COLLECTIVE IRRESPONSIBILITY

The Trinamool wants to sack its minister, and Harish Rawat wants to sack his party. UP elects Akhilesh Yadav who promises a clean government but brings in Raja Bhaiyya. And the Congress does nothing as a bold railway budget risks rollback because it makes sense. Are we looking at the worst of Indian politics?

Arati R Jerath | TNN

COLLECTIVE IRRESPONSIBILITY

    Internal dissensions ambushed two governments last week and nearly brought them down. In Delhi, the Manmohan Singh government tottered as its heftiest ally, Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, vetoed the railway budget and demanded the head of the minister who scripted it. Ironically, the man is her nominee in the Union cabinet, Dinesh Trivedi. And in Uttarakhand, newly sworn-in Congress chief minister Vijay Bahuguna looked shaky after half his party revolted against his appointment in favour of rival aspirant Harish Rawat.
    That both crises were entirely avoidable only reinforced the spectacle of collective irresponsibility that seems to have become the hallmark of UPA-II. It also affirmed that the Congress continues to be in a state of drift despite its drubbing in the recent assembly elections. The party has been behaving like a headless chicken ever since Sonia Gandhi moved out of the driver’s seat more than a year ago on health grounds. Although Rahul Gandhi is widely regarded as her successor, he hasn’t taken over yet and after the collapse of his UP campaign, which has dented confidence in his political acumen and vote-getting abilities, he may remain the elusive leader for some time longer.
BIG BROTHER
It has become convenient to blame the Manmohan Singh government’s troubles on coalition politics. But increasingly, it is becoming evident that much of the current turbulence in UPA-II stems from leadership problems within the Congress. The party is the bedrock of the ruling alliance. Any instability in the Congress is bound to rock the government. Today, with Sonia inactive and Rahul shying away from responsibility, party leaders are pulling in different directions. And so are those in the government, which is headed by a prime minister who lacks the necessary political authority to maintain order among his colleagues.
    Mamata may have been closer to the truth than widely accepted when she blamed the fiasco over the railway budget on the Congress. She accused it of not consulting her. Interestingly, both Trivedi and finance minister Pranab Mukherjee accepted that they did not run the passenger fare hike past Mamata. It was a strange decision because both are savvy enough to know that having made populism the touchstone of her politics, the firebrand TMC leader would kick up a storm. At a party meeting after she slammed the budget, Mamata is believed to have said that she may have agreed to a hike in upper-class fares only. Had the Centre taken her views into consideration, it may not have found itself in the humiliating position of having to consider two unprecedented possibilities: to replace Trivedi while the budget process is on and to recast the budget after rolling back second-class sleeper fares.

MULAYAM PITCH
Many in the TMC believe that the Congress is deliberately stoking a confrontation with Mamata to push her out of the UPA so that Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party can be brought in. Both parties have roughly the same strength in the Lok Sabha and talk about rebooting the UPA with the SP was in the air even before the UP elections. Significantly, two senior Congress leaders, party treasurer Moti Lal Vora and parliamentary affairs minister Pawan Bansal, were packed off to Lucknow to attend Akhilesh Yadav’s swearing-in ceremony even as the Mamata storm was blowing through the government. But the party has been forced to go slow on the SP plan since then for two reasons. One, there is no firm commitment of support forthcoming from Mulayam, who is known to bargain as hard as Mamata. Two, sections of the Congress are embarrassed by the rowdy behaviour that marred Akhilesh’s swearing-in as well as his decision to make the notorious Raja Bhaiyya a cabinet minister in his government.
    When UPA-I took on Prakash Karat and the Left Front over the Indo-US nuclear deal, it could justify it on grounds of ideological differences and India’s strategic and energy interests. The frequent clashes with Mamata seem to arise more out of poor management and ego issues. With Sonia silent on the TMCCongress equation, mistrust and suspicion between the two partners-in-government can only increase.
    For many in the Congress, however, it is the Uttarakhand drama that is more worrying. Rawat is a middle-ranking leader from a tiny state. Yet, he has dared to wave the banner of revolt amid talk of floating a regional party and seeking help from the BJP to form a government. Is this a sign of things to come? Some believe that if Rawat’s rebellion succeeds, it will give a fillip to grassroots leaders in other states who are chafing at the growing power of a coterie of leaders seeking to fill the void created by Sonia’s abdication and Rahul’s frequent absences.
DELHI DURBAR
There is little doubt that the callous attitude of the Congress establishment stirred up a hornet’s nest in Uttarakhand. Bahuguna was foisted as chief minister without going through the customary formality of “consulting’’ Congress MLAs. The tried and tested Congress formula is to go through the motion of consultation and then get the MLAs to pass a resolution leaving the decision to the Congress president. After being humbled in the elections, it was expected that the Congress would tread carefully in the one mainland state it could hope to rule. Instead, the approach surprisingly was more cavalier than usual.
    The Congress received a huge vote of confidence from the people in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls. It has frittered away that mandate in less than three years. The party is only fooling itself by blaming its troubles on its allies. As the big brother, it has greater responsibility to steer the coalition ship and keep it steady. But to do that, the Congress must first sort out its internal problems and settle the leadership question. As the recent poll results proved, voters see more than politicians give them credit for.
Messing up the mandate
In 2009, the UPA came back to power with a bigger mandate. The second innings was expected to be better than the first. But halfway through, the coalition seems to have frittered away what looked like a great opportunity
Scam after scam | The government tried to blame the Rs 1.76 lakh crore 2G scam on “coalition dharma” and floated “zero loss” theories to defend itself. But the scam became a symbol of all that’s wrong with the government. In 2010, the Delhi Commonwealth Games were marred by corruption, leading to the arrest of Congress MP Suresh Kalmadi. The involvement of certain Congress leaders from Maharashtra in the Adarsh housing scandal also dented the government’s image
Ramdev fiasco | First they sent Union ministers to the airport to win over the yoga guru who was threatening to launch an agitation against black money. When he refused to play ball, the Delhi police was unleashed on his camp in the heart of the Capital. The images of the police waking people with teargas and lathis didn’t go down well with the public
Lokpal bungle | Nothing did more damage to the Manmohan Singh government than its handling of Anna Hazare’s anticorruption movement. As Congressmen called him “corrupt from head to toe” and the government sent him to Tihar jail, Anna’s popularity grew. The manner in which the Lokpal bill was debated in Parliament made many doubt the government’s seriousness about tackling graft
FDI fumble | In November 2011, the government announced FDI in the retail sector without consulting coalition partners. Mamata was the first to revolt; others followed suit. The government was forced to back off. During the UP campaign, Rahul Gandhi tried to revive the issue by telling farmers why FDI is good for them. With UP lost, the issue is on the backburner

-TOI