Shape up or ship out

Maharashtra8217;s Tom and Jerry show 8212; with coalition partners, the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party, constantly at each other8217;s throats 8212; has gone on too long for comfort. The latest round of recrimination involves the size of the state ministry, which today stands at 61 members. How many is too many is surely a detail that should have been sorted out in the privacy of the negotiating room rather than aired with great gusto on primetime television. What is most interesting is that through all this political jousting, the leaders and spokespersons of both parties have maintained that there is just no possibility of the fledgling government collapsing under the weight of its contradictions 8212; a prospect that their political opponents are certainly not discounting. Clearly neither the Congress in Maharashtra, nor its partner in power 8212; the NCP 8212; seems to know the first thing about coalition politics. Both parties could gainfully study how the lure of the fishes and loaves of office kept theirpredecessors, the Shiv Sena and the BJP, from rocking the boat too hard. Indeed, despite a conspicuously poor record of governance, the BJP-Shiv Sena front got to rule the state for almost a full term because of the hard-headed realism it displayed in this regard.

The NCP, which has boycotted the first full-fledged cabinet meeting to demonstrate its anger, has tried to occupy the moral high ground in the present controversy. It maintains that it is in the interests of the state8217;s economy that it is raising this ruckus over the size of the Deshmukh ministry. In a state where Rs 70 in every Rs 100 goes into staff salaries it makes little sense to operate a jumbo ministry, it argues, especially since the state8217;s coffers are in the red. The argument is indubitable and even the Congress would be hard-pressed to decry its logic since, according to the party8217;s own guidelines, a state ministry must not exceed 15 per cent of the strength of the Assembly. It is a different matter that the Administrative ReformsCommission had recommended that a ministry8217;s size should not exceed 10 per cent of the number of legislators. But in this case it is not just the size of the cabinet that has led to the current friction. There seems to be a serious breakdown of trust between the two supposed allies which augurs ill for the longevity of such a coalition.

If Sonia Gandhi and Sharad Pawar, the leaders of the two parties, cannot even bear to look at each other in Parliament, it would be defying reason to expect their junior colleagues to pull off the miracle of governing a complex and demanding state like Maharashtra together. Far more likely is the prospect of small, niggling developments transmogrifying into major misunderstandings. Indeed, the NCP8217;s intransigence over the size of the cabinet could well have been provoked by the fact that at least two of the three additions that the Congress is said to have unilaterally made at the last minute, are known Pawar critics. Incidentally, one of them had contested unsuccessfullyagainst Pawar in the Lok Sabha elections. Looking on as interested spectators of this tableau is the Shiv Sena and the BJP, with the leader of the opposition, Narayan Rane, already demanding the dismissal of the Deshmukh government. Even if the present crisis blows away, with both parties agreeing to prune the number of its ministerial representatives, the message to the Congress-NCP coalition is clear: shape up or ship out. Bitterness cannot be a viable basis for governance in Maharashtra or elsewhere.