Mantralaya drama

It was Day 14 in Maharashtra, a government was yet not in the saddle, suspense was still in the air, a curious reversal seemed to have taken place. The NCP was suddenly looking like the larger party 8212; and not just because it had won a couple more seats in the just-concluded elections. The Congress seemed diminished for other reasons. Long hours after the NCP had arrived at R.R. Patil as deputy chief minister, suspense prevailed inside Congressland in Mumbai on Friday, where a hectic last-minute maha-drama of 8216;8216;kaun banega mukhya mantri8217;8217; was still being enacted. In the thriller that finally ended in Vilasrao Deshmukh8217;s selection as the next chief minister, you could take your eyeballs off the Congress camp at your peril.

There is something absurd about the whole theatre that just ended in Maharashtra and no number of 8216;8216;this-is-coalition-politics8217;8217; arguments can make it sound better. First the state had to bear with a pre-poll alliance that locked itself into backrooms for unending negotiations after the verdict. Then, even after a settlement was reached between the partners, the Congress, which had loudly proclaimed the victory to be for the incumbent, all but declared the race for chief ministership wide open. At the end of it all, uneasy questions remain about coalition politics in general and for the Congress specifically. Shouldn8217;t pre-poll alliances be less non-committal and less ad hoc on crucial power-sharing decisions? What does a pre-poll alliance mean, really, if all the bargaining is going to take place after the verdict, testing the people8217;s patience with politics, rather politicking? Are pre-poll negotiations only about seat adjustment and allocation, no more? The Congress party in particular, needs to ask itself whether it has emerged from this drama looking like the more mature party. Why did its leadership let shadowy lobbying and factional jockeying for the post of chief minister undermine a crucial victory? Sonia Gandhi8217;s party must be held accountable for taking so long to give a government to the people of Maharashtra.

It certainly does not augur well for the new government. The extended haggling over chief ministership within the alliance and then inside the Congress party is an ominous signal for the office of chief minister in the state. Everyone agrees that, notwithstanding the election results, the last Congress-NCP government has pushed the state further into crisis. India8217;s most industrialised state stares at a huge debt of nearly one lakh crore; both agriculture and manufacturing have gone further into decline; economic inequalities have widened. Pulling the state out of these quicksands is going to require political resilience and administrative surefootedness. The beginnings don8217;t inspire confidence that the new government is up to it.