A K Bhattacharya: Waiting for a government

NEW DELHI DIARY

Now that the result of all the exit polls point towards a hung Lok Sabha with the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) likely to fall short of that magic figure of 272 seats, it is time to look at the various scenarios and their implications for the kind of a government that one might expect at the Centre.

Whatever doubts that still lingered about the accuracy of the exit polls should have been dispelled by now with the Andhra Pradesh assembly results showing a trend that the pollsters had already predicted.

Exit polls conducted by as many as three television channels show that the NDA's final tally might be less than 250, while two other TV channels have put out a range of 263-278 seats for Mr Vajpayee's coalition.

The interesting highlight of the exit polls is that even though the NDA might fail to get the majority, the Congress-led alliance is also nowhere near that magic figure.

In fact, it appears to be well short of 200 seats. And the other parties (the Samajwadi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Left and the independents) are expected to bag between 92 and 117 seats.

So, what are the scenarios looking like? If the NDA indeed fails to get more than 250 seats, Mr Vajpayee will be facing a serious dilemma. The Rashtriya Swamsevak Sangh (RSS) has already advised the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders that if the NDA fails to cross 250 seats, it should decide to sit in the opposition instead of making any effort at forming a government.

Even otherwise, any effort to form a government through expedient post-poll alliances can be politically counter-productive, if not disastrous.

Mr Vajpayee will also be acutely conscious that in spite of his exhortations at several public meetings, the people of this country have not given him a clear mandate.

So, left to himself, he may go along with the RSS view. But then there will be other equally powerful forces at work that might persuade Mr Vajpayee to extend the scope of NDA's coalition to include new partners and stake claim to form a government.

Also, the nature of the mandate may be such that President A P J Abdul Kalam will be obliged to give Mr Vajpayee the first chance to form a government. No other pre-poll alliance is expected to get more seats than what the NDA is likely to win.

The Congress may still forge a post-poll alliance with more parties and try to get an invitation from the President ahead of the NDA. But going by precedence and convention, the President will make such an offer to the Congress only when the NDA declines to form a government or fails to put together a fresh alliance with the requisite strength.

Either way, it is bad news for the economy and the business, as one can now forget about a functioning government at least for some months to come. Consider the problems Mr Vajpayee will face even if he agrees to put together a fresh alliance. The ministry formation will be the first stumbling block. Mr Vajpayee has already tied his hands by approving a new law that limits the size of the central government to a maximum number of 72 ministers.

So, he cannot increase the size of his ministry even though he will have to accommodate new partners and meet their aspirations.

Moreover, Mr Vajpayee will be under more pressure to allot ministerial portfolios to those who won the Lok Sabha elections, in preference to those who have been accommodated in the Rajya Sabha.

As many as four key ministers of the Vajpayee government are at present Rajya Sabha members: Jaswant Singh, Arun Shourie, Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj. A fifth contender from the Rajya Sabha for a ministerial berth will be Pramod Mahajan.

It is difficult to speculate where the axe will fall and how Mr Vajpayee will manage this situation. But its impact on governance will be a cause for concern.

How determined will he be in pursuing the agenda of economic reforms that the NDA outlined before going to the polls? Can he speed up the sale of public sector undertakings? Will he be able to push through the much-delayed hike in petroleum product prices? And will he be able to convince his new alliance partners about the need to introduce the value-added tax regime or remove direct tax exemptions?

The scenario gets no better if the Congress forms a government with its alliance partners. It will be even more undecisive and slow in taking the hard measures on the economic front.

It will also be amenable to even more pressure from its various alliance partners. Worse, the Congress is nowhere near resolving the obvious dilemma of its alliance partners over the prime ministerial candidate "" although most Congress insiders believe that there can be no debate over Sonia Gandhi's leadership.

Never mind that a recent poll showed that India Inc rated Manmohan Singh higher than Sonia Gandhi as the prime minister of a Congress-led government.

But that is a debate in which nobody is interested now. The next few days will see an intense race among political parties to form new groups and alliances to form a government at the Centre.

Whichever formation comes to power at the end of that exercise, one thing is sure and the stock market has already sensed it: the new government will not be stable and focused on its agenda. Governance might suffer. But then that is a small price one pays for democracy.

akb@business-standard.com