Coalition durables

Four years ago this week, the Congress found itself victorious in the general elections proving every opinion poll in the country wrong. Perhaps, in retrospect, more unexpected was the ease with which the Congress-led coalition took power at the Centre. Hushing its traditional distaste for coalitions expressed just six years before at its Pachmarhi conclave, the Congress had, in the run-up to the elections, stitched up key alliances with regional parties. In many ways, the most iconic image of the party8217;s accommodative resolve was Sonia Gandhi8217;s visit to neighbour Ram Vilas Paswan8217;s house. It had taken the Congress some years before it realised that its unipolar moment had well ended by the mid-8217;90s. And by the 2004 elections, it had recognised that she who sewed up the better alliances would hold New Delhi. So, assorted regional leaders bred for decades on anti-Congressism 8212; the Lalu Prasad Yadavs, the Karunanidhis 8212; were brought on board with generous seat- and power-sharing deals.

By all indicators, the coalition has held. As it prepares for the next Lok Sabha elections, rumour is already rife that the Congress is agreeable to some sort of understanding with one of its fiercest foes, the Samajwadi Party. The fact of just the speculation points not merely to the Congress8217;s open mind on seeking new ways of gaining a political base in Uttar Pradesh, which it has not managed for four years despite inducting Rahul Gandhi for the exercise. It is also an indicator of the party8217;s confidence in its ability to take on and to manage difficult allies. After all, except for the always reluctant Chandrasekhar Rao of the Telangana Rashtra Samiti, hardly anyone has walked out of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance, have they?

That, curiously, may be just the problem the Congress should reckon with as it begins to take stock of the past four years. Is the Congress becoming too accommodating? On account of the Left, the government has, most spectacularly, allowed itself to be held back from acting fully on its reformist instincts and its nuclear initiative. But the Congress has also allowed its regional allies, who are in government, to secure little parking lots, where the collective responsibility of the cabinet is not allowed to operate. Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss, of little PMK, for instance, was able to use the legislative might of the UPA and Left parties to exploit Parliament to settle scores with a single individual. Minister of Shipping, Road Transport and Highways T.R. Baalu, of the DMK, which has perfected the art of gaining ministerial autonomy at the Centre, almost drew the prime minister8217;s office into a messy scam. Perhaps the Congress needs to reach back into its single-party past to draw lines of control around its allies.