One of the most unsettling elements for the UPA government in New Delhi is the Congress desire to revive in UP and Bihar. The UPA rests on a sort of tripod, the three legs of which are Congress, Left, Laloo and company. The Congress and the Left are engaged in a continuous combat in Kerala, Tripura and West Bengal. In Kerala, it is a ding-dong contest, a kind of see-saw bringing UDF or the Left on top. In West Bengal, the Congress is condemned to offer only token resistance.

There were always two parallel tendencies in the Congress — BJP positive and anti-BJP, tendencies inherited from an earlier, pre-BJP period when Purushottam Das Tandon defeated Jawaharlal Nehru at the first Congress session in Bhubaneshwar in 1950.

While the Nehru-Tandon contest reflected differences within the Congress on the nature of Indian nationalism, Indira Gandhi’s cautious stance after her second-coming in 1980 was conditioned by the fear of losing Hindu votes because excessive talk of a so-called Muslim vote-bank was creating a backlash. Rajiv Gandhi’s inauguration of his election campaign in ’89 from Ayodhya promising Ram Raj was tactically based on a similar appraisal of electoral politics.

By the time P.V. Narasimha Rao appeared on the scene, mandalisation was a rampaging reality. P.V.’s main support came from MPs from the south. This caused him to contemplate the mandir-mandal mahayudh in the Hindi belt, not like a Nehru but more like Purshottam Das Tandon. Little wonder L.K. Advani described him as the “best prime minister since Lal Bahadur Shastri”. In any case, P.V saw Congress revival in the Hindi belt a threat to his prime ministerial longevity. Just in case a revived Congress threw up a leader capable of challenging him! This, in addition to the caste homogeneity he felt for the Mandir forces, who — he believed — stood against the debrahminising tsunami of Mandal.

Preventing the revival of the Congress in the Hindi belt was, ironically, a strategy devised by a Congress PM. The rise and consolidation of Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati in UP and Laloo Prasad Yadav in Bihar was one consequence of this policy. The other was the emergence of the BJP-NDA at the Centre.

The May Lok Sabha elections exposed the hollowness of the NDA. Sonia Gandhi’s renunciation placed her on an unassailable pedestal. Under challenging conditions she had humbled the BJP. True, but one fact must never be forgotten. The Congress only has 145 seats in a House of 543. The BJP has 138. P.V. had brought the party down to its lowest tally ever — 140 seats. Sitaram Kesari, as party president, won for the party 141 seats. Admittedly under trying conditions, Sonia Gandhi pulled up the party to 145 seats. It is a stark reality — from ’96 to May ’04, the Congress has hovered between 140 to 145 seats. All the other seats are with the Left (60 seats) or Mulayam (36), Laloo (24), BSP (19) DMK (16) and so on.

The UPA tripod, intelligently conceived, rests on the above figures. P. Chidambaram, in a brilliant Budget, demonstrated total grasp of these ground realities, without capitulating in any way. Full marks to the UPA government on several other counts — foreign affairs, energy security. But just when the nation should have been showering praise on the UPA Budget, look what the party has gone and done. It has embroiled itself in the most inelegant, third-rate political manoeuvres in Jharkhand and Bihar, and it was so avoidable from the start.

Who are the coterie freelancers who have served Sonia Gandhi so poorly? They should be shown the door. Otherwise, the impression will continue to gain ground that she herself is solely responsible for the mess. In their eagerness to hand Sonia Gandhi the trophy of a revived Congress in Bihar, the coterie have gone and scored own-goals in Bihar and Jharkhand.

Sonia Gandhi must grasp the stark reality. In 1947, the Congress contained within itself the entire ideological spectrum, regional forces and what has emerged as the social justice formation. Today they are all outside the Congress. They cannot be put back in the Congress womb. They can only be kept in a coalition like the UPA.

Yes, Oscar Fernandes is doing excellent work setting up party structures up to the block level in UP. This can yield dividends over a decade provided the party comes across to the block returning officers or the district Congress samitis as possible winners in the near future. Can the party revive itself in UP, Bihar? Yes, but only up to a point. And that too when it stitches together arrangements with the regional forces on the following lines: say 30:70 in favour of the regional party for the assembly election and 70:30 in favour of the Congress for the Lok Sabha.