Ballast for a rocky boat

In many ways the United Progressive Alliance under Manmohan Singh is a more complex coalition than the National Democratic Alliance that Atal Bihari Vajpayee headed. This is so even though the latter had some 24 constituents at one point and Vajpayee himself was driven to appeal to voters in the last Lok Sabha elections to send the BJP back to power on a more stable basis. As it happened, the 14th Lok Sabha saw the NDA relegated to the opposition benches and there, on the treasury benches, sat the UPA comprising 15 distinct political parties. What casts a shadow over prospects of UPA’s extended longevity is the fact that it has an additional tier that the NDA did not have — Left parties, which are often pitted against the Congress in electoral frays, supporting the coalition from the outside. One of the big arguments in favour of getting the Left parties to join the UPA government, in fact, was that this would provide the ruling coalition with some foundational strength, besides possibly instilling responsibility in Marxist ranks.

That, however, did not happen. The Left chose to stay out and there have been moments — as, for instance, tensions over Budget proposals after which CPM leader Sitaram Yechury famously declared on television that his party was prepared to bite — when the UPA boat did look as if it had hit pretty stormy waters given the ideological differences inherent within it. A coordination committee — which Congress President Sonia Gandhi and senior Left leaders are presently working to set up — would be the bureaucrat’s answer to this instability. This is not to say that it won’t provide some useful ballast to steady the UPA barge. This is to say that it is not a sufficient measure to stabilise this coalition.

The UPA’s coordination committee, whenever it begins to function, could learn a thing or two from the NDA example. Vajpayee was astute enough never to throw the party’s weight — it had 181 seats after all and was clearly Big Brother — around in an obvious manner. Every crisis that the NDA faced — even those that could have divided its ranks like the Tehelka expose of 2001 or the Gujarat crisis in 2002 — was handled by some deft consensus building and man management. Pointmen like George Fernandes were crucial for this purpose. By projecting him sometimes even more than those within its own ranks, the BJP leadership, particularly Vajpayee, could protect the party’s interests and ensure the coalition’s survival. Coordination, then, is more than the setting up of committees. It is about maturity, accommodation and, most of all, realism, from all the constituents within the UPA.