Country cousins

After independent candidates,now the regional parties face the prime ministers disapproval. Speaking to the editors guild,Manmohan Singh declared regional parties destructive to Indias long-term interests. Arguing that regional parties get caught up in their own perspectival battles say,water-sharing disputes among states and,vitally dependent on consensus and re-election from their own constituencies,they cannot rise to take a national view. He underscored the need for mature,confidence-inspiring governance,pointing out that across the world,states were organising themselves for greater negotiating power,through common markets India,instead,is being pulled in different directions by its fractured politics. At a time when the Congress has realised that its own survival depends on ramping up its nationwide presence (steadily whittled away by regional players in recent years),the PM claims that only a national party like the Congress can articulate interests that cross regional borders and take the medium-to-long term view.

The PMs views find echo in a globally engaged middle class and corporate India,who dread the shrunken public policy horizons of a motley,messy coalition. But the only way to generate a national consensus for this view is to integrate the poor and regionally alienated into the larger economy the only antidote to the dissipation of local loyalties is to give them stakes in sustaining a stable Central government. Creation of a surpassing economic identity that can weigh over preoccupations of language,caste and region is the only way a national party can credibly back up its claims. After all,if Europe was drastically unevenly developed,a common market might not have been so feasible.

Perhaps,keeping the regional party bogey in mind,the PM was also distinctly softer on his estranged allies in the Left. Only a few days ago in Kerala,he had ripped into the Left and declared them consistently misled by ideology at every crucial juncture from the Quit India Movement to the telecom revolution (and presumably the nuclear deal). Now,the PM praised their personal integrity and intellectual heavy lifting,and expressed his regret that they parted way over matters of principle. Of course,elements in the Left have also been making overtures to the Congress,perhaps because both consider each other more reliable and responsible partners than their whimsical country cousins.