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Battle symbolic

I groan whenever I hear a Congressman speak of all the 'progress' that this country has made under the Congress rule. If you want to know why, take a look at the ballot-paper on election day. Lotuses, and hands, and wheels, and hammers and sickles, and ears of grain, and bicycles, and swords, and God-knows-what-else cavort across the page. It is like a child's drawing-book in triple size -- and, of course, none of this nonsense would have been necessary if half of India wasn't illiterate after all these decades of glorious Congress progress.

If the average voter could read the name of the candidate -- as he or she obviously cannot -- the Election Commission wouldn't be driven half-crazy looking for appropriate symbols to allot to independent candidates. Nor would parties squabble over the possession of symbols when they split. This last has always been something of a problem for the Janata Dal, a group that has raised splitting to the level of a fine art. It is with some surprise, therefore, that I learned that the latest battle for the symbol is actually a bit of a farce.

Once upon a time -- back in 1989 for those who can remember that far back -- the Janata Dal actually managed to win around 150 seats in a general election. In 1998, several splits later, that was reduced to a mere six seats. Three of these men -- Ram Vilas Paswan in Bihar, Jaipal Reddy in Andhra Pradesh, and I K Gujral in Punjab -- entered the Lok Sabha with the support of other parties. It was only in Karnataka that the Janata Dal managed to win seats on its own account. Today, that last bastion too has fallen.

The battle for the party headquarters in Bangalore is probably quite genuine; our politicians have an amazing appetite for real estate. But the squabble for the wheel symbol is supposedly quite bogus. Neither the J H Patel nor the Deve Gowda factions say so openly, but they both secretly hope that the Election Commission shall rule for the other side!

J H Patel and his group know perfectly well that they didn't do a good job of governing Karnataka. They want to hitch their wagon to the BJP-led alliance (which won 16 of the state's 28 Lok Sabha seats in 1998). But the BJP would prefer to keep the Janata Dal as far away as possible from itself. Losing the battle for the symbol would make it considerably easier for the J H Patel group to merge into Ramakrishna Hegde's Lok Shakti. But they can scarcely win the legal battle and then announce that they were surrendering!

Deve Gowda understands Patel's predicament better than anyone else. He knows that the BJP and the Lok Shakti swept Karnataka in the last Lok Sabha poll. He does not want that alliance to be strengthened by whatever little strength the Patel faction can contribute. Forcing the wheel symbol on the rival group will, hopefully, ensure that some of Patelšs unpopularity will rub off on the BJP and Lok Shakti.

Of course, there is another reason. If J H Patel is standing at the BJP's doors, Deve Gowda in turn is trying to negotiate with 10, Janpath. He knows just as well as Patel that the Janata Dal has very little chance of doing well in Karnataka. And the only real rival to the BJP-Lok Shakti team is the Congress. So if Patel has joined one camp, it makes perfect sense for Deve Gowda to tie up with the other. And why not? After all, that is what the rest of the once-great United Front did...

Think about it. The DMK, the National Conference, the Telugu Desam, the Asom Gana Parishad -- all of them are openly or tacitly on the side of the BJP. The CPI and the CPI-M are openly allied with the Congress in Tamil Nadu, and that relationship could be extended to other states such as Bihar and Punjab. What we are witnessing is nothing less than the polarisation of Indian politics.

One of the last pockets of resistance was Karnataka, where the Janata Dal tried to maintain an image as something distinct from both the BJP and the Congress. Now, it too has admitted defeat.

Despite all the noise and fury, what we are witnessing in Karnataka today is not a battle for a symbol. It is a symbolic battle -- the Janata Dal is a symbol, and a warning, of what happens to smaller groups as the two giants come to centrestage.

T V R Shenoy