Too clever by half

Someone defined a politician as a fence-sitter who, at the same time, manages to keep an ear to the ground. And this is just what the Con...

Someone defined a politician as a fence-sitter who, at the same time, manages to keep an ear to the ground. And this is just what the Congress has done in its handling of the issue of President8217;s rule in Bihar. The moment the Narayanpur massacre in the Jehanabad district of Bihar took place within 16 days of the earlier one at Shankarbigha, the Congress had publicly stated that enough was enough and that the Rabri Devi government had lost its moral right to rule. A position that was reiterated by Congress President Sonia Gandhi during her visit to the area a couple of days later.

What is one to make of such a statement if it isn8217;t a tacit acknowledgement of the need to impose President8217;s rule in the state? After all, the Congress did not say, the Rabri Devi government must own up to the moral responsibility for this carnage and resign. Instead it had stated that 8220;it had lost its moral right to rule8221; 8212; a far more definitive statement. True, even during that visit, Sonia Gandhi preferred to be vague abouther party8217;s stand.

While she expressed deep distress over the incident and stated that it was the 8220;highest duty8221; of the elected state governments to protect those who were most vulnerable and that the Bihar government had repeatedly failed to do so, she also indicated that the dismissal of the government would not help solve the issue of Dalit-Bhumihar clashes. But it was all so delightfully ambiguous that even a seasoned political analyst could be forgiven for not having read the message right.

Now, it seems, the Congress has sighted a small window of opportunity in the BJP government8217;s dilemma over getting the Presidential proclamation, invoking Article 356 in Bihar, passed in both Houses, especially in the Rajya Sabha where the ruling party has control over just 72 of the 245 seats. With the Congress deciding to oppose the move, chances of its being passed are minuscule. While this is not sufficient cause for a collapse of the ruling coalition, the resurrection of a RJD government, under Rabri Devipresumably, will nevertheless be a source of great embarrassment to it.

After all, this is the second time in five months that the Centre has sought to impose President8217;s rule in the state.

But if this is embarrassing for the BJP, such ambiguity hardly redounds to Congress8217;s credit either. Besides ruffling the feathers of some of its own workers in Bihar, who are anxious to distance their party from Laloo Yadav8217;s RJD, it conveys the impression that the party leadership has not quite got its fundamentals right on a major issue like Article 356. Its stand on the need to protect Dalits has also got somewhat compromised, something it is clearly conscious of since it has now announced its intention to launch a series of 8220;pro-Dalit programmes8221; in a bid to retrieve the ground it lost by diluting its message on Narayanpur.

Although the Congress insists that it is the unsavoury developments concerning the governor8217;s office at the orders of the RSS that have prompted it to distance itself from the idea ofPresident8217;s rule in the state, what comes through loud and clear is a unholy anxiety to sharpen contradictions within the ruling coalition and engineer the collapse of its government.