Personality-driven poll

This election is deteriorating into a game little children play with triangles, squares and hexagons called 8220;match the shapes8221;, only this one involves matching personalities. The main body of the Congress and the Pawar-Sangma-Anwar front are totally absorbed after the split with figuring out who fits where. As Maharashtra Congress legislators decide in ones and twos to move this way or that, small opportunistic outfits like Suresh Kalmadi8217;s Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi discover in the confusion where they actually belong. If the BJP thought the pieces went smoothly into the National Democratic Alliance, it may have to take a second look at the likes of Ramakrishna Hegde, Mamata Banerjee and George Fernandes. Nor is that all. In UP and Gujarat, the BJP itself has not been licked into shape despite Kusum Rai being relieved of her duties in one state and a cabinet expansion in the other. Here too, it is the personalities, the Kalayan Singhs, Rajnath Singhs, Keshubhai Patels and Suresh Methas, which do not sitcomfortably together. Among non-Congress, non-BJP parties, the rule of opposites prevails: if Laloo Prasad Yadav8217;s moves in one direction it will send Ram Vilas Paswan off in another, if Jayalalitha goes west, G K Moopanar turns east and on and on nauseatingly.

The people of India should be forgiven for thinking elections are about issues and programmes. They may worry about such things as where new jobs will come from, whether there will be potable water in their villages this year or teachers to teach their children or better policing on the streets. They may struggle to understand who stands for secularism and pluralism, good governance and stability or what precise direction this or that party will give economic or foreign policy. But they would be mistaken to think they are going to get answers during this personality-driven election. Campaign issues are receding into the background as personalities 8212; the USP on all sides 8212; collide and merge only to collide again. For the NDA the personality of AtalBehari Vajpayee looms larger than the NAG national agenda for governance which people are expected to take for granted as a useful document because it is tagged to Vajpayee. In the Congress it is a good deal worse with the choice narrowed down to Sonia Gandhi or Sharad Pawar and substantive party programmes drowned out by legalistic wrangling over the Constitution.

Personalities are overwhelmingly important because it is about the only thing left to hold parties and alliances together. Coalition politics as practised in the last few years have shown that few parties are unwilling to reshape themselves if there was a chance of coming to power. Call it pragmatism. But if political convictions are relatively easy to abandon, personal ambitions and likes and dislikes are not. So 1999 may turn out to be the year when the art of coalition-making will lie not in creating joint programmes or institutional mechanisms but in taming the ambitions and egos of an army of political personalities.