Maharashtra has a new government at last. But it is too early to cheer. The newly-formed coalition between the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party looks decidedly shaky not only because of the circumstances of its birth but also because of what lies ahead. It is fortunate that the leaders of the two parties in Maharashtra, Prataprao Bhosale of the Congress and Chhagan Bhujbal of the NCP are total realists. Thanks to that the two were able to forget the cause of the original rupture between them (the citizenship question and the expulsion) within a matter of hours after the election results came in. However, they had been unable even after a fortnight to bring the power-sharing negotiations to a conclusion. The emergence of a new government was delayed while the NCP which made maximalist demands learned to climb down. By the time the bickering over who should be chief minister was sorted out, there was none left for deciding how to divide the rest of the spoils to the satisfaction of each major partneror the small parties allied to them.When getting to the swearing-in of the Congress' Vilasrao Deshmukh as Chief Minister and the NCP's Chhagan Bhujbal as Deputy Chief Minister was a near-impossible task, it is fair to ask whether the two parties will go on to form a genuine partnership in government or whether they will be constantly manoeuvring for advantage. It does not augur well for the coalition that the ministry is being formed in phases and that the final phase has been left for after the vote of confidence in early November. Evidently ministry formation is going to be a protracted business with everything from ministerships to the speakership and places on state public corporations subjected to hard bargaining. Initially the NCP played a weak hand brilliantly. With next to no clout nationally and only 58 seats in Maharashtra, it was indispensable to the Congress (75 seats) and to the SS-BJP alliance (125 seats) and bargained with both. Eventually, however, it overreached itself demanding more thanits actual numbers entitled it to. Even though the Congress has so far managed to resist the more outrageous demands, the process of coalition formation has earned a bad name. And in the end much remains to be settled between the big two leave alone meeting the demands of six small parties and independents on whom the coalition depends crucially.Even if compromises are eventually thrashed out, relations between the Congress and the NCP are not going to be easy. Nothing separates the two parties but ill-feeling between some of their leaders. Therefore, the experiment of running a coalition government in Maharashtra will test the survival skills of both parties. In their reduced states, after the split, it will be hard for party leaders - and the NCP perhaps more than the Congress - to keep their parties intact and to prevent party members changing sides. Unless the NCP settles for being junior partner, the government is not going to get smoothly into its stride. There is a great deal to be done and thesooner political uncertainty is ended the better for Maharashtra. The primary task of the new government will be to look into the state's finances which are in a mess and to restore them to health.
