Balancing act: UPA-II walks the rope on state equations

One year on, a grand Congress balancing act is underway. Continuing to live at the mercy of whimsical allies, the Congress has failed to live up to its promise of aggressively pushing forward its agenda.

From just 145 seats (26 per cent) in 2004, when the Congress shot up to 207 seats (38 per cent) in the last Lok Sabha polls, political pundits saw it as a thumping victory for Sonia Gandhi that would empower the Congress party. It was not to be.

The Congress leadership soon found the going was getting tough — while in 2004, it was the Left parties that waved red flags at almost every reform initiative, in 2009, it was the DMK from the and Trinamool Congress from the east that slammed the brakes at will.

Consider this: even the all-powerful Congress president and chairperson of the UPA Sonia Gandhi was unable to push at least two agendas close to her heart even before the coalition’s first birthday bells rang.

It took just three months for Mamata Banerjee — the biggest ally of the Congress in UPA-II (with 19 seats) — to spike the government’s long-pending Land Acquisition (amendment) Bill.

Despite announcing her commitment to pass the bill, Gandhi was forced to give in to Banerjee’s highhandedness and put the proposed Bill on the back burner, following a heated exchange of words between the Trinamool chief and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee.

The Women’s Reservation Bill — a dream of the late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi — is yet to pass the Lok Sabha hurdle even after a smooth passage in the Rajya Sabha in the first half of the just-concluded Budget session.

The reason: The Congress floor managers, working overtime to save the Budget against a united opposition-moved cut motion, had to appease the Yadav clan — Mulayam Singh Yadav’s SP (21 seats), Sharad Yadav’s JD(U) (20) and Lalu Prasad’s RJD (4 seats) — who vehemently opposed the Women’s Bill.

Economic reforms like the Pension Fund Bill and Insurance Amendment Bill are still untouched — even though the Left is in oblivion — following opposition from the DMK and the Trinamool.

The irony of the underlying equations of Indian coalition politics reached its climax when the party had to take help from the BJP and the Left to pass the Women’s Bill in the Rajya Sabha, and then, within a month, resort to managing the Yadavs (SP, BSP and RJD) to defeat the Left and the BJP cut motions.

But, there is no immediate threat to the coalition. While Banerjee needs the Congress to win Bengal next year, the DMK would require the party to retain power in Tamil Nadu, where assembly elections are due in 2012. The NCP in Maharashtra and the ruling National Conference in Jammu and Kashmir also need the Congress to run the show.

It’s state politics that is deciding the fate of the UPA at the Centre: The Congress has managed to limp rather than walk, but it will continue to do so.