What the hell is going on?!

As usual Indian politics offers a Bollywood or even Tollywood style potboiler where sadly the country is the most ignored character and politicial expediency and electoral merit takes precedence. As usual MSM continues to behave (in the opinion of some) like the mouth piece of the ruling coalition and unable to lend even a single original thought to this crisis that may soon consume public consciousness and plunge the nation into a mid-term poll that I have been predicting for several months now.

I assume most people reading this are aware of the developments that have unfolded over last 48 hours. These developments are largely in line with what I had predicted in my blog in September 2012, with a few minor differences. I of course expected these to come about in the last year itself, but then timing in politics is always a bit dicey.

To re-capitulate, my thesis is that the DMK pull out is engineered by the Congress itself that wants the government to fall and call new elections. The reasons have been outlined in the September blog but broadly being: Congress expects that the government will not be able to complete its full term anyway and would rather that it fell on an obscure policy issue that its key electorate will not care about or understand rather than issues of corruption, mis governance etc. We will again touch upon this point later in this post but let me get into the meat of my analysis on the taaza developments right away.

As discussed several times earlier, Congress cannot seriously expect to get re-elected after the farce of the last 8-9 years. Its best option is to get a third front government that it can support from outside to prevent a resurgent BJP led NDA from coming to power. It is necessary for the Congress however to have a third front PM that can be ‘managed’ or ‘controlled’ by it. Someone who is extremely parched for the PM’s chair and whose principals are subservient to his/ her political ambitions. Congress needs this too ensure that the new PM keeps the wraps on all the cases and investigations on the various scams in return for a continued outside support to his/ her government.

The UPA (226 seats) today has three main constituents: the Congress with 203 seats, Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) with 9 seats and 14 seats of other small groups. The main ‘outside’ support (53 seats) to the UPA comes from four main constituents: Mulayam Singh’s Samajwadi Party (SP) with 22 seats, Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) with 21 seats, Lalu Yadav’s Rashtriya Janta Dal (RJD) with 4 seats and others with 6 seats. This is how UPA crosses the midway mark of 273 seats (226+53 = 279).

It is clear that the others with 6 seats cannot on their own impact UPA at all. But either SP or BSP or both together can easily bring down the government. Interestingly both Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati are facing the CBI on some matters, and it has long being alleged by opposition with some empirical merit that the Congress controls the actions of these two leaders via the CBI office. If this is true, then both Mulayam and Mayawati make good ‘puppet’ PMs that the Congress may be looking to lead the third front. Both these individuals are famously known to dream of the Prime Minister’s chair in any case strengthening the case that I have outlined earlier.

Therefore, if for one moment we were to accept the truth of two things: a) Congress wants early elections and b) BSP and SP are controlled by Congres through CBI, then it emerges that Congress can virtually ask one of the two to walk out on some flimsy reason or the other. Assuming all of the above is the case, then who will Congress ask to walk out? Simple, the one that it believes is in a position to win most seats in Uttar Pradesh and form a relatively stable jirge called the third front. That is the person Congress will prefer to be the puppet PM.

Now lets look at it from SP and BSPs point of view. SP is losing the public perception war everyday now thanks to the goonda raj it is famous for. The longer it stays in power the more votes it loses. In that sense they would perhaps like to call elections early. Just for this reason alone, it follows that Mayawati would prefer that elections are delayed as much as possible (admittedly I cant think of another reason for BSP wanting elections to be delayed). In any case neither SP nor BSP can afford the other reaching the PM’s chair given their own rivalry in the state of Uttar Pradesh. So there will have a be a ton of backroom agreements under the stewardship of the Congress to ensure that one does not extinguish the other in UP using CBI after coming to power. Another important aspect is that the party (SP/ BSP) which pulls out first will have the most credibility (well…relatively speaking anyway) when it goes to ask for votes in the next election.

So can the party asked by Congress to pull out refuse? No. For one thing, they are not in a position to argue with the CBI sword hanging over their head. Plus not pulling out will not help keep UPA up, as the Congress can ask the other party to pull out. With about 21-22 seats between them, sticking of one of them in UPA while the other pulls out is hardly going to help. Plus the one that doesn’t heed to High Command will be remembered as the one that did not ‘cooperate’. Also the one that sticks in will lose the advantage of the more relative credibility that I mentioned in the preceding paragraph.

It will be interesting to see the role that the past master of Indian-style politics, Sharad Pawar will play in this drama. It is my belief that Sharad Pawar will be meeting all sides but not say a word on it in the public domain. He has been singed once when he lost his chance at Prime Ministership in early 2000s and will play his cards very close to his chest. He also knows that with just 9 seats at his command he is not in a position to really influence what the Congress wants in terms of continuance or otherwise of the UPA government. So my guess is he will keep his mouth shut and play along with whatever is going on. He may in an outside chance present himself as the third front PM candidate if he can convince the Congress of his willingness to ‘play ball’ on all the investigations that a new government is expected to undertake. But he is a smart cookie and don’t expect him to make his Prime Ministerial ambitions known anytime soon. This is a game best played AFTER the next elections are over. And played it will be.

Now looking a bit at the BJP. The BJP has come out and sided with the Congress in opposing DMK’s demand for a country specific resolution. Fair enough. Also, it has sided with Mulayam Singh Yadav in asking Congress to throw out Beni Prasad Verma who had passed some very frank remarks against Mulayam Singh Yadav. Fair enough. In the meanwhile, a potential NDA partner, Jayalalitha’s AIADMK has raised the bar making DMK’s position to back off a difficult one. Again, fair enough. So basically BJP will play along with Congress’ plan (if such plan does in fact exist) to quit office mid way on its own terms rather than being possibly thrown out due to corruption issues and other miscellaneous havoc. The BJP leadership seems to be thinking “baad ka baad meing dekh lenge, abhi pehle to inko nikalo”. Narendra Modi’s shining leadership has also electrified its cadre and BJP appears to be a resurgent force, for now anyway.

A quick word on Nitish Kumar, about whom I feel pity these days. He apparently made a speech today which said his future options on alliances are open thus hinting he may not stick with the NDA. Now that we have explored what appears to be his fantasy, lets look at practical realities:

Lets say he pulls out of the NDA, he will mostly go with the third front (well he can go with the UPA…but that’s a black hole. We all know all laws of physics break down in a black hole and thus isn’t subject to any sensible analysis). Practically, he is allegedly the least blackmailable of Mulayam, Mayawati and Pawar. So what chance does he have of becoming the third front’s PM candidate. Zilch. In the process he breaks the alliance with the reenergised BJP which is preparing to fight next elections on every single seat in Bihar. Thus chances are gets reduced number of seats as well. So his bargaining power reduces further. The other thing is if he joins the third front or the UPA, he automatically becomes ‘secular’ and thus eats into the madate of Lalu Yadav, the one time self proclaimed king maker now made pauper. Lalu, interestingly sees Mulayam Singh being picked by Congress to pull out which explains his eagerness to rush to Mulayam’s defence in the Beni Prasad (non) issue. Lalu cannot afford Nitish breaking up from NDA and thus may lean on Mulayam to lean on Congress to stop JD(U) becoming part of the third front or UPA. So it is likely that Nitish for all his ruckus, remains with the NDA or then fights elections on his own without being part of any alliance in the hope that he will get enough seats to be a king maker post elections. What is fascination Biharis have for becoming ‘king maker’ is beyond me…first Lalu and now Nitish. First king maker and now irrelevant.

Now quickly touching upon Congress secretly wanting mid term elections. Lets assume that DMK has had a genuine stroke of morality after years and has genuinely pulled out of the UPA. The Congress knows that it cannot possibly continue this government at the whims and fancies of the SP and BSP. They can use the CBI stick to a certain extent but there is a limit of politically difficult decisions that SP and BSP will tolerate. After all they have their own electorate in Uttar Pradesh to worry about. The Congress knows it will go crazy trying to manage BOTH these parties in passing any new laws. If the Congress was counting on short public memory and going out on a bang with a slew of reforms towards the end of its tenure, holding hands with SP and BSP is not going to make it easy. It would rather hope for new elections sooner than opt for death by a thousand cuts.

Question on timing. I am going to fall for this temptation again ha ha, and say that it doesn’t happen now. Mulayam picking Beni Prasad as the issue seems a petty reason to call for elections. Unless he spins this into some Bhaiyya pride issue, he is not going to pull support due to this. Congress too cant make it too obvious by staking the governments future on Beni Prasad’s ego. Afterall apart from him being a ‘close associate’ of our perennial PM-in-waiting, what is Beni’s qualification or achievement? I say, the current issue works out, but another crops up within the next 3-4 months and then the government goes in for early elections. After all the fun of a drama is in its suspense. Sadly, this drama is of my country and the joke is on us.

 

This is work of fiction. A theory that is possibly wrong. All resemblances to people and organisations living and dead coincidental and unintentional.