The Hindu Business Line : Congress (mis)calculation

IF Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad loses his 16-year-long stranglehold on Bihar, and the BJP and its allies come to power, the Hindutva party should organise a thanksgiving for the Congress-I. It has managed to put the saffron party, sidelined for quite a while, back at the centre-stage of Indian politics.

And the thanksgiving should be a substantial one because exit polls predict the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) cobbling up a government in Bihar, where a hung Assembly has been forecast, as well as forming a government once again in Jharkhand.

The NDA has to be grateful to the Congress in Jharkhand where it quickly finalised an electoral alliance with Sibu Soren's Jharkhand Mukti Morcha without consulting its allies in the United Progressive Alliance. The result was annoyed ally leaders, such as Lalu and Pawar, proclaiming that the Congress was yet to understand the dharma of coalition politics.

Unfortunately, the Congress keeps repeating the mistake of forming coalition governments after elections instead of before.

Only in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, when India's oldest party was not even in the reckoning for forming a government at the Centre, did Congress President Sonia Gandhi go out of her way for the sake of the Party. She wooed non-NDA parties, swallowing insults from the RJD chief who offered the Congress only four Lok Sabha seats in Bihar, cementing ties with DMK president M. Karunanidhi, taking Sharad Pawar's NCP on board and coaxing Ram Vilas Paswan to ally with the Congress. Of course, the improved relations between Lalu and Paswan, two prominent players in Bihar, helped her cause. And the result is there for all to see today at the Centre.

But the Congress' problem is handling power. If Sonia managed to swallow her pride and bend to the whims and fancies of her allies in the Lok Sabha polls, it was because the Congress was not in power at the Centre. But after being firmly in the saddle in Delhi, look at the way the party leadership has behaved in Maharashtra.

Despite the NCP emerging the single-largest party, and principles of natural justice dictating that it should be an NCP chief minister in Mumbai, the Congress leadership refused to yield ground, kept the entire State and even the country in suspense for days as it bickered and bargained with the NCP to grab something it had clearly not earned.

It behaved in much the same manner in Bihar, where the situation was doubly difficult; Lalu could match, if not surpass, the Congress' arrogance when it came to thrashing out a seat-sharing formula. Against the 20 to 25 Assembly seats he was willing to give the Congress, the latter demanded around 80, way beyond the 11 seats it has in the present Assembly.

As a senior partner, instead of trying to act as a bridge between two of its feuding allies — Lalu and Paswan — the Congress only fuelled the flames by choosing one over the other. It allied with Paswan, and tried to placate its UPA ally, the RJD, by saying it would have only "friendly contests" with it in Bihar. As though such delicately balanced formulas work in the rough and tumble of politics at the field level.

The exit polls have predicted between six and eight seats for the Congress in Bihar, much lower than its present number, clearly proving that if in the Lok Sabha it managed to get the four seats the RJD had allotted it, it was riding piggyback on the RJD as well as Paswan's Lok Janasakhti Party to a lesser extent.

But parting company with the RJD — obviously Sonia's attempts in the final phase of the Bihar polls to help Lalu have failed — and going with Paswan in the foolish hope that it might be able to form a government with the LJP in Bihar is likely to hurt both the Congress as well as the RJD.

If Lalu's stranglehold on Bihar finally ends, there will be few to shed tears for the RJD. Considering the State's degeneration over the last 16 years: the absence of industrial or economic development, the decay in infrastructure, the growing cult of violence and criminality, and above all, a sense of hopelessness among Bihar's citizens, the RJD certainly needs to be booted out. But the question comes in the alternative. Of course, anybody would be better than Lalu's badshahi way ruling the State as his fiefdom. But are the BJP and its allies the best alternative? Certainly not, as many of Bihar's 16 per cent Muslims who had gone in search of employment to Gujarat suffered in the communal carnage of 2001.

On Sunday, if the NDA retains Jharkhand and wrests Bihar, its leaders should first garland the Congress' top brass before thanking the electorate. Then they can sit back and watch with glee the tremors such a verdict is bound to cause in the UPA.

Response may be sent to rasheeda@thehindu.co.in

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