The Hindu Business Line : A joyless marriage ends

The Left parties’ parting of ways with the UPA, far from precipitating a political crisis, seems to have released a new set of energies, with unlikely parties promising support to prop up the Government. RASHEEDA BHAGAT on the new equations in the run-up to the vote of confidence.

The CPI(M) General-Secretary, Mr Prakash Karat, announcing withdrawal of support.

Even as frenzied debates raged on various TV channels on the fate of the United Progressive Alliance government following the withdrawal of support from the Left parties on Tuesday, the equity market, no great admirer of the Left at any time, suddenly and swiftly changed direction from its southward march. Although it recovered most of its losses for a while, the session was volatile and the Sensex ended with a loss of 176 points.

One more person should have received the news of the Left’s withdrawal of support with a similar sense of relief — the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, who is in Japan for the G-8 meet. Had he, with his penchant for Urdu poetry, the luxury of expressing his sentiments in public, he might have quoted the saying: roz key marney sey tau ek din ka marna behtar hei (rather than die a little everyday, a single day’s death is preferable)! Although, his government might not die… not yet.

That is why the UPA leader, who has been bashed relentlessly by the Left leaders over the last couple of years, remained calm and said confidently: “This will not affect the stability of my government.”

India is a democracy and every political group has the right to pursue its agenda, but the timing of the Left’s decision to finally sever ties with the UPA deserves to be condemned. What kind of people take a measured and conscious decision to make the country’s prime minister look small while attending an important international event on foreign soil? Surely the Left’s decision seems aimed to humiliate the man whose pro-US stance its leaders could not stomach.

Though the break was in the offing and the CPI(M) General-Secretary, Mr Prakash Karat, had been making it extremely clear that whatever the UPA does or says, unless it was able to bring on the table a dramatically different set of facts on the Indo-US civil deal, it would withdraw support, the timing of its decision is bound not to go down well with many people.

So, throughout the day, Left leaders tried to shift the blame on Dr Manmohan Singh for categorically telling journalists “on foreign soil” that the UPA would be going to the IAEA Board of Governors “very soon”. CPI(M) Polit Bureau member Ms Brinda Karat even went to the extent of asking why Dr Singh was in a hurry to make this decision public and wondered if he made some kind of “commitment to Mr Bush” on this issue.

The Left’s decision to withdraw support put an end to four years of its troubled relationship with the UPA.

TROUBLED RELATIONSHIP

From Day 1, when the CPI General-Secretary, Mr A. B. Bardhan, spooked an already jittery stock market by saying “bhaar mei jaye market” (to hell with the market), the Left Parties have been holding a gun to the head of the Congress-led Government. One of its first tasks was to put a quick end to the divestment of loss-making PSUs, begun so efficiently by the NDA Government’s Disinvestment Minister, Mr Arun Shourie.

Then there was strong opposition to the entry of FDI in retail; it also wanted a ban on futures trading in commodities and firmly opposed a hike in the prices of petroleum products even while international crude prices went through the roof, maintaining that the Government slash import duties instead of passing on the burden to the public.

To the Left parties’ credit, it must be said that its persistent pressure on the Government to think of the disadvantaged sections, even before inflation started going up, did get results in terms of government policies. Otherwise, in an era when the country was nearing a double-digit growth rate, it would have been very easy for the ruling classes to forget the socially and economically disadvantaged and train all its energies on the betterment of the educated, urban and affluent classes that constitute the very visible face of a rising India.

Frenzy of political consultations

The Left and UPA’s parting of ways has now brought the Samajwadi Party to the centre-stage and, on Tuesday, as the possibility of some of its MPs migrating to the BSP camp unfolded, it became clearer why the SP was in such a hurry to mend fences with the Congress-led UPA.

Apparently, a handful (maybe 5-7) of SP MPs, some of them Muslims and Dalits, have decided that their interests and political future will be better served on the other side of the fence, with the BSP chief, Ms Mayawati. Anyway, their Lok Sabha term will end soon; if not immediately, then in nine months, and it would make better political sense to be in a camp that had so dramatically swept the UP Assembly elections last year.

Though both Mr Mulayam Singh and the party General-Secretary, Mr Amar Singh, tried to maintain a brave front on Tuesday, after the party’s parliamentary board meeting in Delhi, saying that all its 39 MPs — including two in jail — remained with the SP, the truth is different.

Two of its MPs, Mr Raj Babbar and Mr Beni Prasad Verma, are in rebellion mode, and the latter will go with the Congress on any issue, though it is not clear how many will desert the SP in anticipation of better times with the BSP.

Coming to the spin that the nuke deal is anti-Muslim, something Ms Mayawati has been able to use to her advantage by getting some important ulemas to condemn the deal, the SP leader Mr Amar Singh went to great length to point out that the Deobandhis were with the SP on this issue.

The usual rhetoric of how the SP was ready to make “any sacrifice” to save the country from “communal forces — look at what is happening in Jammu”, followed, before Mr Amar Singh attacked those who “questioned the nationalism of Indian Muslims” (read Ms Mayawati) and thought they could mislead them into believing the nuke deal was anti-Muslim. All eyes will now be on President Pratibha Patil; the BJP, of course, wants an immediate vote of confidence and is objecting to the possibility of its being pushed to August 11, when the next Parliament session begins. At the moment, the manner in which various political combinations and permutations are stacked up, it seems there is bad news for the BJP and the Left.

The numbers do add up

It looks as though the UPA government will not fall; at least, not for now. As has been mentioned in this column, the Congress leadership has been busy stitching up the numbers necessary to prop up the UPA government in anticipation of the Left withdrawal. Obviously it was ready for a divorce from this joyless marriage

And so there was Mr Ajit Singh of the RLD (Rashtriya Lok Dal) admitting at a press conference that he had met Ms Sonia Gandhi last fortnight and indicating that his three MPs would go with the UPA in any confidence motion moved in the Lok Sabha.

The Nationalist Congress Party chief, Mr Sharad Pawar, was in consultation with the TRS chief, Mr Chandrasekhar Rao, seeking the vote of his party’s three MPs in such a motion; the support was promised in return for a favourable promise on Telengana! The PDP’s Ms Mehbooba Mufti has also made it clear that its one MP will go along with the UPA; she was decent enough to thank the Congress leadership for not resorting to any “horse-trading” in Jammu and Kashmir to save the Ghulam Nabi Azad government. Was this the message from the tame manner in which Mr Azad resigned on Monday?

The other ally the UPA could get, — the trickiest of them all, though — is Mr Deve Gowda’s JD(S), with its three MPs. Mr Gowda is fuming at the BJP’s poaching two of its MLAs in Karnataka, and his son, Mr H. D. Kumaraswamy, who had had experience of sleeping with the enemy (the BJP) in his State, calmly told TV channels on Tuesday that his father was “always with the secular forces”.

So the UPA seems to have the numbers necessary to pull through any confidence motion. The UPA plus SP MPs make up 269 (presuming the SP flock remains intact), and three each from the RLD, the TRS and the JD(S), along with one MP from the PDP, takes the tally to a comfortable 279, giving the UPA a cushion of seven. Then, of course, there are the independents. And nobody has forgotten that horrible day in April 1999 when the Vajpayee government was tricked into believing that it had the required numbers to prove its majority on the floor of Parliament but lost the confidence motion by a mere vote.

As they say, nothing is impossible or permanent in politics. Or else, we would not be witnessing the debate on the slim possibility, despite denials, of the Shiromani Akali Dal, which has 8 MPs, voting along with the UPA, not only because it supports the nuke deal, but because it should not be party to the humiliating fall of a government led by a Sikh!

If the Shiv Sena can support a daughter of Maharashtra, even if she happens to be a Congress candidate, why cannot the Sikhs support a son of Punjab, is the emotional bait!

All this is not good news for the BJP, or the Left, who had to suffer the ignominy of the Congress spokesman Abhishek Singhvi angrily saying that the Left was welcome to join the “exotic company of the BJP” when a no-confidence motion comes up for vote in Parliament.

Take your pick on which partner would feel more insulted!

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