From ‘Lal Salaam’ to ‘Dalal Salaam’

SMS has many uses. In a politically charged atmosphere, such as the one that obtains in Delhi now, a wordsmith can use this tool to reach millions of people with his smart take on the events. Thus, an SMS presently doing the rounds says: “From Lal Salaam to Dalal Salaam, what a fall for Sonia Gandhi and Dr Manmohan Singh!”

It’s an apt commentary on the thoroughly opportunist manner in which the Congress president and the Prime Minister have attempted to save the Indo-US nuclear deal and also save their government. They might succeed, but at what cost — to the nation, to the Congress party and to the political culture in India?

The arrangement between the Congress and the Left had a certain political and moral legitimacy. The people’s verdict in the last parliamentary elections was clearly against the NDA government. Hence, it was legitimate on the part of the Congress, which had emerged as the largest single party, to stake claim to form the Government by creating a post-poll alliance. The Left parties chose to stay out of the UPA Government, but pledged their support to it on the basis of a mutually agreed common minimum programme (CMP). Hence came into being a stable government, headed by Dr Singh.

Why did this Government become unstable? The answer to this question lies in the arrogant mindset of the Congress leadership. The country may well have and truly moved into the coalition era, but the Congress, which ran only one-party governments from Nehru to Narasimha Rao, continued to behave as if Dr Singh’s government was essentially a Congress government that could do all that it wanted. It forgot that it had less than 150 MPs in a House of 545, that even the UPA had no majority, that it headed what was essentially a minority coalition government that could claim to have the backing of more than 272 MPs only because of the outside support lent by the Left, and, finally, that the sole basis of the Left’s support was the CMP.

And the CMP had not a word about the Indo-US nuclear deal.

Nevertheless, the Sonia-Singh duo made the nuclear deal the most important priority for the UPA Government. When the Left objected, the Congress leadership resorted to the tactic of buying time by forming the UPA-Left committee under Pranab Mukherjee’s chairmanship. Whereas the Congress leadership’s conduct in the committee was dilatory, Prakash Karat and his comrades approached deliberations in the committee’s nine meetings between September 2007 and June 2008 with utmost seriousness. This can be seen in the excellent 203-page document that they released on Thursday, containing all the well-researched notes they exchanged with Pranabbabu and his colleagues.

... contd.

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