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The Rediff Special/ Mahesh Rangarajan

Vajpayee cannot live up to the expectations of a saffron spring

The Vajpayee government has beaten the odds and endured for a year. Managing a coalition as disparate as this one was never an easy task all the more so for an ideological formation like the BJP. The formidable maneuvering skills of regional leaders like Ms Jayalalitha and Ms Banerjee mean even keeping the ship afloat is difficult. Mr Vajpayee was the third prime minister in office since the Congress's exit from power in May 1996, not counting his own brief turn at the till that month. But the government has grasped the nettle of coalition-building.

Coalitions at the Centre have so far never lasted a full term in office. So what matters more is what they accomplish, not how long they cling to power. The Janata Party restored democracy, V P Singh implemented Mandal. Gujral refused to invoke Article 356 against a state government. The feathers in the present regime's cap pertain to a very different field: that of security and foreign policy.

In May 1998, by finally exercising the nuclear option, India joined the ranks of the weaponised states. To back up the claim that strength and statesmanship go together, this has been followed, after a lag, by a historic bus trip to Lahore. True, the final terms on which India will accede to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty are unclear, and the Indo-Pak dialogue is yet to move beyond confidence-building measures. But it is significant that no major Opposition party has questioned the actual decisions on either count.

Significant as these initiatives may be, the real challenges lie at home and not abroad. Here, the stumbling blocks are all too real. The one point the BJP and its closest ally in the Hindi belt, the Samata Party agreed upon was to impose President's Rule in Bihar. The first time, the head of State asked them to reconsider the move, the second time, the Rajya Sabha stood in the way. All along despite the appalling state of Bihar, the federal impulse in the Constitution ever so weak in the long decades of Congress rule, prevented the rulers in New Delhi from realising their goal.

More than that it has revived, for the first time since the ascendancy of Mrs Sonia Gandhi to the helm of her party, the chances of a concord (though not an alliance) between the Congress and the Mandal-centred parties of north India.

More seriously, the November 1998 assembly election saw a serious erosion of the support base of the Hindutva forces in the Hindi belt. For the first time in a decade, it lost the support of large sections who had gravitated towards it either due to Hindutva or to give the party a fair chance.

Even more than the rout in Rajasthan, the debacle in its stronghold of Delhi and the return to power of Digvijay Singh in Madhya Pradesh was a warning signal for the Union government. It was more than a question of onion prices. What was germane to the choice was the party's inability to transform itself from an Opposition force to a party of governance. The attacks on Christians in Gujarat and Orissa reopened the issue of whether the regime could move beyond the Hindutva agenda.

Try as it might, the RSS issue has returned to the centre-stage. Had it been under a BJP government, the issue could have been settled by affirming the ties of the party and its parent organisation. But the coalition in power requires the support of no less than 90 Lok Sabha MPs who support Mr Vajpayee, but are not of the Sangh Parivar. This includes regional groups like the Telugu Desam, which even as it bails out the government on the floor of the House is reluctant to come any closer to it.

This is the nub of Vajpayee's dilemma: he cannot break with his own ideological roots nor can he fully live up to the expectations of a saffron spring. What he says matter less than what his fellow travelers in the saffron camp do. It was the temple issue that enabled the party to expand its base a decade ago, but to attain power it has had to rely on allies whose moorings are very different. The party is hoist to its own petard: By taking office without a majority of its own, it runs the risk of failure.

One way out could have been to deliver in terms of performance. But industrial recession looks likely to persist. Economic reform has moved ahead, but it is too slow for the middle class, while not as yet backed by a safety net for the poor. Budget-making may have bought breathing space vis a vis the swadeshi lobby, but the economy continues to be wobbly.

Unless the revenue situation markedly improves India may face a crisis, though not a breakdown by the end of the year. Not all of this is due to the present regime in office, but that is hardly likely to influence popular perceptions of its record.

What makes this a serious matter is that since 1977 every single incumbent government (save only for the Congress in 1984) has failed to return to power. It is not merely an anti-incumbency effect. In the BJP's case, its core constituency is clearly not fully satisfied with what has or rather has not been done. As for the allies, at least three are in a perilous state of health: the Akali Dal, the Biju Janata Dal and the Samta party. And there is no telling what Ms Jayalalitha will do the next time round.

What threatens the government is not the Opposition. In fact, the Sonia-led Congress is still re-grouping and is reluctant to even press for a real trial of strength. What imperils the regime is that it may not have a distinctive message to go to the people with by the time of the next election.

Bailing out Jayalalitha will come to haunt its campaign for clean politics. The sacking of the naval chief raises doubts about the government's handling of the armed forces. Swadeshi runs counter to the imperatives of forging closer global links. Endorsing reservations above the 50 per cent mark as the ruling coalition's coordination committee has may alienate upper caste voters.

Each compromise, each decision shows how far the party has to go in learning to use the instruments of governance in a sophisticated way. And it matters. After all, even if a poll is not imminent few expect the Lok Sabha to complete its full term.

The Hindutva agenda will yield only diminishing returns and is past its peak. In fact, even tactical advances on this front will only lead to fresh strains in the coalition. The struggle within the Sangh on how far it will go in reining its own front organisations is closely linked to the fate of the present regime.

In a sense, this is at the heart of the dilemma for Vajpayee. In order to survive in office, he may end up doing things that undercut his core base of support. He can neither renounce nor fully defend the utterances and actions of his ideological allies.

Survival in office has given his supporters something to cheer about. Once in power, the only thing that counts is performance. And the Indian voter is apt to punish those who fail to live up to expectations. If Vajpayee and his team do not get its act together now, the bus may not come their way for a long, long time.

Mahesh Rangarajan is a fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, and a political analyst at New Delhi Television.

The Rediff Specials

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