Opinion The future is federal

When he turned 70 in 1959,Nehru said he wanted to retire. But his party would not let him.

April 15, 2012 02:23 AM IST First published on: Apr 15, 2012 at 02:23 AM IST

When he turned 70 in 1959,Nehru said he wanted to retire. But his party would not let him. His last five years were much troubled,especially with the China issue plus a Defence Minister accused of under-arming the Forces (sounds familiar?). With the decline in Nehrus power,a syndicate of regional leaders emerged: Kamaraj from Madras,S K Patil from Bombay and Atulya Ghosh from Calcutta (as these places were called in saner times). The syndicate was a sign of the regional powers arriving in Delhi to wield their clout.

The power of the syndicate was ended by Indira Gandhi in seven years when she split the party and inaugurated the era of personalised centralisation of power. But this experiment failed within eight years in 1977. The Janata was the federal solution but it failed miserably. In the next eight years,the Congress one-person rule was revived but again it collapsed in 1989. Since then we have had fragile coalitions,some surviving the full term but not all.

But India is no stranger to coalitions. Indeed,the 1935 Government of India Act,which is the skeleton of our Constitution,envisaged a weak Centre and powerful States. In 1947,Partition so scared the leaders that they opted for a strong Centre. The idea was that since the Congress will be in power at the Centre and in all the States,the Constitution will function smoothly. Now we have come to the other end of that spectrum.

Yet,people I meet,talk with glee about the likely defeat of the Congress but with fear that the result would be a federal coalition of small regional parties. The idea that India will have a government with neither the Congress nor the BJP in the lead is worrying many people.

Of course,we may all be wrong and the Congress may regain the elixir of eternal life. Or the BJP may sort out its many leaders and decide on one leader who could challenge the Congress and make friends with allies. Yes,it is possible but somehow does not seem probable. At best,we may have a federal coalition with outside support from one or the other of the national parties.

The arithmetic is tricky. JD(U) plus NCP,SP,TMC,TDP (with its few seats),AIADMK,Biju Janata Dal and maybe the Shiromani Akali Dal could get together. But the SP will not accept outside support from the BJP. Maybe the BSP can take its place if it does better in 2014 than it did in 2009 or 2012. The BJP could support such a coalition, leaving it to the Congress to be the Opposition Party if it has managed more seats than the BJP in 2014. The Left does not have many seats and they hold back from joining coalitions. So it will have a small number of seats to shore up the Congress Front.

Will such a coalition be able to work? The last few years have illustrated the fact that it is not strength in the Lok Sabha for the lead party,but the ability to keep everyone together. Without large national parties which have bossy tendencies,the federal coalition will need to sign explicit Common Minimum Programme. The UK,whose two party system we still crave for,has now a coalition in which the two partiesthe Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have drawn up an extensive document,listing the matters they agree on from their two manifestos and thereby making clear what they disagree on.

These Common Minimum Programmes will have to be very detailed. There will have to be some agreements on fiscal responsibility if the rupee is not to slide down even more than it looks likely it will do till 2014. The only ideology which combines these parties is populism with public spending,no reduction in subsidies and no raising of prices of railway travel,petrol etc. Of course,the coalition will contain regional parties which have been fiscally responsiblethe JD(U),for example,which is running a budget surplus thanks to Sushil Modi (BJP) who is finance minister. So we may be surprised yet.

We may not have much choice. Indian voters may decide they want to experiment with a third way. It will be a helter-skelter ride. Enjoy!