The Hindu Business Line : Presidential race and the loyalty factor

The race to Rashtrapati Bhavan holds little suspense as by now it is pretty certain that the UPA candidate and Nehru-Gandhi family loyalist, Ms Pratibha Patil, will make it. Despite the angry statements issued by Muslim clerics and other leaders urging Muslim legislators not to vote for her, following her rather flippant, if not irresponsible, comments on the veil, and to opt for Mr Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, it is extremely unlikely that Congress legislators, Muslim, Hindu or Christian, would dare defy the High Command. That some Muslim leaders went to the extent of endorsing Mr Shekhawat's candidature despite his being a BJP leader is an indication of the deep hurt Ms Patil has caused the community by making statements she must surely be regretting now.

But in the week gone by those comments faded into the background as the media dug out much more uncomfortable information about her. A woman appeared out of the blue charging Ms Patil with having used her political clout to shield her (Ms Patil's) brother who was charged with the murder of the woman's husband. Then came the allegation that a co-operative sugar mill Ms Patil had promoted in Maharashtra — Muktabai Sahakari Sakhar Karkhana — had defaulted on the payment of tens of crores of rupees to various banks. Of course, after she founded the mill her younger brother, G. N. Patil, had taken it over a few years ago. There have also been allegations of misuse of funds in a co-operative bank promoted by her.

Even as Congress spokespersons scrambled to defend her, some more murky details came to light.

The `region' slip shows

But it is clear that Maratha leaders are closing ranks to put a Maharashtrian in Rashtrapati Bhavan, proving yet again how it is really religion, region and caste, rather than competence for the job, that drives the selection of candidates for the country's high offices. In the Presidential race, gender is just a convenient handle for UPA leaders across the spectrum — from Mr Lalu Prasad to Mr M. Karunandhi.

Their personal records on the gender front don't go much beyond the promotion of their own female relatives to high posts.

Returning to Ms Patil, the Maratha lobby is active in ensuring her election. The Shiv Sena has brushed aside all past ties with the BJP and decided to support Ms Patil because her family has lived in Maharashtra for 300 years. The Union Agriculture Minister, Mr Sharad Pawar, a sugar baron himself, stoutly defended Ms Patil's track record on the alleged default on loan payments by her sugar mill saying: "As many as 74 sugar mills were issued notices (on bank loan default) in December 2006 and it is unfortunate that only one particular case has been brought up in the media." But the point, Mr Pawar, is that the other 73 defaulters are not contenders for the President's post!

An Emergency zealot

But what the Congress leaders will find much more difficult to defend is Ms Patil's speech made in the Maharashtra Assembly during Emergency, and reproduced by an English daily on Monday. Of course, it was an era when most Congress leaders were outdoing one another in showing their loyalty to the Nehru-Gandhi family. To endorse Sanjay Gandhi's ferocious family planning efforts meant a sure ticket to his mother Indira Gandhi's favour. So, making a passionate plea for family planning, and endorsing the suggestion that it should be made compulsory, Ms Patil, then Maharashtra's Health Minister, rebutted opposition to this measure from the Muslim League and gave this lecture to Muslims: "My opinion is that whatever religion one practises, he should keep it at home and adopt family planning as the true religion."

Worse, joining the bandwagon on forced sterilisation during the Emergency era, she also made this preposterous statement: "We are also thinking of forcible sterilisation for people with hereditary diseases."

No due diligence?

Going through all this one wonders at the lack of a due diligence process that the UPA, in general, and the Congress, in particular, ought to have done before naming a candidate for such a high office. This, once again, reveals two factors; one, loyalty to Nehru-Gandhi family, of which the present scion is Congress(I) President, Ms Sonia Gandhi, makes all warts disappear.

Two, the sheer contempt that our ruling classes have for the people. We may display the label of a "democracy" but the manner in which we are ruled, the scant respect our legislators have for our opinion or intelligence, and the way in which most party supremos — from the Congress(I) to the AIADMK — make their party men and women dance to their tunes, makes us a raja-praja kind of outfit. At this point, all that the poor praja can hope for, after having expressed its preference for a second Presidential term for Mr Abdul Kalam from the various platforms at its disposal, is that Ms Patil will grow in stature to fit into the rather large shoes of her highly respected and loved predecessor.

Political messages

But this entire drama has not been without a couple of very interesting and pertinent political messages. Judging by the fervour with which senior Congress leaders and Cabinet ministers, such as Mr Shivraj Patil, Mr Sushil Kumar Shinde and even Mr Pranab Mukherjee, put their hats in the ring for the Rashtrapati Bhavan position, it does not look as though too many Congress leaders are hopeful of the party getting a second term in office, even in a coalition government.

Their calculations clearly seem to have weighed two years in their ministerial positions against a clear, and perhaps hassle-free, five years in Rashtrapati Bhavan. If senior leaders themselves have little hope that the party will return to power, and even if it does, that they will continue to get Cabinet positions, what hope or optimism can the humble Congress(I) rank and file have of a 2009 victory?

The other interesting political takeaway from the Presidential elections is the manner in which the Third Front, christened the United National Progressive Alliance (UNPA), has come together. Currently, comprising as it does, chief ministers who have failed to return to power, it might not seem a formidable group. But the noise they made, the manner in which they zeroed in on the people's overwhelming choice for a second term for Mr Kalam, the embarrassment Ms Jayalalithaa caused Mr Karunanidhi when he had to "reject" a Tamil continuing in Rashtrapati Bhavan, and the media headlines they grabbed, must have surely raised the antennas of Ms Sonia Gandhi and such BJP biggies as Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Mr L. K. Advani.

If the anti-incumbency factor kicks in again and the people think they have punished parties such as the TDP, the AIADMK and the Samajwadi Party enough, the UNPA might pick up sufficient number of Lok Sabha seats in 2009 to be in a bargaining position. If it does, how long before leaders such as Mr Lalu Prasad, Mr Ram Vilas Paswan, Ms Mamata Bannerjee, Mr Nitish Kumar, and Mr Deve Gowda, as also the Left parties to switch sides is anybody's guess.

Soon there will be a new occupant in Rashtrapati Bhavan. Hopefully, the furore over her remarks on the veil has taught her to think of better ways of empowering women than asking them to throw away the veil, particularly when she continues to keep the pallu of her sari firmly on her head.

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