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BETWEEN THE UNES ,

Bereft of Ideas

Kuldip Nayar writes from New Delhi
***The old and tired leadership that India has is the reason why political parties cease to inspire or the appeal to the young.***
The Central Hall of Parliament is a barometre to measure political climate in India. The more the pressure, the busier is the hall. It is indicative of changes. Whenever a crisis has developed in the past, the place has overflowed with MPs, some sitting in knots, some standing but all lost in animated discussions. Today the place is deserted. No leader shows up. There is an atmosphere of ennui that comes from having no occupation or interest.
The budget should have brought to the fore the contradicts that plague the ruling United Front from within or without. But it has silenced critics. It is like the worst of things and the best of things. Still political parties appear reconciled. if not happy. Whatever their rhetoric, they do not sound unsatisfied. The halting, puffing United Front has another bowl of energy. The talk of its fall is suddenly over.
Even otherwise, the political scene has come to be dominated by such elements in parties and outsiders as are interested in consumerism and showy life. They are vocal, they control the media and they are the ones who set an agenda in political parties, whatever the ideological mumbo-jumbo. And in any case, the political leadership is so old and so tired that it has lost its elan and even the will to differ.
1 am reminded of Congress leaders on the eve of independence. They were so exhausted by satyagrahas and agitations that they did not want to start another movement against the British, who offered a divided India as a solution to the subcontinent's problems. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad has admitted it in his writing. But others were keen on power, a few of them sincerely motivated by the desire to serve when they were left with some years of active life.
The old and tired leadership that India has is (he reason why political parties cease to inspire or the appeal to the young. It is not that the budget is an ideal one; it is the cosiness of status quo that saps their activity. It is far more comfortable to agree than to express dissent. The budget is only an example.
Tne Bhartiya Janata Party, the largest bloc in the Lok
Sabha. has huffed and hawed for record. Otherwise, it feels that its clothes have been stolen by Finance Minister P Chidambaram. Urban middleclass. its main stay, believes that it never had it sb good. The party does not talk about the swadeshi. which has been attacked by drastic cuts in the import of foreign goods. It says the defence budget should have been higher. What a profound statement to make! Every sector of government activity would want more allocations. Congress is conspicuously quiet because Chidambaram has left Manmohan Singh miles behind on the road of economic liberalisation on which he has set out five years earlier.
The reaction to the budget only indicates how the two largest parties in the country have no programme except tittle-tattle, The confusion is to mistake activity on paper for purposeful programme or good programme. This is not siriiply a matter of deciding how large a role the party should play in society or the economy; the confusion affects all sides in that debate. The real malady is that political parties are bereft of ideas. But it is far better for a party to have lots of bad or pointless ideas and be striving urgently to put them into effect than to have no ideas at ali. Better dangerous than bereft. Un-, fortunately, this is not the case.
The BJP is still in the midst of the crisis that has followed the demolition of the Babri Masjid in December 1992 because it is afraid to go all Hin-dutva and cannot feel at home with the secular realities. It has realised more than before that its president L K Advani's boast that "it will go it alone", when he separated his flock from the Janata Party in 1979. was a call for the wilderness. None came near it last year with all prizes and pressures it offered to at a majority in the Lok Sabha. If it wants to come to power at the Centre, it has to have allies. Its
preferences is still for communal forces, as Punjab has shown or for such desperate elements as have only power the end. like the Samta Party in Bihar. But the BJP will soon discover, if it has not done so far. that its kind of politics does not go down well either in the south or the east. But then if it gives up the Hindutua. which its mentor, the RSS, will never accept, it has no appeal to attract.
Advani is wrong in concluding that the BJP has benefitted from the 'secular logic' that has brought 13 regional parties together. In fact, if they had not done so. lines between communal and secular forces would not have been drawn so clearly as they are today. If the realisa-
tion that the BJP cannot rule the country with its communal stand is a gain, I have no complaint. Once the BJP leans to compromise, it will find that the type of politics it follows is sterile. It has not benefitted the society, as Advani claims. In fact, if has endangered the ethos of tolerance and a sense of accommodation. India s greatest asset.
The BJP is wrong if it believes that it is making inroads in the south. The party is still seen in that part of India as a northern Hindu chauvinistic group. A few successes in local bodies elections do not count. What counts is the strength in parliament or assembly. The BJP. which Once polled 28 per cent votes in Karnataka, is now a poor third. It is sliding downward practically in, all the nonHindi speaking states.
Congress is too disheartened and too divided to take its place. If elections were announced tomorrow, it would not be able to retain its present strength of 148 seats in the Lok Sabha. Advani is right that Congress is disintegrating. But he is wrong when he says that the BJP is replacing it. Regional parties are gaining ground.
It is understandable why some Congress leaders are keen
on a larger formation with the Janata Dal or. for that matter." the United Front. Former Maharashtra chief minister Shared Pawar's name is being, mentioned in this context. What is coming in the way is the Congress wishful thinking that it. being larger than any of the UF constituents, would lead the coalition. Even if it were to stop, insisting on that and wanting to join the government, several claims of Congressmen for the ministership would not be easy to reconcile. And then one does not know how the communists would react. They wear their hostility to Congress on their sleeves.
True, there are certain elements in the UF who want to jettison the communists to join hands with the Congress. Many busy-bodies have gone from one camp to another in the recent days. But they are also afraid of disturbing the applecart. Something tells them that if they were to do so. the whole structure could collapse, making a mid-term poll inevitable. None in the Janata Dal or for that matter, in any political party wants that to happen.
Prime Minister Deve Gowda is sitting pretty, having brought a budget which has caused confusion in the ranks of opponents. He finds himself more entrenched than before February 28. the budget day. He also knows that it is well-nigh impossible to build another coali-tion. without rocking the boat — a situation which none of the UF constituents wants. Advani has talked of immediate dangers to the Gowda government. But Advani is the person who. a few days ago, said in an interview that the UF government would "survive for some more time" and that there was no prospect "of mid-term poll in the immediate future in the emerging scenario.
The Deve Gowda governmen-t's problems are witbin. But for three, four ministers, the cabinet is that of passengers. Nonperformance is bad enough but some of them are guilty of misperformance. They may not be bereft of ideas but their ideas, especially their actions, are harmful to the country. The Janata Dal. which Invokes Jayaprakash Narain's name, cannot be found compromising with ethics or moral standards. '