The Hindu Business Line : A matter of six months

The choice before the political managers of the Congress Party is letting the next Lok Sabha elections to be held on time, that is, in May next year, or asking for a dissolution sometime this year. Everyone is aware of this choice, but everyone has also been kept guessing about when the elections will actually be held. The managers have, of course, made up their minds on the broad strategy to be followed to arrive at a decision. In other words, they have got tentative scen arios ready and are, perhaps, only waiting for important indications from the ground-level of which way the political wind is blowing before setting specific poll scenarios in motion.

What are these indications, or inputs, which will make the Congress Party’s political managers call the shots one way or the other? Clearly, the most important among them is the results of elections at various levels held all over the country. Two such polls have just been held, one at the State Assembly level and the other at the decentralised district gram panchayat level, both of which are pregnant with implications for the next Lok Sabha elections. The Assembly elections are, of course, those that have been held in Karnataka, the decentralised polls being those held recently in West Bengal.

Implications of THE Karnataka results

To this writer, the Karnataka elections are less important than the West Bengal polls for a very simple reason, namely, that the election results in the Left-ruled State will throw light on which way the wind is blowing in West Bengal, which could have an important bearing on the formation of the next Government at the Centre through the coalition route. This argument, as should be clear, hinges totally on the thesis that, first, the political future of the Indian Republic will from now on be governed solely by coalitions and, second, the Left will continue to play an important part in New Delhi (as it has during the past four years) provided it can protect its base in West Bengal.

The Karnataka Assembly results will no doubt be indicative of the respective strengths of the Congress, the BJP and the Janata Dal in the State, but it is clear that they will not have an inordinately weighty impact on Government-formation at the Centre because of the absence of any important potential Central coalition partner being involved at the State level. In other words, the Janata Dal can by no stretch of the imagination be equated with the Left when it comes to Government-making in New Delhi, which is why the implications of the Karnataka results for the Lok Sabha as a whole will be restricted to providing indications of the general position of the two leading parties, the BJP and the Congress, at the national level.

Explosive potential

Seen from this perspective, the West Bengal district and village-level elections hold an explosive potential for the next Lok Sabha polls in view of the possibility that, should the Lok Sabha elections turn out the same way for the ruling Left Front as in the district-level polls, the Left will be sending fewer MPs to the Lower House, which would mean a huge difference in the coalition-politics that will almost certainly swamp New Delhi immediately after the results are announced. Some people have said that, based on the performance of the Left parties in the district-level polls in West Bengal, it would mean around 10 fewer Left MPs in the next Lok Sabha from the State, which could have serious implications for Government-formation at the Centre.

Clearly, in all probability, all this has been considered by the political managers of the Congress Party who, one would like to imagine, will be sensible enough to stick with the Left as a coalition partner should another opportunity present itself. Of course, the Congress would surely like to improve its own position in the Lok Sabha. If this is not possible, it would perhaps like to have the Left as a partner given the experience of cohabitation during the past five years. But the effectiveness of this arrangement will depend on the number of MPs the Left can send to the Lower House, and the recent district-level poll results in West Bengal are not a very encouraging sign. However, the point needs to be made that even in this mutual-support scenario, the Congress would probably not like to have a strong Left as a governance partner for reasons that have become very clear during the past four years.

A decision to have elections six months before they are due could lead to the Left in West Bengal being pushed into a corner. Clearly, the Left Front Government in the State needs time to recover from the district-level poll blow and to recoup lost ground, an uphill task even if the Lok Sabha polls were held a year from now. This would argue — from the Left’s point of view — for the elections to be held as late as possible. From a “coalition standpoint”, this is also what the Congress should aim at. But, then, the Left element (as a coalition input) is only one among a handful of elements that would have to be considered before deciding on the timing of the elections.

Timing of the polls

The other, perhaps a more pervasive, factor in the timing of the polls is the state of the economy — the state of inflation, to be more specific — which could eat into the Congress’s support base nationwide with time. Every indication available points to the inflation figures getting worse before they can improve, the implication being that the figures could be at their worst if the Lok Sabha polls were held next year.

In fact, the kingpin of the present price situation seems to be the international crude price and the havoc it is causing vis-a-vis the finances of the Indian oil marketing companies. A price increase of petroleum products is inescapable, which cannot but lead to the inflation figures creeping up further, perhaps even to a high of 9.5 per cent within the next couple of months.

So will the political managers of the Congress Party wait for all this to happen and then go in for the Lok Sabha polls, or will they decide to call for elections much sooner than expected? If they do so, they can least go to the people and tell them that the price rise is due to external factors (the crude price increase) and that, given their creditable economic performance till now (as indicated by the overall growth rate), they should be returned to the seat of power for another five years so that they can tackle effectively the economic problems facing the nation.

True, the Left may get a smaller number of seats if elections are held later this year, but then the scouting around for strange bedfellows has already begun if the invitee list to the UPA fourth anniversary celebrations was any indication.

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