Elections to five states are over. What do they tell? The Congress won inPondicherry, was defeated in Kerala, got reduced in Assam, slipped in Bengal,and rode piggy-back to a great victory in Tamil Nadu. The results for Congresstherefore appear mixed. But this is illusory. All Congress losses were the gainsof its allies. The parties opposing the central government are nowhere in sight.It was therefore a spectacular victory for the UPA combine. To cap this, MrsSonia Gandhi swept Rae Bareili with a stunning margin. Her personal standingtherefore has never been higher. The moment therefore is propitious for thegovernment to move forward towards stability, coherence and improved governance.
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Political leaders too often make a common error. They formulate strategy onthe assumption that political arrangements remain static. They do not. They havea dynamic of their own. Politicians ignore this at their own peril. Is MrPrakash Karat too falling into this common error? Immediately after the polls hewas asked on TV about the prospects of CPM becoming the lynchpin of a futureThird Front. He said that was a long term possibility very much on the horizon.
Why should the CPM contemplate a future Third Front when the present UPA isworking so well for it? The error, one suspects, arises from CPM’s surmisethat the present arrangement is temporary and that the party can always go backto its original position. This is where the political dynamic needsunderstanding. A mixture of political compulsion and advantage impelled the UPAarrangement. Now the alliance cannot stand still. Either it will move forward toits logical culmination or slip back and disintegrate. The UPA leaders shouldreflect. They could with advantage consider out-of-the-box ideas to reach arewarding culmination of the arrangement.
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India desperately needs a national party, preferably two national parties.Demands of governance, of the economy and of foreign policy dictate this. Whycannot the UPA evolve into a national party? Before throwing up hands in horrorand ridiculing the suggestion, trends preceding the present political situationmight usefully be recalled.
Democratic functioning within political parties ended with the tenure ofPandit Nehru and the stint of Mr Lal Bahadur Shastri. Their democraticfunctioning kept alive, to a large extent, the devolution of power which is sofundamental to a federal polity. Due to human frailty, expediency,permissiveness regarding norms, or whatever, after these two leaders inner-partydemocracy all but vanished from Indian politics. This severely erodedfederalism. That in turn led inevitably to a proliferation of regional parties.This development impelled truncated national parties to strike opportunistalliances with regional partners for mutual benefit. This untidy, opportunistand unstable arrangement was hailed by politicians as a great step towardsfederalism. The coalition era had arrived, they said. The use of the term, ‘coalitiondharma’, became popular. There is a grotesque flaw in this perception.Federalism cannot be protected by opportunist coalitions. It can only besafeguarded by disciplined federation.
The UPA leaders might seriously consider making the UPA a federal party. Italready has a Common Minimum Programme. That could be enlarged and made a partymanifesto with directive principles. Drawing up a party constitution of thefederation would be a simple affair. Each party’s identity could remain intactat the state level. The franchise in each state would be given to the mostdominant partner in the federal party. That partner’s writ would run in stateassembly elections. Smaller partner-groups in the state, whether national orregional, would have to accept decisions of the majority view as final. In stateassembly elections, all candidates would have to contest on one symbol endorsedby the majority. To begin with, dominant state partners of the national federalparty might retain their election symbols at the state level. Only after passageof time, and with confidence created in the experiment, might they adopt, ifthey choose to, the federal party’s common parliamentary symbol for use alsoin assembly elections. The candidates for parliamentary elections from eachstate would be selected at the state level. However, all candidates of thefederal party would contest parliamentary elections on one common symbol. Thatwould remove all threats of defection. It would introduce discipline andcoherence at the level of parliamentary functioning. To draw up the constitutionof a federal party for achieving coherence at the centre without eroding powerat the state level is not a difficult task.
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In short, democratic functioning absent from most parties at present can, atleast in part, be reclaimed by institutionalizing a federal framework for innerparty functioning. The UPA has three remaining years in office. If its leadersrecognize national priorities and act with determination, they can create India’sfirst federal political party. Are there any genuine ideological hurdles torender this insurmountable? Each participant would gain from a federalarrangement.
If the UPA were to move in this direction the NDA would be impelled to do thesame. The Janata Party in 1977 was the only party apart from Congress to haveever governed India as a single party. That became possible because a fraudulentand dictatorial Emergency had been imposed. The beneficiaries of the JanataParty, who, without conscious intent, were propelled by events to seize power inthe centre, squandered their legacy. The party disintegrated. Today the BJP isthe largest party that was once part of Janata. Many of its stalwarts aredrifting away. The relationship of the party’s most senior leaders with theRSS is fractured. The party is falling apart because its ideological beliefs arein sharp conflict with electoral advantage. In short, Hindutva has failed. Theparty leaders know it. That explains their clumsy efforts to somersault. MrAdvani belatedly discovered virtues in Mohammed Ali Jinnah. RSS Chief Sudarshandiscovered many peace-like qualities in Prophet Mohammed. He praised thebeneficent nature of true Islam. These abrupt about-turns will not do. The partywill have to acknowledge what it gained from the Janata and what it lost when itretraced steps to its origins. Only then would it regain the confidence ofallies. They might consider then to federate with it permanently. If the BJPaccepts this reality the NDA too like the UPA could realistically attemptbecoming a federal party. Were this to happen India would get its two-partydemocratic system.
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It is not unlikely that this idea will be contemptuously dismissed bypoliticians. Nevertheless it has been put on record. One believes that, short ofa miracle, no single party will govern India again unless it is a federal party.
Rajinder Puri can be reached at rajinderpuri@yahoo2000.com
