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The middle-aged woman in no hurry!

After reading the headlines these days, my eyes automatically stray to the dateline. I need to double-check whether it is 1990 or 1998.

As in 1990, most of the globe is concentrating on the FIFA World cup. And as in 1990, Chandra Shekhar is concentrating on pulling down an elected government, setting up his own with the Congress and AIADMK backing, and then sacking a DMK ministry in Madras.

But the seven days within which the A B Vajpayee ministry was supposed to fall have come and gone without anything happening. There are a couple of reasons for this.

First, as Karunanidhi points out, the probable result of bringing down the Vajpayee government is another general election. That is enough to make saner elements in the Opposition draw back from the brink.

Second, Sonia Gandhi is hesitant. In the last Lok Sabha campaign Jyoti Basu once disparagingly referred to her as a mere "housewife". Well, housewives know how to keep their own houses clean. That is Sonia Gandhi's priority today.

Her chief domestic problem is Sharad Pawar. The mutual animosity between the most prominent leaders in the Congress is nothing new. Pawar was remarkably unenthusiastic about offering the leadership to her after Rajiv Gandhi's assassination.

More recently, Sharad Pawar ensured the defeat of her handpicked candidate Ram Pradhan in the Rajya Sabha polls from Maharashtra. It is a measure of Sonia Gandhi's weakness that she has been unable to take disciplinary action against Praful Patel, Pawar's close aide and the man who engineered the fall of the official Congress candidate.

Pawar himself was in London. But the magic of modern communication meant that he was never out of touch with his aides. Nor, come to that, with Jayalalitha, to whom he sent a fax. While the precise contents of the message haven't been revealed, we can easily guess the drift --urging Jayalalitha to withdraw support to the Vajpayee ministry.

(London wasn't the only halt on Pawar's itinerary. He also went to Stockholm, the Swedish capital -- Bofors territory. Sonia Gandhi would love to know just why Sharad Pawar visited Sweden.)

Jayalalitha didn't reply to Pawar's fax. But everybody knows that he is currently her candidate for prime minister assuming that the Congress needs to provide one. He began wooing the whimsical autocrat of Poes Garden as soon as the results of the general election began pouring in. (Pawar was in Madras when Jayalalitha hemmed and hawed over formally notifying the President of her support to a BJP-led ministry.)

If Jayalalitha smiles upon Pawar, one Congressman she heartily dislikes is Dr Manmohan Singh. And for good reason -- every single investigation being conducted by the Enforcement Directorate began in his tenure at the finance ministry. (The Union finance minister's green signal was required as Jayalalitha was then a chief minister.)

The fun really begins when you consider the fact that Dr Manmohan Singh, currently the leader of the Congress in the Rajya Sabha, is reportedly Sonia Gandhi's choice to head a ministry in case Vajpayee is upset in a coup. Jayalalitha's disapproval is probably an added qualification for the 'Mr Clean' of the Congress in Sonia Gandhi's eyes.

We all know the grand plans being spun by Dr Subramanian Swamy, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Laloo Prasad Yadav, and the rest. But even they realise that they won't get very far unless both the Congress and the AIADMK come to terms. But when you consider the ill-concealed rivalries between the principals involved, the whole complicated tapestry of conspiracy falls apart.

Just consider the following: Sonia Gandhi doesn't trust Sharad Pawar and doesn't like Jayalalitha. Pawar woos the AIADMK chief but fears Sonia Gandhi is out to get him in the long run. Jayalalitha doesn't approve of Dr Manmohan Singh and is openly contemptuous of Sonia Gandhi. ("Can an Indian become prime minister of Italy?" she sarcastically enquired three months ago -- and that was one of her more charitable remarks.)

Even assuming that the Vajpayee ministry falls, this is not the foundation for a stable government. Which is why the energetic Subramanian Swamy is trying to manoeuvre Chandra Shekhar back to Race Course road as a 'consensus' candidate. And, of course, with Dr Subramanian Swamy himself as finance minister!

"An old man in a hurry!" was former prime minister H D Deve Gowda's famous jibe about a former Congress president. Today's Congress president is better described as a middle-aged woman in no hurry whatsoever -- much to the fury of the plotters in Madras and elsewhere.

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T V R Shenoy