The Umbrella Regime

CONSIDER this: a government at the Centre with P.V. Narasimha Rao at the helm. A cabinet that includes S.B. Chavan, Sharad Pawar, K. Karunakaran, Jagannath Mishra, J.H. Patnaik, Sitaram Kesri, Ram Vilas Paswan and Sharad Yadav, among others. Ruling party benches in the I.ok Sabha comprising nearly 350 members from the Congress, Janata Dal, Left Front, Telugu Desam, AIADMK, DMK, BSP, Asom Gana Parishad, and Akali Dal, working in perfect harmony on issues of grave national import such as the debt trap, the poverty line and unemployment. And a wounded BJP licking its wounds in the Opposition, routed by the might of this grand secular alliance.

Even for a political framework so used to fantastic alliances and opportunistic coalitions, this is sheer fantasy.

But senior Janata Dal leader and former chief minister of Karnataka, Ramakrishna Hegde, does not seem to think so. For him, such a coalition is not just a distinct possibility but the only solution to the ills plaguing the country. And he's placed the idea before the nation's leaders. So what if his own supporters scoff at the very thought of tying up with the enemy and privately wonder if Hegde has finally gone senile. But the 69-year-old politician isn't one to give up so easily. " Those who came to scoff stayed for the prayer, " a confident Hegde told Outlook.

Sources close to Hegde reveal that the former chief minister's urgency to forge an alliance of non-BJP parties before the elections stems from a fear of the power wielded by the BJP in the Hindi heartland, the Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh sagas notwithstanding.

Besides being in power in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Delhi, the BJP is the number two party in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka. "A three way contest among the Congress, the BJP and the NF-LF combine will Split the non-BJP votes and give more seats to the BJP in the elections," says a Senior Karnataka minister. "The one way to prevent this is to forge an alliance of non~BJP parties before the election and fight just the BJP instead of fighting the BJP as well as one another. And this is Hegde's basic premise behind the secular coalition," he adds.

The premise isn't an overnight realisation. Hegde first came up with the idea of a national coalition of political parties after the 1991 l. ok Sabha elections, in which he was defeated. The secular credentials of the coalition were obviously designed to keep communal forces, represented by the BJP-RSS-VHP combine, from coming to power. With the Congress succeeding in forming a government despite being short of a majority, a national agenda, let alone a coalition, was naturally dismissed.

Four years later, Hegde is pushing the blueprint of his plan again. Supporters of Hegde are in no doubt that he is doing so only after having done the necessary homework--and legwork. For, political observers in Delhi confirm that Hegde has met Prime Minister Narasimha Rao more than once in the last few months and it is only with his explicit go-ahead that Hegde has been pursuing the idea. But Hegde firmly denies it.

Much to the surprise of political pundits, Rao has managed to survive a full term. But the feeling is that the Congress, dented by the exit of a rump group headed by Arjun Singh, is by no means in a position to return to power on its own. The BJP's desperation to make it this time is clearly visible. There is not much that is different within the precariously balanced NF-LF combine, where parties continue to walk in and out at will. And if at all there is a thread of unity that binds these groups together, it is their realisation of not being able to secure a clear mandate from the voters in 1996.

Hegde's strategy therefore sounds perfectly sane on paper. But elections were never fought in black and white. The reaction, therefore, has been a quick rejection of the plan by everybody--from Jyoti Basu to H.D. Deve Gowda and V.N. Gadgil to Sharad Yadav. "As a political party we have assumed a specific stand against the Congress and the BJP and propose to stick to it," says J.H. Patel, Karnataka deputy chief minister. Senior JD leader Ram Vilas Paswan is equally emphatic in Delhi. Hegdeji may have articulated his personal preference for such an alliance. But the idea has been categorically rejected by the rank and file of the Janata Dal," he says.

Congress party spokesperson V.N. Gadgil asserts that the opinion within the party is that there should be "no alliance with anyone before the Lok Sabha elections". Gadgil has another reason for dismissing the idea. "Just as the anti-Congressism of all parties helped the Congress, anti-BJPism on this scale may actually help the BJP," he says.

Not that there are no takers. Senior Congress leaders Sharad Pawar and R.K.Dhawan are said to be favourably disposed towards a coalition strategy. More recently, at the inauguration of the campaign committee of the Karnataka Congress, Union Home Minister S.B. Chavan too subtly endorsed the need for a secular coalition of parties. But against a backdrop of widespread rejection, the vague expressions of endorsement appear too feeble to be taken seriously.

The basic opposition to the idea of a non-BJP coalition of parties lies in the fact that the Congress and the parties represented by the NF-LF combine have traditionally fought each other in successive elections. The Congress is still considered enemy number one in Bihar, Orissa, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Assam, Punjab and Haryana, where members of the NF-LF combine wield considerable political clout. This sentiment is explained by a minister in the Deve Gowda cabinet: "We admit in private that Hegde's idea is not all nonsense. But our party workers have always fought the Congress in subsequent elections and are naturally antiCongress. How can they be expected to shake hands with the Congress, give up a seat and ask the people to vote for the Congress? And what will we do in the next assembly elections?"

Hegde, of course, recognises the pitfalls in the realisation of his dream. But is argument is that if diverse forces such as the Jan Sangh and later the BJP, the centrist parties represented by the Janata Party and recently the JD, and the Left Front could forge an alliance in 1977 and 1989, a well thought-out secular coalition with a national agenda is as much a possibility. Moreover Hegde is often said to cite the example of the time when he and Deve Gowda split in 1989 but came back together in 1994 to give the Congress a sound thrashing in the Karnataka elections.

But the comparison to the recent success in Karnataka doesn't cut much ice. For Hegde to have drawn Deve Gowda back into the ID, there existed--and still does--a huge support base within the party in Karnataka. But the same cannot be said at the national level. The urbane Hegde, in fact, has been clearly isolated by the vocal Paswan-Sharad Yadav-Laloo Yadav combine in the national JD. What Hegde wishes to achieve is to somehow sideline what he considers the Paswan-Sharad Yadav mafia in the National Front before the election so that they are unable to call the shots later when the need for tie-ups arises.

But with no support forthcoming for his grandiose plans, and Hegde himself not in a position to split the JD, the former chief minister despite all the bravado and confidence, understands the rules of the game. Says he: "These are my personal views. I feel strongly about it and therefore have placed it before the people. It is for them to accept it or reject it. I have no political or personal stakes in it."

With leaders of the non-RJP parties too having little to gain from a coalition, Hegde's fantasy seems fated to stay just that--a fantasy.