Sitaram Kesri must be the most hated man in India today. Even among his peers the Congress presidents rating was running close to zero. For never before has someone caused so much havoc for so little.
The office of prime minister which Kesri has come to lust after at the ripe old age of 81 will almost certainly elude him. Indeed, he will be fortunate if he survives unscathed the political upheaval wrought by him with his wholly inexplicable letter to the President on Easter Sunday snuffing out the life of the 10-month-old Deve Gowda government.
The eternal backroom operator committed two cardinal sins. Of course, he could not be blamed for developing such high ambitions so late in life. After all, there was no objective criterion for achieving glory in the 112-year-old organisation. Power had for long been the preserve of members of the Nehru-Gandhi family. Then, by a fortuitous turn of events, it had smiled on a non-leader like Narasimha Rao. Raos mounting troubles at the hands of the law resulted in the nondescript Congress treasurer becoming party president. Convinced that fate had willed him to lead the nation, Kesri chanced his luck and tried to become PM. He failed.
For in the dominant Hindu ethos, anyone hankering after power is seen to be wicked, nay, evil. Mahatma Gandhi, the epitome of self-sacrifice, shunned power all his life although he was clothed in power for as long as he lived.
In recent days, former prime minister V P Singh emerged as the patron-saint of the Third Force precisely because he made a display of his abnegation of power. The wise men of the UF wanted him to be PM. He refused, thereby refurbishing his image as a selfless leader. His exertions from the hospital bed in the recent crisis too made him out to be above the blandishments of office.
Kesris other sin was strategic. He failed to hide his ambition behind the garb of public weal. Mrs Gandhi had decimated the well-entrenched syndicate in 1969 by shedding copious tears in public for the poor. The nationalisation of 14 private banks was meant to be proof of her credentials as a socialist, as against Morarji Desai and co who were in cahoots with the haves. In a sudden rush of blood to the head, Kesri shot off that letter to Dr Sharma and only later looked for reasons to justify his impulsive action.
What next? Admittedly, Kesri is desperately looking for a face-saver. If only the wise men of the UF elected G K Moopanar or even an I K Gujral as their leader, the Congress could go back to the pre-March 30 status quo. In his chastened mood, Kesri would want to put another government in place as soon as possible. Minus him and any other Congressman. He knows that he could burn his fingers badly should the present crisis lead to a snap poll. And so, the Congress might soon play midwife to the birth of another UF government, with or without the support of the Leftist groups.
However, such a coalition would be tenuous at its very birth should the Congress refuse to join it or be kept out by the UF leaders. For it is unnatural to expect the single largest supporter of the coalition to sit out in the cold even as minor groups rule the roost in government. Since India seems to have entered the coalition mode, isnt it time honest efforts were made to craft a government which fully reflected individual group strengths in the House?
A coalition based on a common minimum programme that facilitates power sharing according to each constituents strength in Parliament will prove to be far more durable than the half way house which crumbled last Friday.
It may be that most constituents in the UF have for long bitterly opposed the Congress. It may be that the Communists remain allergic to supporting a government in which the Congress has an active role to play. But the leaders of other centrist parties would have to opt for one or the other major magnet in the polity in order to wield power at the Centre and survive electorally. Their choice is limited to the communal BJP and the corrupt Congress. They cannot take on both simultaneously. Join one, and fight the other.
But if the UF leaders still suffer from Congress phobia, they ought not to have sought its support in the first place. It was odd that the Congress with 144 members was treated like a pariah by the very people who had depended on it for survival. The Congress was not likely to play the UFs bonded slave for long. That is why an honest Congress-UF coalition alone could break the logjam of numbers in the eleventh Lok Sabha. Unfortunately, it is unlikely to happen, at least not immediately. Kesri with his foolish and ill-timed move, has botched the chances of such a coalition.
Despite the blood-letting on the countrys bourses, the current phase of political instability is not without a silver lining or two. For one, the consensus on passing the Finance Bill underlined the welcome development that our netas could rise above their partisan agendas to protect national interest. Also, despite feeling disgusted with the party chief and in spite of their refusal to countenance a situation which pushed them into an early election, not one Congress MP defied the party whip. This was all the more remarkable considering that Kesri evoked derision among the Congress rank and file and further afield in the country at large.
