Phoney war

The plunging levels of civility between the Samajwadi Party and the Congress would be worrisome at any time. But the fresh outbreak of hostilities on new year eve is especially so. Could it possibly be an omen? Is this to be the way of politics now, this, the language of political thrust and parry? Mulayam Singh Yadav, also Uttar Pradesh chief minister, has just accused the Congress-led government at the Centre and particularly the Congress chief, of masterminding a phone-tapping operation against the SP leadership. He also accuses Sonia Gandhi of unholy plots to bring down non-Congress governments in states across the country. In turn, the government in Delhi dismisses the documents the UP CM waves at a press conference in Lucknow to prove his case, as forgeries. The truth of the matter must await a more rigorous investigation. But what leaps out in this moment is the plain tawdriness of the political exchange.

The unpleasantries between Mulayam Singh Yadav and Sonia Gandhi go back a long way. Many will plot the beginning at that point in 1999 when, after the fall of the Vajpayee government at the Centre, the SP thwarted Sonia8217;s first bid to form a government, or so the story goes. Evidence has regularly dribbled into the public sphere ever since that all is not well, or even polite, between the Mulayam-Amar Singh duo and the Congress8217;s presiding deity. Though the two parties have often found themselves to be on the same side of the communal-secular fence, they have also found ways of evading real intimacy. Each supports the other8217;s government, 8216;8216;from the outside8217;8217;. If the Congress is pointedly niggardly with invitations to the SP leader for its jabs at dinner diplomacy, the SP is careful to feed the spectre of the Third Front at regular intervals. Now both parties see the UP assembly elections on the horizon 8212; though they8217;re due only in 2007 8212; and the battle begins all over again.

As they lay out their battle gear in UP, however, both the SP and Congress would do well to glance across the border at Bihar. In Bihar, it was not the pitch of his antagonism to Laloo Prasad Yadav that won Nitish the mandate, voters cast their vote for development. In UP, 2007, what will eventually matter is whether or not there is visible progress on the projects and schemes that Mulayam is hectically inaugurating in his state. All that these unparliamentary tiffs between senior leaders achieve is to shine some unflattering light on the mistrust and bad faith that unfortunately runs in our politics.