How historic'' Atal Behari Vajpayee's ouster from power is will depend on how his successor manages to provide a government that can ta...
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How 8220;historic8221; Atal Behari Vajpayee8217;s ouster from power is will depend on how his successor manages to provide a government that can take the nation forward.
Though non-Congress parties had come to power at the Centre earlier, they were all governments led by erstwhile Congressmen or supported by the Congress party. Vajpayee8217;s was the first genuine non-Congress government and a rightist one to boot. But the very nature of the fractured verdict and the composition of the coalition did not give him much elbow room except within the parameters of the hastily-drafted National Agenda for Governance NAG. Besides, Vajpayee also had to content with certain cantankerous allies for whom power was an instrument to settle scores with their political rivals and some overzealous partymen, who saw an opportunity to foist their ideology on an unsuspecting nation. To be fair to him, he tried to stick to the national agenda and evolve a consensual approach on all contentious issues except, perhaps, on the sacking ofAdmiral Vishnu Bhagwat, which ultimately brought his government down and the sacking of the Rabri Devi government in Bihar.
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It8217;s not for nothing that Vajpayee has been described as the right man in the wrong party. Whatever success the BJP achieved in the last election was primarily due to him. It was he alone who could have cobbled together a government under such trying conditions. But the BJP has something in it that puts its allies, except perhaps the Akali Dal whose constituency is by and large insulated against poaching by other parties, perpetually on the guard. It is significant that neither during the 13 days he remained in power in May 1996 and now, for 13 months, did the party gain new friends and thus consolidate its position. And this despite every opinion poll favouring Vajpayee as the hot favourite and almost all leading politicians beginning their speeches in Parliament by paying wholesome personal compliments to him. Whether the party was a liability for him or he overgrew the party, thefact remained that the BJP label did not take him far in his prime ministership. The deliberate attempts to deride his leadership and show him up as a mere mask also caused considerable damage to his political manoeuvrability. Yet, his regime has not been an unmitigated disaster. This was partly because, after Nehru and his daughter Indira Gandhi, he alone had the requisite stature to lead the nation in the direction he wanted.Pokharan II in May last and the bus journey to Lahore in February will remain Vajpayee8217;s defining moments, though he watered them by his misguided letter to President Clinton and by letting his colleagues speak the intemperate language of 8220;hot pursuitquot; and 8220;potential enemy No. 18221;. To give him his due, his attempt all through has been to resist being a prisoner of his party8217;s ideology. It meant giving economic reforms the much-needed push even at the risk of antagonising some powerful elements in the organisation. The saying that a good man is a useless man unless he is able to asserthis goodness may not be appropriate in the case of Vajpayee who could have taken action instead of observing a day8217;s fast to mark Gandhi8217;s death anniversary. Yet the very thought that he is unlikely to return to power in view of his avowed commitment not to contest another election will surely sadden people across the country.
