Author: Swapan Dasgupta
Publication: Sify.com
Date: May 16, 2004
There is a school of romantics who
uphold the view that the Indian electorate is so amazingly canny that it
should get honorary membership of the Mensa club for earthly geniuses.
Its unceasing ability to either quietly reject existing rulers or boisterously
endorse new claimants for governance has won it many admirers.
Democracy, as every member of the
political class is aware, means never to take the voters for granted. In
the past, the Congress learnt this lesson and on May 13 it was BJP's turn
to imbibe the hard knock of rejection.
It is a lesson that will be imbibed
by yesterday's rulers, regardless of whether they make a song and dance
of the learning process. However, that is the least of the nation's concerns.
Far more relevant is: Did the voters choose wisely?
The 14th General Election has resulted
in a categorical rejection of the NDA and, by implication, its entire leadership.
It is a rejection of the NDA mascot
Atal Bihari Vajpayee as much as it is a rejection of LK Advani, the most
lucid advocate of India Shining.
I have little doubt that it is also
a repudiation of the type of campaign the BJP mounted. There is no point
pretending it was a half-way rejection or to point a finger at individuals
like Narendra Modi or Jayalalithaa who were not central to the battle.
The NDA may have given India six years of good governance whose worth history
will recognise. For now, however, it has been designated second-best by
the voters.
The problem is that there has been
no unequivocal endorsement of an alternative. The Congress and the DMK-led
alliance may have together won 216 seats, which is 29 seats more than the
NDA but that is still well short of the majority. Add the 61 seats won
by the Left and the 36 won by the Samajwadi Party and the Congress can
easily command a majority. But that still does not answer the fundamental
question that the people will be asking in the coming days: what is the
nature of the mandate?
The facile answer is that it is
a secular mandate. In reality this means absolutely nothing. Except for
VP Singh who addressed some Press conferences during the campaign, the
secular-communal was an invisible feature of this campaign.
Likewise, the suggestion that the
verdict constitutes a categorical rejection of economic reforms and an
endorsement of socialism is preposterous. The three Gandhis, by their own
admission, didn't believe there was anything to feel good about. Yet, the
Congress campaign - if the party's advertisements are anything to go by
- merely questioned the BJP's right to appropriate all the credit for India's
achievements. We were there before, claimed the Congress, may be legitimately,
although PV Narasimha Rao was conveniently dubbed a non-person.
I raise these issues because since
May 13, the vocal apparatchiks of the two Communist parties have been,
in effect, demanding that the new government should be pursuing the regressive
and antediluvian policies of the Left. The foreign policy of the NDA has
been dubbed "pro-imperialist" and its economic policies described as "pro-rich
and anti-poor", whatever that means. The Left has demanded an end to disinvestments
in the public sector and the CPI's AB Bardhan even raised the question
of control over education.
While the Congress has been preoccupied
with promoting the prime ministerial claims of its Italian-born leader,
the Left has been dominating the policy battleground. The stock markets
have, predictably, voted with their pockets to this new onslaught. That
was only to be expected. Yet no one has asked the basic question: Who gave
the Left the authority to dictate the economic policy of India?
This is not a spurious wariness.
History suggests that Indian Communists have made the hijacking of political
authority a skill. Between 1969 and 1977, Indira Gandhi pursued the material
interests of her family and allowed the Left to play havoc with the economy
and education. A repetition of this scenario cannot be ruled out. For India,
the consequences are horrifying. Every Government deserves a honeymoon.
It is unlikely this Government will be blessed with a trouble-free initiation.
With the Left at the wheels of decision-making, the Opposition cannot afford
to put off the fight for even a single day.
