Fading Front

Monday8217;s United Front rally in Hyderabad was an eloquent political contrast to the show put up at the same venue barely six months ago by parties under the same signboard. Chandrababu Naidu, as the UF convener and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister, held centrestage then, as he kicked off the Front8217;s poll campaign with a call to crush quot;communal forcesquot; besides the Congress in the battle of the ballot. He was now the target of the unbridled ire of the truncated Front, as the quot;betrayerquot; who had helped the BJP and its coalition at the Centre. Naidu has been rattled enough to deny any positive alliance with the BJP, but this hardly promises the return of the prodigal. It was not only the TDP, AGP and NC leaders who were noticeably off the list of speakers. Conspicuous by his absence on the occasion was also Tamil Maanila Congress president G.K. Moopanar, who was actually at the time paying court at 10, Janpath and pronouncing the Congress as the only alternative to the BJP. His excuse for not attending the rally 8211;that he had not been invited 8212; sounded suspiciously like Naidu8217;s for leaving the UF 8212; that he had not been consulted on the Front8217;s decision on Lok Sabha speakership. No one asked M. Karunanidhi, but no less noticeable was the non-attendance of the DMK chief or any of his lieutenants.

It is not as if all this meant a smaller, but still united Front. Those present and rallying were not a picture of political cohesion either. A second, if slightly less striking, contrast was provided by the tactical lines trotted out by two prominent UF leaders. Invited Mulayam Singh may have been but that did not prevent the Samajwadi Party chief from echoing Moopanar and even pledging the UF support for any Congress bid for power at the Centre, with no bar on Sonia Gandhi. Both the SP and TMC leaders were undeterred in this regard by the barely concealed reluctance of the Congress to attempt any rash alternative-making at this juncture. Deve Gowda hastened to deny this as the Front8217;s stand, but his point was only that thesubject was yet to be discussed. CPI general secretary A.B. Bardhan ruled out any UF backing for the Congress at the rally, but the CPIM8217;s pre-poll preparedness for a Congress-led alternative was no closely guarded secret, nor the tendency of the smaller Communist party to accept the big brother8217;s lead ultimately. Marxist mandarin Harkishan Singh Surjeet8217;s affected outrage at the pro-Congress campaign makes no serious difference to the scenario.

Mulayam Singh and Moopanar may have spoken for most of the Front. But acceptance of this as a fact will demand a repudiation of the very rationale of the Front. What stood exposed at Hyderabad was the relevance of the idea of the third Front. The UF, projected as the alternative to quot;communal forcesquot; as well as to those of quot;corruptionquot; and the quot;cult of dynastyquot;, has clearly failed the test of time. The emergence of a bipolar polity is a reality that a conglomeration of regional forces can no longer expect to counter with any significant degree of success, at thecentral level at any rate. The Front cannot be transformed into a reckonable factor again by merely refusing to recognise this reality. Rallies and rhetorics won8217;t suffice to revive a hope that has been belied so repeatedly.