Commentary/Saisuresh Sivaswamy

Punjab results show up the UF's real nature

All those who have called the recent sweep of Punjab by the Akali Dal and the Bharatiya Janata Party as a drawback for the Congress party and its president Sitaram Kesri, are missing one crucial point. Which is that the United Front, a ragtag combination of regional parties who have come together to play the Congress's game of staving off the BJP's challenge at the national level, has little clue as to do what to do with the Akali Dal. Or, for the matter, the BJP.

In fact, for some time now, the United Front has been glossing over its real status: which is that it is a coalition of parties which have each fought an electoral battle with the Congress at the regional level, but are today in power thanks to the munificence of that very party! Try telling that to your electorate the next time round -- which, if Kesri wills it, will be a few months later -- and seek votes to know how ridiculous the situation really is.

Technically, the UF is an alliance of regional forces, and thus represents the aspirants of the regions that have felt left out under central rule from New Delhi. So now you have Guwahati, Hyderabad and Madras calling the shots in the national capital, which is as it should be. But poor Chandigarh, which has witnessed so much of turmoil over the last two decades and is desperate for corrective measures, can find no room, although it too defeated the Congress party. All because of the Akali Dal's alliance with the BJP.

One way of looking at it could be that lessons have been learnt. The 1989 experiment -- under which V P Singh in his greed for power and lust for defeating Rajiv Gandhi at the hosting, tied up with the BJP, enabling it to touch 89 in its Lok Sabha tally -- will not be repeated by the JD/SP or whoever, basically because they found to their dismay that the BJP's electoral appeal surpasses their own. It is all right if you are a regional party with limited appeal, the powers behind the UF experiment have no problem in sharing a little of their power with you, but the minute you start expressing an aspiration to rule the country, you are a rival.

What the regional constituents of the UF do not seem to realise is that they are mere pawns in the tussle for power between the Congress party and the JD/SJ/SJP. Come election time, P Chidambaram will have to take on the Congress candidate at Sivaganga, and at that time let him try and explain to the voter the need for opposing that very party at whose mercy he had remained finance minister all along.

Given this ludicrous situation, what just might happen is a swing towards the BJP on the part of the voter -- given the fact that it has remained majestic in isolation, did not try buying out members of Parliament even when faced with the prospect of being defeated on the floor of the Lok Sabha, and has managed its affairs with a greater rate of success than its principal rival, the Congress party.

Obviously it is a two-way game between that party and the United Front. While the Congress will continue to support the latter till the time it is certain that its fortunes have revived vis-a-vis the BJP -- and, mercifully, there is no sign of that as yet -- the UF will make the most of its stint at power, and hope to go back to the voter and explain to him the situation under which the Congress's support was taken and plead for a clear majority for a continuance of the positive work they have been able to do thus far.

But a spanner in the works is Manmohanomics, thrown possibly in anticipation of exactly such a situation by former prime minister P V Narasimha Rao.

And it is there for all to see -- the man who billed himself as the humble farmer unable to do anything for his and his party's constituency. Despite all the verbal abuse hurled at the former finance minister's policies, today's rulers have found that there is nothing they can do bar continue the same policies, even forcing someone to remark that Chidambaram is Manmohan Singh sans the turban.

So, in the first place you take the support of that party which you have all along opposed to remain in power. Even if you are confident of explaining away that to your loyal voter, next you will have to tell him, the humble farmer, why you could do sweet little for him and his lot. And, try telling him the truth that even if he does give you a clear majority the next time round you still won't be able to do much for him; you definitely will not be able to fulfill all that you had promised before 1996. And that's what power has done to you, it has made you more realistic.

So let's see, then, many outside the UF politicians's families voting for them.

And the last laugh will have been had, not by the BJP which will manage to retain its 'I told you so' look, but by the faithful supporter, the Congress party.

What better way to highlight the hypocrisy of all those who have been rigidly anti-Congress all through their political careers but who don't mind genuflecting just a little for the sake of a few days or months in Delhi's salubrious climate.

Of course, it certainly won't get the part on the decline any new votes, but at least it will have given it enormous moral satisfaction. Which, in these days of shrinking vote banks, is nothing to scoff at. Who knows, perhaps a new son may yet rise on the Congress's dreary horizon, but more of that later.

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