The issue is mandate, not majority

They scream for blood, the instant cure, all of them faking fever. One hundred days into nightmares, the Government still shivers.

Jayalalitha8217;s febrile outpourings get the certificate of sanity when the BJP Government vacillates between controlled bouts of arrogance and appeasement.At one moment, the stand is 8220;principled8221; and goes with its consistent approach towards the issue of dismissal of state governments. Then, the memories of the past give way to intimations of the future. Affected morality becomes a baggage to be dropped at the entrance of coalition8217;s bazaar of convenience.

So the Governmentdecides to send a team of inspectors to monitor state governments. They stroll down Marina beach, check on the tourists, the breeze and the Bay of Bengal, to assess law and order in Tamil Nadu.

The shaken chief minister sings servile songs to save his government and nostalgically remembers a sepia-tinted commonness with the tormentor. The Government in Delhi lives to struggle for another day.

When the scream gets shriller and pierces the closed walls of coalition, the farce is enacted again elsewhere. The bureaucrats in Delhi are asked to get into their ironed safari suits, pack their briefcases and set off to state capitals. To Rabri Devi8217;s Patna to calm the Samata Party, to Jyoti Basu8217;s Calcutta to please Mamata Banerjee.

They complete the ritual with prefabricated movements and come back to file their reports. The Government in Delhi borrows some more hours and in the meantime finds new excuses to put off the inevitable.

The latest is that it does not have the majority in Parliament to ratify thedismissal of a state government. The fact is: no Central Government ever had the mandate to do it. It will never have.

Dismissing a state government is dismissing the mandate of the people. They do not necessarily vote the same way in the Assembly and Lok Sabha elections, they may vote for a certain party in the state and elect another to Parliament. The pattern is evident when the Assembly and Lok Sabha elections are held simultaneously or when a by-election follows the Lok Sabha elections.

But the question is: even if they do vote the same party at both levels, what right does the Centre have to remove a state government which is elected to rule for five years? How can it determine that the people wanted a change in the state?

Short-sighted power-mongers have always cried for dismissals and the satraps at the Centre nodded. Players at the national level and the state level in the dismissal drama were from the same party. And they had a willing executor at the state capital in the form of the governorfrom Ram Lal to Romesh Bhandari.

It8217;s a Congress legacy. The national party could not bear the sight of parallel pockets of power in state capitals. The only way the Congress knew to remove the obstacles was to dismiss them, no matter what the same voter who elected both the governments thought. It perfected the farce across the country, beginning from E.M.S. Namboodiripad8217;s Kerala to Kashmir, from N.T. Rama Rao8217;s Andhra Pradesh to neighbouring Tamil Nadu.

The Congress wanted to make its India complete with no other party aspiring to share power. It might have gained in the short term, but the message that the Centre did not care about regional aspirations was driven home.

The reckless use and abuse of power and indifference towards the subnational ego contributed to the decline and fall of India8217;s only national party. Regional parties came up to fill the vacuum, fought the Big Brother, often failed to stand up to him. But they survived.

As Indian politics evolved and the national party developedcracks, the regional parties grew to become national players. Their voters realised that they did not need a national party just for the sake of ruling New Delhi as their own state party could do that. This realisation made coalition a contemporary reality and perhaps the future of Indian politics.

Today the central player in national politics, if there ever is one, cannot dream of ruling all states. The states rule the Centre, national coalitions are manifestations of regional aspirations. If the BJP8217;s excuse for not dismissing state governments is that it does not have the majority in Parliament, it sends an ominous signal in the age of coalitions. The idea of coalition itself renders the concept of a Union government deciding on the fate of the state outdated and irrelevant. Article 356 or not, sacking a state government is against democracy. The voter has the habit of hitting back whenever democracy is hurt. If the BJP wants to know more on this subject, it should ask the Congress.