Author: V Krishna Ananth
Publication: The Economic Times
Date: September 1, 2007
Introduction: The fact that the regional parties
have little or no ideology contributes immensely to a political culture that
delegitimises the party system
The Indo-US civilian nuclear deal and the
debate on its implication seemed to cover a lot of ground. It is a different
matter that the parties and the experts engaged in the debate stuck to their
partisan positions. And in this sense, the debate as such did not lead to
any substantial changes by way of policy. It is unlikely that the "mechanism''
that will be evolved soon would alter the course of the deal in any significant
way. Be that as it may.
The debate and the crisis of sorts it created
during the past couple of weeks for the Manmohan Singh government (it even
looked like collapsing) also threw up a feature that has implication to the
democratic polity in the long run. And that is the role of such parties as
the RJD, BJD, JD(U), JD(S), DMK, PMK, MDMK, AIADMK, TDP, NCP, Trinamul Congress,
SP and the BSP. The more appropriate way of putting it will be that these
parties did not seem to be having a view on the Indo-US civilian nuclear cooperation
agreement or the 123 deal. And yet they all took positions.
Lalu Prasad Yadav, for instance, was concerned
about whether the government would last and refused, even when he sat before
TV cameras, to defend the agreement. Mulayam Singh Yadav's aide and adviser,
Amar Singh, meanwhile, was only convinced that the agreement was bad for the
country and refused to go into the reasons as to why he felt that way. And
Mayawati chose to stay out of the focus during the two weeks when the most
important subject for debate happened to be the agreement.
This will not be a serious problem if the
parties that we are talking about were mere entries in the long list of registered-unrecognised-parties
found on the records of the Election Commission of India. In May 2004, when
these were counted the last time, 173 such political parties existed across
the country.
The regional parties, however, are a different
category. The Samajwadi Party and the BSP, together, now represent 55 out
of the 80 Lok Sabha constituencies from Uttar Pradesh; the RJD and the Janata
Dal (U) represent 32 out of the 40 Lok Sabha constituencies in Bihar; the
DMK and the AIADMK determine the political mosaic of Tamil Nadu in that the
various other parties, including the Congress, the BJP and the Left gather
around one of them before every election. In other words, the various regional
parties are no longer marginal forces in the national political scene. They,
in fact, determine the course of government formation in New Delhi.
This being the case, it is striking that these
parties were not concerned, in any significant way, to discuss the details
of the Indo-US nuclear cooperation. The reason why these parties refrained
from discussing the issue has got to do with the fact that a discussion on
such an issue was possible only from an ideological frame. The objection from
the Left parties, for instance, is based on an ideology that considers the
US as an imperialist centre and that the deal would make India into a client
state. The BJP, similarly, has a problem with the deal because it will force
India to close the option of conducting nuclear tests to develop a weapons
programme. The BJP, we all know, is the only party that has been committed
to embark upon a nuclear weapons programme.
Manmohan Singh's Congress, meanwhile, seems
to find the deal as the best to ensure a leap forward in India's energy security
and is not worried about the fallout of this on the existing power generation
facilities, the environmental costs and such other aspects that independent
activists and groups are bothered about. All these, in short, are positions
driven by a definite ideological framework and that is what makes the debate
critical.
THE regional parties, on the other hand, are
not concerned with any of these issues. And the leaders of these parties are
either innocent of these ideological issues or chosen to pretend that way.
And the fallout of this is that their position, on the deal, is determined
by the position of their own rivals in the immediate context. Mayawati, for
instance, is not worried about the deal and its implications and conveyed
that her party will support the government simply because Mulayam Singh's
party had decided to oppose it.
This is the case with the AIADMK too. The
fact that the deal was struck by a government of which the DMK is an integral
part is good enough reason for Jayalalithaa to oppose it. It is worth recalling
the fact that Murasoli Maran was a prominent speaker at a convention against
the May 1998 Pokhran tests in Chennai at that time. He shared the platform
with the CPI(M), Arundati Roy and such others to call the nuclear weapons
agenda as a dangerous one. Maran did that because Jayalalithaa was then a
part of the BJP-led NDA. And in less than a year after that, Maran was an
important member in the Atal Behari Vajpayee cabinet. He did not whisper against
the nuclear agenda that the BJP continued to pursue.
The story is just the same with any other
regional party. And this certainly is a cause for concern for this character
- innocent of ideology - helps them to move across the spectrum between the
Congress and the BJP in recent years. This also leads these parties to swing
between launching agitations against industrialisation when they are out of
power in a State and following the same policies while in power.
All this, no doubt, is contributing immensely
to a political culture that delegitimises the party system. A culture that
begins to treat the political parties as an impediment to the nation's progress
and tends to celebrate technology and management practices as the driving
force behind development. There is a serious problem with this trend. And
that is, it creates an illusion that technology is independent of ideology.
The fact is that this illusion can cause serious harm to the democratic foundation
of the nation! In other words, the idea of democracy without political parties
is a dangerous proposition and India seems to be closer to this sixty years
after independence.
