Forward,defensive

Just when the Congress appeared to have drawn its line and called certain things sacrosanct about the ongoing Lok Sabha elections and the partys stand thereafter,it is once more guilty of sending out mixed signals about at least one of those inviolate entities. It was only a few days back that the Congress invoked the Indo-US nuclear deal in reaffirming its commitment to Manmohan Singh as the partys PM candidate. The message then was that it considered the deal a political and policy watershed and would not tone down its stand on finished business. But in response to a question on NDTV 24/7 on Wednesday,External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said that the post-poll numbers would determine his partys reaction to a possible Left demand for a re-look at the nuclear deal.

It was not that Mukherjee was exactly signalling a softening of the Congress with regard to the deal. His response was,in intent,a defence of the deal. What was lacking in Mukherjees response was the very firmness that the Congress appeared to demonstrate recently. Iterating everything depends on the numbers and using the interrogative in,say,How can I predict what will be the conditions8230; what is to be re-looked? indicate hesitation and doubt in fact,a possible lack of conviction on the part of the minister and,by extension,his party. Asked about not ruling out re-looking at some aspects of the deal,Mukherjee would neither rule it out nor say that it is possible. That India has civil nuclear agreements with sundry other countries,each agreement independent of the others,and therefore that the reference could possibly be only to the commercial transactions more obfuscates than clarifies. Therefore,in effect,Mukherjees defence of the deal just wasnt a defence strong enough.

Keeping possible post-poll scenarios in mind,the Congress has been making overtures to the Left. But mixed signals and doublespeak,meant to confuse ones opponents,often end up confusing ones own ranks. Alliance-building and post-poll arithmetic are tough calls,and the Congress could do with more coherence and firmness therein of the kind that it displayed for once just the other day. After all,it had braved the trust vote in Parliament last July over the nuclear deal.