Heartland trouble

As statements of political intent go, this one is arresting. Asked about his party’s support to the Mulayam Singh government in Uttar Pradesh — in the context of the UP Congress vociferously turning up the heat on Mulayam in Lucknow on the law and order issue — Salman Khursheed reportedly said: “We supported the formation of a government, not its running.” Some would see breathtaking cynicism in the effort to etch a self-serving line between government and governance. The more trusting may read it as as an articulation drawing upon a deep strategy that may be unfathomable so far but is sure to reveal itself later. But really, Khursheed is deserving of our sympathy. As UPCC chief, he is saddled with the task of imposing coherence on the Congress’s predicaments in a longago bastion it desperately seeks to reclaim, and after the famous May 13 victory feels it can reclaim, but runs up against irrefutable constraints each time it tries to do so.

In UP, the Congress senses an opportunity in the political furore building up after the murder of BSP MLA Raju Pal. Yet it also knows it must calibrate its enthusiasms. Mulayam Singh Yadav’s discomfiture cannot but bring joy and succour to local Congress leaders and cadres but Mulayam cannot be dislodged from UP’s throne until the Congress has a plan for UP — the still elusive organisational muscle and political bounce it needs to revive itself in a state that was once central to the one-party dominance system. So, for the moment in UP, the Congress dare not inhale. On the murder of the BSP MLAS, local leaders can ask for a CBI probe but leaders at the Centre will go all evasive on their demand for President’s Rule.

It’s a bit like that for the Congress in that other former stronghold till the 1990s as well. In Bihar, it must nuance its support to Laloo Prasad Yadav — close enough to protect his government but far enough to eke out the space to revive in his state in the long term. And so, the tortured poll pacts between the Congress, RJD and Ram Vilas Paswan’s LJP, each fighting the other and supporting it too. Yes, the Congress’s unbearable twists and turns are born of genuine dilemmas. But a more demanding public debate needs to put the party on notice: it’s incoherence is showing.