:: Arun Nehru

Parties gear up for Assembly poll test

By Arun Nehru

May 31 : THE CABINET was sworn in on Thursday and it all went very smoothly. I have seen many Cabinet formations in the past and in selecting 78 ministers there is always scope for an "error" as everything is done in total secrecy. To ensure a perfect selection of regions, political groups within the party, and religion and caste within a few days is never easy. I recall that on one occasion while balancing the correct caste combinations we got the surname right but took the wrong person!

We have all got used to coalition politics for 20 years and have not seen or felt the challenges associated with "majority" governance. And for many of us used to these situations in the past, this is little more than a storm in a teacup! The Congress with 200-plus seats is well aware of the electoral verdict for good governance. And they will miss a great opportunity for initiating change and reform within the party unless they signal this with the effectiveness of their Cabinet.

Congress leaders will now focus on the "before and after elections" syndrome, especially governance where it has to balance 78 ministers as well as the political leaders in the party to prepare a political base for 270-plus seats in the next elections.

The increase from 145 seats to 200-plus is a clear mandate to the Congress to prepare ground for the future and this will be the task before Rahul Gandhi in the immediate future.

The situation in the Northeast is fluid and Assam needs attention. The alliance with Trinamul Congress in West Bengal has to be strengthened for the Assembly elections in 2011. In Orissa the Congress lost an opportunity to dent the votebank of the Biju Janata Dal’s (BJD) charismatic leader Naveen Patnaik because they did not have a credible leader of stature. There is a great deal of work to be done in Uttar Pradesh where the vote share and seats have gone up sharply. And 21 seats could well expand to 40-50 seats in the future.

Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh will come by 2011 and that will be a critical test. The agenda for Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Karnataka also involves a great deal of organisational work.

Mr Gandhi is being attributed with magical leadership skills but I think he understands the challenges of the future and will deal with the situation in his own quiet and determined manner. His success in reviving the party in Uttar Pradesh is close to a "miracle" and, I think, this will remain his priority for the immediate future. The Bahujan Samaj Party’s (BSP) Mayawati, Samajwadi Party’s (SP) Mulayam Singh Yadav and the Congress will fight a ferocious three-way political battle to regain lost ground — the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is running far behind in fourth place.

The BJP, which has contracted from 135 to 116 seats, faces further shrinkage unless the party can evolve an acceptable political thought process and effect a change of guard for the future. They cannot take their voter base for granted. They have lost ground sharply in Rajasthan, Uttarakhand and Madhya Pradesh and have not progressed in either Uttar Pradesh or Gujarat. The Bihar victory is attributed to the charismatic Nitish Kumar of the Janata Dal (United). And no one can rule out the Orissa syndrome re-enacting itself in Bihar if the Congress plays the revival game there too.

In 2004, the All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), the All-India Trinamul Congress (AITC) and other regional parties lost elections because they could not get minority votes. After the BJD cut ties with the BJP because of the Kandhamal violence, the Bihar alliance too is not likely to hold in future.

The BJP’s first test will come in the Maharashtra Assembly elections, due in four months. All is not well in the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance as Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) has become a major cause for concern.

The Left, which shrank from 60-plus to 25 seats in 2009, faces total extinction in the Assembly elections in 2011 in West Bengal and Kerala. The generation change in the party from Harkishan Singh Surjeet and Jyoti Basu to Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechuri has not worked and this is sad as the Left lack neither competence nor integrity to govern. But sadly, they follow an archaic philosophy which has been abandoned by almost everyone in the Communist movement.

The Left, in my opinion, cannot reverse the 2009 trend in the Assembly elections for 2011. Mamata Banerjee and the AITC-Congress combine will sweep the polls in West Bengal and the position will be no different in Kerala. After two decades the Left will have no say at the Centre and this is unfortunate because the Congress will have to now invent a "lobby" within the party to generate debate on reforms for the future.

Economic policy will get a great deal of attention and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has taken the right decision in inducting Pranab Mukherjee as the finance minister. Political inputs are extremely necessary in all economic decisions and the recent crisis has shown that our development model, with a strong regulatory regime, has weathered the global crisis rather well. But as we look to the future, we will have to match our growth and wealth generation by equitable distribution amongst the poorer sections of society.

I have known and seen Mr Mukherjee for close to three decades and I remember him as the youngest member of the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs (CCPA) in 1980. Those days Prime Minister Indira Gandhi rarely took an important decision without consulting R. Venkatraman, P.V. Narasimha Rao and Mr Mukherjee. He has weathered many a storm, he has seen political "peaks and valleys" and he and Dr Singh, both in their seventies, may well be embarking on their "final" innings. This may well be their best effort for India’s future.

Arun Nehru is a former Union Minister