No Image, No Love

Going, going, still hanging. The options for UPA-II are fast running out. It’s only a matter of time before one or the other parties on whose mercy it now survives will give them the royal ditch. True, the ‘establishment’, influential sections of India Inc and media, may see a reforms-friendly Manmohan Singh regime as a more sound option than the political chaos the nation apparently stares at. But even their best efforts to talk up the regime or open backroom channels with regional parties are eventually doomed to failure because of the Congress’s waning popularity and plummeting stock as an alliance partner.

Take Mamata Banerjee’s concerns. We hear so much about her Muslim votebase. Surely, the events in Assam, where a Congress CM is seen as having taken a position against Bengali Muslims, would be a matter of concern to her? Add to that price rise and corruption and we can understand why she sees the national party as a liability. In Bihar, Nitish Kumar has positioned himself as a force that will eventually break with the BJP on the Modi question. Some imagine that this means shifting to the Congress, but that seems unrealistic. The more sound option for him would be to go it alone and shore up the Muslim vote through that gesture, and leave minority vote-dependent rivals like Laloo Yadav clutching at straws. 

Mulayam and Mayawati have no love for the Congress—the withdrawal of CBI cases cannot be a lasting reason for bailing out the Delhi regime; both truly despise Congress traditions. They will help only to help themselves till they can actually trip the UPA at a time of their choosing. Ditto, DMK.

Indeed, the Congress today does not come through as an attractive option for any regional party. The NDA clicked because A.B. Vajpayee brought a plus factor to the regional table. At the time, the BJP had its own voteshare in Andhra, TN, even Bengal. UPA-I had two appealing leaders: Sonia Gandhi, post-‘sacrifice’, and a ‘clean’ Manmohan. There is now no halo, no image, no promised deliverance. Only an exhausting arithmetic of survival.

Saba Naqvi is political editor, Outlook; E-mail your columnist: saba AT outlookindia.com