Maha mess

If the Congress’s bypoll defeat in Solapur is being blown up into a somewhat premature epitaph for the party in Maharashtra, it has only itself to blame. The party set itself up for such a great fall. Sushil Kumar Shinde was to be the magician, remember, whose mantra would make it all alright again for the Congress in Maharashtra. When he was appointed chief minister, abruptly unseating the by then much-discredited Vilasrao Deshmukh, by a high command in the throes of post-Gujarat jitters, he was expected to work wonders in the 18 months left to go. He had to shore up the Dalit votebank, reverse the debt ridden state’s financial decline, keep a faction riven party united, send out the message of good governance, while preventing the simmering NCP-Congress feuding from exploding into the open. A tall order for a last leg CM, even one as affable and experienced an administrator as Shinde is touted to be. As the resounding defeat in Shinde’s own constituency shows, he may be failing the test. His party must own up its responsibility.

The larger message in Solapur, perhaps, is this: That politics is slow and laborious business and it requires team work. In Maharashtra, for far too long the Congress ignored the signs of things going awry at ground level. One of the first setbacks came in the zilla parishad elections in early 2002, in which the Congress got fewer votes than the NCP. Then the unsavoury drama in June, when ruling coalition MLAs had to be herded to safe places to prevent the Opposition from toppling the Deshmukh government. Meanwhile, the relationship with the NCP was always an iffy thing. The two parties which came together in a post-poll arrangement in 1999, never worked out the chemistry. The rumoured sabotage of the Congress’s chances by the NCP in Solapur may now mean either of two things: That there will be no pre-poll alliance for 2004 Lok Sabha polls. Or that there will be one, and Sharad Pawar will dictate the terms.

The Congress needs to get its act together in Maharashtra, and not just to improve its own prospects for the next election. The people of Mumbai have shown magnificent resilience in the face of terror. They deserve the security of having a government that watches out for them, one that is not nervously turned in on itself.