Once upon a time, only five years ago, Sharad Pawar, Purno Sangma and Tariq Anwar got themselves expelled from the Congress party. Having suddenly cast themselves in the role of Rebel, the Foreign Origins of Sonia Gandhi passed for a Cause. Coincidentally, all of this happened on poll-eve. In the elections that followed, the acrimony between Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party and the Congress was there for all to see — it was far greater, certainly, than their shared opposition to the BJP-Shiv Sena. A fuzzy verdict later, the two agreed to bury their hatchet, to share power in Maharashtra. Now, as the NCP and the Congress gravitate towards each other again — for a pre poll alliance this time because their opposition to the BJP, they say, is greater than their opposition to each other — it’s time to marvel again at how political events always race ahead of the political imagination. Time to wonder also at all the ends that will be left hanging in the NCP-Congress tie-up to be. None of them have to do with policy or programme, of course, because the split in the Congress never had anything to do with either. No, the spotlight in the still unfolding Congress-NCP saga is destined to rest squarely on personalities. On P. Sangma, for instance. The man who stubbornly refuses to give up the old rant against Sonia Gandhi. Consistency, at last, in a notoriously fickle politics? Hardly. Sangma didn’t protest too much when his party cosied up to Sonia’s party in Mumbai. As the amiable leader from the Northeast stomps his foot at a similar intimacy in New Delhi, he is simply the apt mascot for his schizophrenic party. A party that has in recent days oscillated, at once, in as many as three directions: with the Maharashtra unit tilting towards the Congress, Kerala unit in the direction of the Left Front, Northeast unit straining towards the NDA. As the breakdown of negotiations between Sharad Pawar and the NDA underlines, it’s about getting the best deal in votes and seats. And there’s no time to be wasted on the possibilities that couldn’t be. Like an alternative Congress, from within the Congress. Or like a politician who may have used his brand image — and this goes for Pawar as well as Sangma — to make a genuinely political point.
