Restraint, Minister

The call was bound to come. The surprise is that it came quite so quickly. Ramakrishna Hegde's remarks about the need for a fresh mandate to...

The call was bound to come. The surprise is that it came quite so quickly. Ramakrishna Hegde8217;s remarks about the need for a fresh mandate to fight blackmail by Jayalalitha may only be a lashing back by a victim of the AIADMK chief8217;s excesses. But they are disturbing. For starters, it is for the leading party in the coalition, and indeed for the Prime Minister himself, to decide whether to stand up to the demands of its troublesome ally even if it entails sacrificing the government.

What credibility can her target have, even if he makes a legitimate point? Second, in combination with the Prime Minister8217;s own declaration that he would not contest another election, such proclamations so early in the life of this government smack of needless defeatism. Its constituents always knew that governance would not be easy in this unwieldy coalition. But preparedness to go rather than compromise beyond a point is a political strength only when properly projected. Spoken out of turn, it does no good at all.

Mostimportantly, what will a fresh election do for any government? The last election yielded a still-more divided verdict than the one before. Indian democracy has to get over its obsession with elections as an answer to everything including an all-round failure of the political leadership. The divisions in Indian society are being increasingly reflected in electoral mandates. That can conceivably continue indefinitely. No answers in fact present themselves, but election after election is no solution. While Hegde may not be the right man to articulate this thought, though, at some point Jayalalitha8217;s bluff will have to be called.

Bending over backwards to appease her will not help unless the government goes all the way to dismissing the DMK government in Tamil Nadu. Failing that, she will no doubt find daily a new and at least superficially legitimate pretext to remind this coalition of its impotence and fragility.

Meanwhile, all attempts at accommodating her other demands will be read by her, correctly, assigns of weakness which she will then be further encouraged to exploit. L.K. Advani, M.M. Joshi and Uma Bharti are no doubt already in her sights.

In purely strategic terms Atal Behari Vajpayee might have done well to agree that there could be no room in his government for chargesheeted ministers but made it clear that Buta Singh8217;s departure was his decision. And he need not have asked ministers who had not been chargesheeted to answer to Jayalalitha8217;s charges. That would have precipitated a crisis for his government, but this in any case is a matter of time. If the BJP is ever to get rid of the fear of fear, it can do so only by testing Jayalalitha8217;s preparedness to pull the government down on a flimsy pretext. If there has been any lesson at all from recent coalition experiments it is that only a devil-may-care disregard towards their own longevity will permit governments to function. This was reflected in the contrasting styles of H.D. Deve Gowda and Inder Kumar Gujral. The first delivered a governmentin his short time as Prime Minister, the second engaged in a self-serving struggle for survival as an end in itself. The ball is now in the Prime Minister8217;s court. Let not the commerce minister run away with it.