Manufacturing Enemies

In Delhi’s political circles they are mourning the demise of the Left. And it is not just the caricatured ones from ‘civil society’, JNU and NGOs that experience this sadness. It is perhaps equally true of the Congress and its government in the UPA. For the first five years of its perch in the cockpit of governance, the party and the alliance faced internal turbulence on every issue directed at it from its own friend cum critic, the Left parties. From market liberalization (insurance and retail), to the scope and breadth of NREGA (something many journalists were quick to cite as a reason for the 2009 Congress victory) to ultimately the decisive (and fatal) clash over the nuclear deal three summers ago. Neither the Left, nor the UPA has really recovered from that collision, despite a return to power that spoke as much for the vanquished as it did for the victor.

The Congress since then has been on an auto-pilot. The Prime Minister, having braved a confrontation that many thought him incapable of causing and having achieved what he believed to be a significant domestic and foreign policy victory, seems to have lost energy and drive. It appears as if the 2009 polls for him were the end of a race and not a pit stop that many observers assumed it to be. These days he resembles an unwilling sportsman, forced out of retirement (or in his case being forced against retirement) to lead a team where disinterest is the prevailing feeling. The Congress seems to have mistaken the period between 2009 to 2014 as one that simply requires the completion of the formality of staying in office. The real pie is the next election when Rahul Gandhi is expected to take over the reigns and a new era of posturing can begin. UPA II then is the foster child the parent is not too keen to engage with. It is a necessity to be borne but the imagination is hidden for better times expected to come ahead. That perhaps explains the indifference and apathy running through this government since its inception. The Prime Minister has been low key, but unlike his first term when this was an asset, in his second term where allegations of corruption have abounded and ministers have been speaking about everything except their work, this silence has conveyed helplessness to favorable and weakness to the less charitable of his supporters.

The problem with playing a waiting game is that two critical elements, time and circumstance, always remain out of control and can turn and twist causing discomforting pain to even the most numb of bodies. In a sense, the UPA’s problems are seeded in its first term when a blind eye was turned to dirty secrets that many thought would either never come out or were underestimated with respect to their potential impact. But both the Telecom scam and the shenanigans of the Commonwealth Games have put the ruling coalition on the mat from which it is still wriggling to escape. It has not helped that multiple public agitations, high profile in nature and media coverage, have never really allowed the government to shift the focus away from the misdeeds in the corridors of power.

To use corporate jargon, the ball has been dropped. And several times over. As evidence slowly crawled of irregularities in Telecom and CWG deals, standard bureaucratic responses were dished out. There was little attempt, in the face of political compulsions, to decisively act and grab the initiative from the opposition, which despite its own disarray has managed to find a voice that it lacked in the UPA’s first term. The result has been that both the government and the party have been made to defend on the backfoot, right from the disastrous announcement of Telengana in the winter of 2009.

Democracy demands governments to possess a thick skin, but also combine it with a large heart and a sense of magnanimity. While the right to free speech requires us individually to listen to a lot of things we would privately consider as trash, governments must not only put up but also accommodate with groups, persons and views that may seem unrealistic at best and churlish at worst. Given that outcomes in our system only appear after years of grind in the bureaucratic machine, intent becomes more important than immediate action. And this government has done every action to let the voter question its intent. When the well heeled and well off middle class agitates for a stronger anti-corruption law, they must be co-opted and not discredited. When a gimmicky godman ‘fasts’ a few hours of the day demanding the return of black money, death for the corrupt and courses in Hindi, there are certainly more deft ways of taking away his sting than by forcibly evicting him and his supporters from the middle of the national capital. Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev will not stand up in polls but the UPA has now given itself the tag of being a government against peaceful protests, howsoever whimsical and misdirected.

The arrogance of power can often lead one to believe that the reaction is temporary and will not affect electoral outcomes. But in a democracy as chaotic as ours, it is foolhardy to rest on such cushy assumptions. Shifting caste identities and a perceived stamp of corruption from Bofors decimated Rajiv Gandhi’s super majority in 1989. For the Congress to think that anti-corruption anger is a middle class drawing room phenomenon and that a disunited NDA along with a beaten Left present no challenge three years from now is to adopt hubris at par with the NDA’s India Shining posturing of 2004. The electorate threw a surprise out of nowhere then and it is perfectly capable of doing it a second time. The initiative has been lost, the momentum was never there and now along with scandal comes the tag of being insensitive and brash. The government stays in office, its electoral fortunes may point north in the coming days but is moral compass is pointing a firm south.

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