Fifth year, fifth gear

Operation Bluestar in what she then saw as supreme national interest. The following two governments to complete full terms compare poorly on that scale. Rajiv Gandhi’s was caught up in Bofors, HDW, the V.P. Singh revolt and some desperately imprudent moves like the shilanyas at Ayodhya. Narasimha Rao was caught up in hawala in his last year, charging his own partymen for corruption rather than charging them up for the polls. The other governments that followed were so short-lived, they remained lame duck all the time anyway.

Some of the reasons behind this new ‘‘last year as slog-overs’’ phenomenon are obvious. This is a government unusually decisive by our waffling standards, a trait it announced with the nuclear tests. The cabinet system works as it rarely did under the Congress and takes decisions, even contentious ones, like the unified telecom licence. The second, now, is the assurance that next year’s election is already in the bag. The Congress and the rest of the opposition are looking so entirely out-gunned and out-thought and so short of ideas except making noise in Parliament and waiting for the ruling coalition to either make last-year blunders, or get caught up in a scandal of the Bofors scale that endures till the polls.

But the other optimistic thought is that this is perhaps one more signal that the nature of our politics is undergoing fundamental changes as underlined by the voter in the recent state elections. Voters like to be governed. They don’t like lame duck governments searching for populist short-cuts or ideas in cynical, short-term political fixing, as was the case in Digvijay Singh’s last year.

If the voter likes to be governed, what can be a better preparation for any forthcoming elections than a fully-functional last year? First of all, you look like you are performing. Second, you give the voter a sense of continuity rather than time to rethink. In times when anti-incumbency is such a strong sentiment, what can be a better message for the voter than an idea of seamless continuity. If anything, Sheila Dikshit’s bucking that trend in Delhi is as good an evidence as any that an incumbent government which works till the very end of its term, as if it was seamlessly moving into the next, increases the odds heavily in its favour. Voters do not necessarily detest continuity. They hate being taken for granted.

Where does it leave the Congress and the rest of the opposition? If they continue the opposition politics as it was played in election years in the past at a time when the rules of the game are changing so radically, they are looking down a very deep and dark tube. But all is not lost if they acknowledge and accept this change and craft a new strategy, in tune with these changed times.

The BJP/NDA strategy in 2004 is unfolding already. It will be to pit Vajpayee versus Sonia in a presidential sort of contest, backed by two and possibly three other planks: NDA versus a disparate opposition without a common programme and a performing five-year government against the notion of two years of confusion preceding that.

If the Congress and its allies have to even have a hope of putting up a credible fight they must, first of all, begin to look like a coalition-in-waiting. The NDA coalition partners have problems but they have a common programme, meet frequently and speak in one voice on major issues. The Congress and its most important ally, the NCP, in contrast are barely on talking terms at top levels. How often do Sonia and Pawar meet to chalk up any common programme, strategy, or to even share a meal?

So a coalition has to be built now, a common minimum programme drafted and, most important of all, a candidate for prime ministership declared. People are not going to vote for any coalition that is shy of telling them who their prime minister is going to be. If it is to be Sonia, which is inevitable, let the coalition partners make their deals now.

They then need to announce a common minimum programme and a manifesto and, most important of all, a shadow cabinet. The only way to get around the Vajpayee versus Sonia issue can be our cabinet versus theirs. If a Congress-led coalition does not formulate that cabinet, it would look like such a hopeless team.

Finally, it would need to offer a positive agenda. Something that, instead of harping on this government’s shortcomings, convinces the voter it could do better. That a change is needed for a better future rather than to punish the incumbent for any sins of the past. In our new, redefined politics, and in the reign of the enlightened new voter who junks the Congress in three states and yet gives it a landslide in the fourth purely on performance, there is no place for negativist campaigns as typical of the opposition in election years in the past as lame duck government.

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