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The Bihar Boomerang

It is an old saw that as one hits the self-destruct button, senses begin to fail (it is obvious that the translation from Hindi does not convey half the pith the original version does), and the six-month-old Vajpayee government, after teetering on the verge of administrative precipice throughout its brief existence, may find itself ousted not because of the ill-temperament of its allies but by its own impetuosity.

Bihar it appears to be, that will succeed in showing up the Vajpayee government for what it is, despite all high-falutin' talk of upholding the ideals of public life. And considering that Article 356 had been the Bharatiya Janata Party's bugbear -- I mean, how can it so easily forget how it was misused at the hands of the Romesh Bhandari-Mulayam Singh Yadav combine? -- its turnaround in favour of wielding the axe over a government that has just won the confidence vote in the assembly is puzzling, to resort to under-statement.

In fact, the grounds for threatening to send the Bihar government are, by themselves, quite unusual. I can't seem to recall the last time a governor recommended the dismissal of a duly elected, constituted state government on the grounds of breakdown of law and order. In fact, gubernatorial privilege it has been, to send a chief minister packing citing loss of majority in the assembly, a fact that has not been overlooked by the Rashtriya Janata Dal brains-trust, which quickly moved in to get the assembly's endorsement of Chief Minister Rabri Devi, only hours before the cabinet's endorsement of the governor's views as it were.

After all, law and order failure, constitutional breakdown and such issues are a double-edged sword. It is a moot point whether Maharashtra under the Congress did not experience a collapse of law and order when for two months its capital city was witness to communal blood-letting. Is it anyone's case that Jammu and Kashmir, which has been in the grip of an unimaginable extent of ethnic cleansing, is not a "fit case" for Article 356, as the Bihar governor has qualified his state?

Sunder Singh Bhandari may be lacking in his infamous namesake's crudity of approach, but his actions and decisions have been no less controversial than those of Romesh Bhandari. A partisan, political appointee to Patna, there was little doubt that S S Bhandari will carry out his brief. The only issue was when, not if.

The Bihar governor also seems to be cut from a different cloth than what is expected of persons holding such an office. The rule, as a rule, is that governors don't grant media interviews; where it is done, it is on matters apolitical. But not only has Bhandari been entertaining political delegations of all hues, he has also been too willing to explain the rationale behind his recommendation.

That he has chosen to strike now, with an assembly election in four states just weeks away, is significant. The BJP leadership calculates that the seeds sown now will bring it a windfall in November, and in its hubris fails to realise that the move could just as well lead to a bloody harvest.

That Bihar is ungovernable is a given. It did not need the BJP's brand of sagacity to realise that things are bad there. In fact, if there is one state in the Union that has actually regressed in every sphere of human endeavour since Independence, it is Bihar. And this has remained the blighted state's fate regardless of who ruled from Patna. The malaise that is eating into the vitals of the state will not be rolled back merely with the ouster of Rabri Devi and the installation of another administration; it needs an operation of far greater complexity, and effort, than entailed by the mere removal of a state government.

But the way the BJP is going about the business of sacking Rabri Devi, there seems to be an enormous amount of foresight and detailing that have gone into the operation. The governor does the needful, the Union Cabinet does what is expected of it, and the Presidential prerogative in the matter is taken for granted. But, of course, the BJP's memory seems to be of Tom Thumb denomination, for only last year the same occupant of Rashtrapati Bhavan sent back a similar recommendation from the then Union Cabinet, asking it to reconsider its decision. Why he should change his mind now, merely because a different set of actors are enacting the same script, remains beyond comprehension.

The choice before the President is simple: either to ratify the Cabinet's recommendation, or reject it. Either way, it cannot bring glory to the Vajpayee government.

Assuming, for the sake of argument, that K R Narayanan sees merit in the decision, the fallout for the BJP both from friends and foes will have a destabilising effect on its government. For one, there is no way the AIADMK's Jayalalitha, who seems to have suddenly rediscovered that silence is golden, will be contained if similar treatment were not meted out to the DMK in Tamil Nadu as well. For, all along, the BJP had been able to resist her threats and demands on the specious argument that it does not believe in the use of Article 356, an argument that will not be available to it once the Bihar government is ousted through this means.

Apart from an ally going ballistic, the Bihar gambit will serve as the catalyst to bring together all the Opposition parties that have so far shown little evidence of coalescence against the Vajpayee government. What has been keeping them apart so far was the absence of an adhesive factor, and the central government has now handed them one on a plate. Even tentative allies, like the Telugu Desam and lately the DMK, will find it difficult to justify backing Vajpayee.

None of all this may happen if the President does a repeat. But a Presidential veto will do far worse damage to the BJP government than the combined might of the opposition. All along, in the six months that Vajpayee has been hobbling along, incapacitated by allies and circumstances, one thing has stood him in good stead: that he has not lost his moral sheen. Not to be sneezed at, it was this factor that has so far prevented Sonia Gandhi from pulling the plug on him. It is this moral authority that has enabled the first viable BJP government to hold its head high, despite failures on most fronts, despite being reduced to a dud for most part.

To go back a little in time, the I K Gujral administration, always a lame-duck, lost even its fig-leaf when it decided to send home Kalyan Singh earlier this year. And now, a similar fate appears to be in store for his successor.

Saisuresh Sivaswamy