The Left’s induction of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi to talk caution to the Congress is apt. With the next UPA-Left coordination committee meeting on the nuclear initiative scheduled for Wednesday, and the Congress seemingly unyielding all weekend to the Left’s demands for an immediate freeze on negotiations on a safeguards agreement with the IAEA, the Left has reached out to the Congress’s partners in the alliance. Among them, Karunanidhi is not just the senior-most in political longevity. His DMK is also the one political party that has been continuously in power at the Centre since 1996, with just one break during the first NDA government in 1998-99. He thus comes to the practice of coalition politics with a unique understanding of how easily alliances can fall apart upon the announcement of elections. An interesting development of the last week has been the sudden and vocal involvement of regional leaders in national issues — like the nuclear deal and inflation. This is a good sign. The practice of coalition politics at the Centre by regional parties is too often a narrow quid pro quo. The party gets the Central government’s acquiescence to its agenda in its particular provincial patch, it gets autonomy in running the ministries under its control — and the national party gets to set policy on everything else. Just recently, the abnormalities of this system were highlighted when T.R. Baalu unapologetically confessed that he sought to use his office to get natural gas at a concession for his sons’ company. The aftermath highlighted the lines of separation that are often drawn up between prime ministerial authority and ministerial autonomy. If the current involvement of parties like the DMK in negotiations on the Indo-US nuclear deal is an indication that they are erasing those lines of separation, it must be welcomed. It does not take extraordinary political insight to forecast that the next general election will throw up a coalition government with the bulk of the numbers in the Lok Sabha provided by the Congress or the BJP. These two parties are learning how to think regional to keep their footholds in the states. Regional parties, in turn, must keep their interventions more informed by the national interest.
