Pot. Kettle. Black.

It is difficult to think of a man of integrity whosenon-partisanship wouldbe acceptable to all, but let's assume for a moment that such a non-politicalperson were governor of Bihar today. Would we still have hadthese charges of blatant partisanship that are being levelled at the currentincumbent? Or, for a moment, suspend disbelief, andassume that the UPA had not launched a 'detoxificationdrive' (though the word 'purge' was used quite liberally in some circles, with a totallack of irony to all its Stalinist connotations) and arbitrarily changedgovernors. If the governor of Bihar, Rama A. Jois had been allowed to serveout his full tenure, and not forced to resign, he would not only still be in office, but would haveremained there till June 2008. What that worthy would have done in similar circumstances, while relevant to this discussion, is perhaps moot now -- but even that idle speculation might still be a useful exercise.

At the time of the Goa and Jharkhandcrisis, the crucial role played bycontroversially appointed ('pliant' was the descriptor used, rathereuphemistically) governors was apparent. While S.C. Jamir of Goa and Syed Sibtey Razi of Jharkhand had already "justified" the reasons for their appointments,this writer had then argued, the right hon'ble Sardar Buta Singh of Bihar, who hadreplaced Rama A. Jois, seemingly awaited his turn.

But not for too long. He could now very correctly be said to have earned his keep.After all, his detractors would point out, this no-where man, languishingin the vast, unattended, moth-eaten woodwork of the Congress party; a man thatthe nation had long forgotten, despite his dubious role in Punjab, Ayodhya and JMMbribery scandal (before his acquittal on atechnicality, he had been awarded three years' rigorous imprisonment and a fineof Rs.2 lakhs under Section 12 of the Prevention of Corruption Act and Section120-B of the Indian Penal Code in the JMM bribery case); a man who last yearthis time was perhaps still trying to come to terms with the anonymity andignominy of having lost his obscure Jalore seat to one whose only claim to famewas that she was Bangaru Laxman's wife, was plonked in the Patna Raj Bhawan forno other ostensible reason than the fact that he had the time-tested reliabilityfactor of the old-faithful in his favour: servility and the ability to be hismaster's voice and fall-guy when required.

So much only to show that Buta Singh has a credibility problem, given his politicalcareer, and it isaccentuated by the fact that he is a governor who was brought into Bihar at atime very conveniently close to the last assembly elections. His recentbehaviour, for example his decision to transfer the two DMs who had stood up tothe RJD "strongmen" Shahbuddin and Sadhu Yadav, as recently as May 19, with hindsight, now assumes ominous proportions. Not to mention the latestoutrage, the timing of his second report recommending dissolution of the Biharassembly, and the unseemly haste with which it was acted on. All of which does provideenough ammunition to the opposition charge: It is difficult not to holdhim guilty of displaying blatant political-bias.

While Buta Singh is no stranger to the murky world of, what he now correctly calls, the "illegal, undemocratic and unconstitutional"horse-trading that he sought to stop by recommending dissolution (remember theJMM case mentioned above or the fact that he was the first minister to bedropped from the Vajpayee cabinet on charges of 'taint' -- yes! NDA would dowell to reflect on that phase of his career too), personally, I still think that singling out the governor for culpability is missing the wood for thetrees.The problem is in the very nature of the beast -- the constitutional roleof the governors that needs a very thorough re-look and immediate corrective.

In the current scenario, it is difficult not to thinkof a phrase with the words "kettle", "pot" and"black" in it. Buta Singh is merely doing his job, as he understandsit, and it is too much to suddenly expect him to have an epiphany or for his"inner voice"to speak up, just as it is mighty rich for him to proclaim himself as the conscience-keeper of thenation. Perhaps it is moot now to speculate on what the same Buta Singh, who is of course an easy target for all ofus -- yourcorrespondent included -- would have done had this bunch of LJP "rebels"somehowgone over to the Lalu/Rabri side? Perhaps it does not require a very fertileimagination to think of the plausible outcome? (Why, a triumph for 'secularism',of course!)

As for those who are now assuming a higher moral ground, perhaps they woulddo well to dwell on the word "taint". Let's not even get into the criminalantecedents of their own MLAs, but as many as four of the LJPMLAs -- Dhumal Singh, Shankar Singh, Rama Singh and Shiv Kumar Rai -- are injail who were crucial for the 2/3rd number to be reached for the "merger"of the LJP with JD(U) to be allowed under the amended Tenth Schedule to theConstitution. Not to mention the minor fact that all of the 29 LJP MLAs had fought ona Paswan platform of being not just against Lalu-Rabri raj but also against thepost-Godhra, anti-Muslim barbarity of the BJP in Gujarat -- the same BJP thatthe JD(U) is allied with. In effect, resort to this "merger" even ifthe 2/3rd number had been reached somehow (which it hadn't been -- and evenNitish Kumar when pressed is at best dodgy or wistful or well, aggrieved andvictimised), would have been a mockery of elective democracy, a charge that the NDA isotherwise quick to hurl at some of the UPA constituents, with far less conviction, who are direct opponents in each other's parliamentary constituencies.

And the same logic applies to a Rabri Devi-led government. Much as there isreason to criticise Paswan for his insistence and intransigence on a blatantlyplaying-to-the-galleries demand for a Muslim CM, he has at least beenconsistent, even if that has proved to be a political folly. So whetherdemocracy would have been murdered or has been murdered remains a matterof which side of the party-divide we view it from. In thisclaim-counterclaim blame-game that ensues, it actually becomes a question of whobetter plays the martyr, has perfected portraying victimhood, and is bettercapable of orchestrating a national campaign where the NDA, particularly its BJPstalwarts -- still nursing the mauling at the hands of the electorate and theirown Sarsanghchalak's confused but hard-hitting ramblings -- are obviously moreadept, possibly because they have more practice, given the sheer politicalhistory of who's ruled and who's not since 1947.

But they do not help matters by keeping out of Parliament, on real orperceived grievances, when there's a crying need for systemic problems to beaddressed, particularly when they are well identified. One of which is thediscretionary powers vested in one individual who is an arbitrarily chosenpolitical appointee to a high constitutional post. The ruling political class,with minor aberrations -- B.K. Nehru comes to mind for standing up to IndiraGandhi, off-hand -- does not go around appointing men of integrity or withspine.

While the Bommai judgement does provide some checks against blatant misuse ofArticle 356 and while the anti-defection law, with recent amendments, is a bitmore stringent now, the system still leaves enough scope for political bias tobe exercised by strategically placed governors, though Buta Singh and the UPA have exceeded that by a fair margin in this case, and the Supreme Court should have no trouble in over-ruling this dissolution that the NDA correctly calls a "fraud on the constitution" . But while the governor and UPA decisions were very much in keeping with their track record, it still beats one as to why the President did not send the cabinet proposal back for reconsideration.

All of this is not to absolve Lalu Prasad Yadav and his threat of'complications' to the PM, if his bidding weren't done and done pronto, even ifit meant the CCPA burnt midnight oil, called up the Prez in Moscow, faxed himthe official communique as late as 1 AM (and received it back, signed, but onlyat 2:30AM), along with a conveniently timed governor's report. The less saidabout the not so honourable railway minister the better, but the UPA only hasitself to blame for abjectly giving in to his pressure-tactics. Byburning bridges with Mulayam and his SP MPs, even if they continue to support itin theory, it has hardly left any play for itself vis-a-vis Lalu, while itsgrand strategists make their grandiose plans about "recapturing" Uttar Pradesh.The Left, on the other hand, is not as foolish as the Congress and has cannilykept its doors open to all but the BJP, be it Mulayam or Chandra Babu Naidu orLalu. The Congress meanwhile allows itself to be manipulated by not just itsallies, but also internally hemorrhages at the hands of its backroommanipulators who are shamelessly busy playing footsie withsuch grand gestures, meaningless of course, as reservations for Muslims in AMU. Surely it occurred to one of them at least that it would be to their advantage to let NDA form a government, for it would be unstable at best?

Digressions about the Congress follies aside (thereshould be multitudes doing dissertations, each running into unwieldy lengths, onthis very topic), to come back to the point, much as there is reason to bemoan and condemn the blatant bias shown bythe governor and the speed at which the cabinet moved and got the President toaccede to its advice of dissolving the Bihar assembly, it is time to open theold debate about the role of the governors, particularly as fractured mandateshave become a fact of life.

As long as there is an absence of any clearly defined systemic mechanism, horse-trading is going to be also a regrettable and unpleasant fact oflife. Jharkhand, Goa and now Bihar are only symptoms of this endemic disease. Andlet's be clear -- there is horse-trading from both these camps now busycalling each other names. (Manmohan Singh's choice of words today, when he was done with tiger-spotting, left at leastthis writer slightly confused: "Horse trading of the worst kind was taking place".Surely he did not mean that one kind is better than the other?)

We need prevention, an inoculation against the disease, not a temporary, quick-fix of the symptoms. Fresh electionsin Bihar, leaving aside the cost to the exchequer, may or may not throw up aclear verdict. How is the governor or the system going to deal withhorse-trading if it doesn't? (To that a limited extent, it would actually help matters agreat deal if Buta Singh were to be replaced with a non-partisan governor, buthow would even that really provide any redress for surely he would be replaced by yet another equally honourable worthy? Apart from the small matter of wishes, horses, beggars, flying, etc.)

Better minds than mine have applied themselves to this issue of systemicreforms on the role of governors, and it is time that all that was brought tothe fore once again and we looked afresh at the old suggestions ofexamining and adapting other systems -- the German one, for instance -- forhung-legislatures as well. It is also time to seriously debate the need to have allelections together. The last time the suggestion came from a BJP man, but justbecause it came from there it shouldn't stop us from seriously discussing anddebating it, otherwise policy and governance would remain a hostage towitch-hunts, "appeasements" of various kinds, release and suppression of variousreports and an incessant, never-ending and nauseating cacophony of the pot andkettle calling each other not just black but trying to prove whose black wasblacker and which, indeed, is the blackest of them all.

By the way, to go back to the beginning: A man of integrity whose non-partisanship would be acceptable to all, or at least to most. Anysuggestions?