The WIMA windfall

If you are a Delhi journalist and write a sort of political column, the question most frequently put to you, even by perfect strangers, is, ‘‘So will the Vajpayee government last?’’ Experience has taught me that such delicate questions should never be answered with a definitive ‘‘yes’’ or ‘‘no’’. You hedge your bets, since politics is not an exact science like mathematics but akin to astrology, which we know from Dr Murli Manohar Joshi is a science of sorts nevertheless. As in astrology, if your political predictions are in black and white you are likely to end up with egg on your face. I recall with embarrassment the time I airily assured the businessmen sitting next to me at a lunch in Mumbai that there was no immediate threat to then Prime Minister Deve Gowda. Halfway through the meal I received a telephone call from Delhi informing me that Sitaram Kesri had withdrawn Congress support to the United Front government.

I should have known that it takes just a little huff and a puff to bring down opportunistically cobbled together alliances with shaky foundations. Chandra Shekhar’s government came down in a twinkling because Rajiv Gandhi objected to a security guard snooping outside his house. Deve Gowda fell because Sitaram Kesri was furious that the CBI was raking up the old murder case of his doctor. V.P. Singh was brought down because Devi Lal wanted to be prime minister. Moraji Desai’s government crashed because Charan Singh wanted to be PM. I.K. Gujral lost out because Arjun Singh wanted the government to go and he found his excuse in the Jain Commission report.

Judging by past precedent, the Vajpayee government should have long since been relegated to history. There was enough incendiary material in the last monsoon session of Parliament alone for the combustible coalition to go up in smoke — from a messy UTI scandal, to a badly botched summit with Pakistan and a disastrous performance by NDA constituents in the assembly polls.

This Parliament shows signs of being equally stormy with history text book censorship, Pota and George Fernandes’s reinduction providing grist for the opposition mill, particularly as the rifts within the fragile NDA partnership are growing. There are rumblings emanating from a section of the Janata parivar, most notably Ram Vilas Paswan and Sharad Yadav who have been deprived of their plum portfolios, the DMK and the National Conference. Even the Sangh Parivar, furious that its life-long agenda has been stood on its head by the prime minister, periodically makes public its unhappiness.

From the day the Vajpayee government took over, the Congress with some justification has been referring to it as ‘‘illogical, irrational and unsustainable’’ and hoping wistfully that it would soon collapse ‘‘under the weight of its own contradictions’’. But the government has completed two years and does not look like an establishment ready to shut shop in a hurry.

So what is the secret of its survival, when earlier governments have collapsed with much less provocation? Cynics talk of the SITA (Sonia is the alternative) factor being a major disincentive against toppling the government. Actually it is more a case of MPs being constricted by the WIMA (What is my alternative) factor. Earlier bringing down a government was practically a reflex action among opposition politicians or alliance partners who fell out with the government, but this has been replaced by a new mood of realism. Quitting a government in a blaze of media publicity and being a five-day hero on TV talk shows is scant compensation for losing the next elections or even for being forced to go through the agony and expense of an election campaign. Rather than following their leader blindly, legislators have started asking, ‘‘What’s in it for me?’’

Which explains why Ajit Panja refused to follow Mamata Bannerjee out of the NDA or why the bulk of the Loktantric Congress Party MLAs politely declined to accompany Naresh Aggarwal when he was thrown out of the state coalition by UP Chief Minister Rajnath Singh. Recent reminders to potential defectors that the grass is not necessary greener on the other side of the fence were provided by Mamata Bannerjee’s Trinamool Congress and S. Ramadoss’s PMK. Both quit the Vajpayee government before the assembly elections in their respective states only to return suitably contrite within a short period.

Surprisingly the opposition too seems to have taken heart from the old proverb that hanging together is better than hanging separately. The Congress’s timidity in striking hard at the Vajpayee government in Parliament is curious. Mulayam Singh Yadav’s reluctance to introduce a vote of no confidence against the BJP government in UP for months after Kalyan Singh quit the party and left the state government vulnerable was even more curious. The UP state assembly, elected with a very divided composition to begin with, in fact provides an instructive example for the Central government in the art of political survival. The BJP has successfully dragged on a cut and paste opportunistic partnership in government to its full term and now even talks of over time.

In politics the new trend is to make a pact with the devil himself if it is for your advantage. Else, why does the Congress in Bihar continue its unnatural alliance with Rabri Devi which goes against both its inclinations and caste affiliations? Or why does the NCP support Congress Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh even as Sharad Pawar continues to bait Sonia Gandhi about her foreign origins? And the general impression that Maneka Gandhi was deprived of her culture portfolio not because she had tread on a few toes in the government but because Sonia Gandhi had made her removal a condition for constructive support in Parliament is hard to dispel.

Today party whips concentrate more on getting their numbers right within the House rather than worrying solely about defections to the other side. The new rule of the game is, if one group goes out, entice another to come in. If the DMK is restive, woo the AIADMK. If Paswan and Sharad Yadav cross over to Laloo, counter it by splitting Laloo’s RJD. If Prime Minister Vajpayee is taking a tough line with both his own party and his allies these days, it is because he is boosted by the magical number 304, which is a larger number of MPs supporting him than when he began his tenure. Kid glove treatment is reserved for Chandrababu Naidu, the only party leader who can single handedly bring down the government. But now he too is hampered by the WIMA factor, for his MPs from Telangana are no longer willing to follow him blindly. All of which explains why the worry lines on Vajpayee’s face which were etched so clearly during his last regime have disappeared. He does not have to keep looking over his shoulder to watch out for Jayalalithaa’s next move. The uncertain look has been replaced by an impassive Buddha like demeanor.

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