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Parivar and the Family

If a week is a long time in politics, the Bharatiya Janata Party is now discovering that a month is an eternity.

On the eve of the first phase of voting in the 13th general election, consensus among pollsters and political pundits had devolved on the BJP-led NDA scoring a decisive, even if simple, majority. The Congress party had been trashed, despite the Dynasty returning to stake its claim to lead the party.

Naturally, the slew of opinion polls had led to euphoria within the NDA, while the Congress's spin doctors took it upon themselves to put up a brave front, often unsuccessfully.

Today, with polling over bar a handful of constituencies, the writing on the wall is much clearer than what it was four weeks ago. The NDA is going to form the next government, but the 300-plus mark is still some way ahead.

Of course, there is no saying what will happen when the ballot boxes are opened and the votes are actually counted. The crowds that have been dogging Sonia Gandhi's meetings may not necessarily have voted for her party. On the other hand, the intellectual turning up of the nose that Messrs Vajpayee and Co engender, may not have any impact on the actual hoi polloi voter.

It's hard to say what will actually happen. One thing that I do every time I enter the election chat-room is to stick my neck out on the NDA's actual tally. Before the first vote was cast I had fixed the figure at 280-285 for the NDA, and now that the last votes are about to be cast I see no reason to change that number. The NDA will form the next government with the most slender majority ever enjoyed by the ruling political formation in independent India.

The last time round, let me clarify, the BJP and allies were still short of a majority, and the magic figure was reached subsequently.

Signs of instability? Hardly. The NDA is not in any danger of immediate disintegration, not as long as Vajpayee is around to lead it. Much to other claimants' chagrin, he remains the glue that is holding the anti-Congress formation together. Without him, it is hard to imagine the NDA constituents sticking together, given that each one of its leaders would like the top job for himself.

But this election is, for sure, the BJP's last hurrah. Now that it has undergone an image makeover and become another Congress party -- a cleaner version, if you will -- there is no way it will be able to withstand the Dynasty's appeal in the next round of elections, whenever they are held.

Not for nothing does the BJP's rise in India's political firmament coincide with the eclipse of the Dynasty's hold over the electorate. For five years after Rajiv Gandhi, the last from the family to lead the nation, the Congress managed a tenuous hold over the polity, thanks largely to the machinations of P V Narasimha Rao. Once it seemed clear to the electorate that the Gandhi family had sworn off politics for good, it did not plump for the non-Congress, non-BJP political formation as it would have done earlier.

The 1996 verdict reflects this confusion among the voters. For the first time, the BJP was the single largest party, but it had not managed to shed its extreme image, and remained isolated. By 1998, it had managed to win over friends, and the Gandhi family's last-minute, conditional entry into the election arena did manage to stop its inexorable march towards power.

In 1999, the prospects of the Gandhi family returning to the helm of Indian politics -- a possibility that has so far not been disputed -- will have succeeded in preventing the NDA from crossing the 300-mark.

The next time round? The BJP and its hopes of heading India for the foreseeable future will have been dashed.

In that sense, the 1999 encounter between the two formations will have boiled down to Parivar vs Family. This time the former will barely steal a march.

Election 1999 has shown that barring Vajpayee, the Parivar has no bankable face for the future. While more Indians will prefer Vajpayee as prime minister than anyone else, there is no second-string who can be projected as the face of Parivar's future. While Sonia, in a fit of sheer genius, has shown that the Family has Priyanka and Rahul to bank on.

The near-hysteria that Priyanka generates in the Hindi heartland is not to be scoffed at. This is the first time since 1952 that a generation born well after Partition, and therefore untouched by it -- as are a huge number of the electorate -- is making an entry into national politics. The impact of Mandal on the polity is often touted as the single factor responsible for repeated fractured verdicts since 1989. What is being ignored alongside is the impact of the lowering of the voting age from 21 to 18, done by Rajiv Gandhi. This has thrown into the voting net lakhs of youth, whose concerns, and visions, are of the future. It is a segment that hates gerontocracy, and will run away with Priyanka as and when she decides take up the family business.

Today, riding on Vajpayee's charisma, the NDA-BJP is an ersatz Congress. When it comes down to it, there is little of consequence to distinguish the two from each other. With the Gandhis back in the Congress, why would the BJP merit a second look?

That will be the biggest challenge facing the Sangh Parivar. Stung by the isolation in 1996, its leading lights agreed to a dilution of principles that had powered it from a meagre two seats in 1989 to its pre-eminent position seven years later, in the hope of forming the government. The choice now will be to convince the voter that it is better than the Congress at Congressism, or to go back to being a conglomeration of extremist elements.

Saisuresh Sivaswamy