-Deve Gowda, from its earlier anti-UF one.

For all the players know that over the last six years – since P V Narasimha Rao was chosen as the consensus choice for prime minister following the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi -- that the south has come to play the dominant role in the nation's politics.

Former Andhra Pradesh chief minister N T Rama Rao underscored this fact when he refused to put up a candidate against Narasimha Rao in Nandyal and allowed the latter to walk into the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest electoral margin.

For that is a region that has for long suffered the dominance of the Hindi belt. That is a region that has never understood why, barring Morarji Desai, all the prime ministers have come from this belt. For that is also a region that has yearned for larger autonomy from the Centre.

For the Congress, Rao may have been the consensus choice, but it nevertheless marked a watershed. The reasons for nominating him were many; he was seen as the Bhisma pitamaha of the party; he had virtually quit electoral politics just before the 1991 election, and had retired to his native Andhra. Such a man, it was felt, would be unambitious and malleable; more importantly, the Congress had not fared all that well in the north, and there was a clamour from the southern MPs to nominate one of them.

What has happened since then -- and a large part of it had to do with Rao's own tenure as prime minister -- is that barring the Bharatiya Janata Party, every other political party had been decimated in the Hindi belt.

The Janata Dal was in conflict with both the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party, which effectively squeezed out the Congress party from the fray, but it also ensured that the BJP benefited from the division in their votes. No wonder that although all these parties came together to forge the United Front -- which was a post-election phenomenon last year – they had to nominate a south Indian for the prime ministership, not that they had a lack of candidates from the Hindi belt eyeing the post.

The message was clear then, that the north had lost its primacy in the nation's political affairs, and the northern leaders themselves admitted as much when they agreed to Gowda as prime minister. And it is this factor that will come to the fore once again, when the ayes and nos are counted on Friday.

Mid-term elections--a misnomer really, for elections will be held in one year's time of the last round -- or no, this will be a factor that no party can afford to ignore. And it will include the BJP, which has so far been kept out of the political reckoning simply because it has no say down south. Its count in north India is good, but the southern factor is one that the party will have to seriously consider if it is bidding for the premiership.

And the southern factor is also the reason why Kesri pulled out of staking his party's claim to form the government--if that had come to pass, as CPP leader he will have been the obvious choice for the job but accepting it would mean alienating the one region where his party has not been wiped out entirely as yet. The other choices, if the TMC refuses to play ball, would be K Karunakaran or A K Antony, but the reason for handpicking Moopanar is that he also has the tacit approval of 10, Janpath.

For the UF, too, there is little choice but to heed the Congress's demand for change in leadership, which would once again perforce devolve on a south Indian (while here, shed a tear for that old war-horse, Ramakrishna Hegde, who seems to have shot himself in the foot). Deve Gowda may have his 40-page farewell message to Parliament and the nation ready, but there is no reason to throw in the towel as yet.

Deve Gowda has got to go not only because the Congress is demanding his ouster, but also because he has forgotten the basic lesson one needs to know in his position. Which is that you cannot launch a smear campaign against a party's top leaders even while expecting them to continue to support you in the Lok Sabha; this way you may win brownie points but you won't be running a stable government.

Apparently he has gambled on the Congress party's fear of another round of elections, but he looks all set to lose this round. But there are any number of capable men in this political formation who come from the south, surely any one of them can do a better job in political management than he has shown himself capable of.

But since the focus of the present crisis seems to be the Union Budget's fate, what better solution to defusing it than elevating the man behind the budget to the top job? He fulfills at the criteria: he is an ex-Congressman, he is clean, he is competent, he is backed by 10, Janpath, business and industry, and is a favourite with foreign investors. Most important, he also speaks Tamil!

Tell us what you think of this column