Elections in India
At noon on March 6, or perhaps an hour earlier, a great impasse will begin in parliament. This is not an astrologer’s prediction. The source is rather less celestial, the Election Commission. Since counting is now quick, we shall know the results of the UP Assembly polls by noon, and the stars of Delhi will begin their whirligig. If, as its foes so anxiously desire, Congress does poorly after such massive investment of political and financial capital, its ability to govern will be impaired beyond immediate repair.
If, conversely, Congress succeeds, it will set a fresh agenda without worrying about consequences. Its lifted spirits will give Congress the energy and confidence to break with disruptive allies and risk a general election which it can fight on terms different from the corrosive themes of corruption and administrative impotence that have turned UPA 2 into such a limp also-ran.
In democratic politics the definition of success is a variable, not a constant. The Congress is not seeking a victory for the party in Uttar Pradesh. That is impossible. What it wants is a victory for Rahul Gandhi, which is possible. You can’t change the goalposts for the first, but you can for the second.
Success can be recalibrated as a comparative fact. It will be measured, therefore, not against the 90-plus Assembly segments which Congress won in the 2009 parliament polls, but against the 22 seats it got in 2007. The drums are scheduled to roll for Rahul Gandhi if he delivers around 70 seats; anything more, and the escalation of applause will rise in geometrical progression.
This has been his campaign, even to the extent of caging his effective sister Priyanka Gandhi to just the family constituencies of Rae Bareli and Amethi. Mrs Sonia Gandhi has made high-profile but limited interventions.
PM Manmohan Singh will make his first election speech only after half of UP has voted. UP is designed to give Rahul Gandhi’s family inheritance electoral credibility, enabling him to take over party and government whenever he wants. The trigger could be this summer’s presidential elections, when Dr Manmohan Singh could top off his extraordinary career in politics with a bid for Rashtrapati Bhavan.
In any case, the decision will lie with Rahul Gandhi, not circumstance; and he will choose the moment after March 6. We know he is here to stay, but cannot be sure in which capacity. If Rahul Gandhi cannot find his way into Dr Singh’s chair, the duopoly, which now runs Congress and Government, will become a triumvirate. But two is about as many simultaneous prime ministers as Delhi can sustain; three is a crowd. Someone will have to move.
Who wins Lucknow becomes, in that sense, less important than the permutations and combinations that open up in Delhi. The challenge to UPA’s majority in parliament will not come from BJP. Congress does not treat the BJP as worthy opposition, but rather as a saffron dinosaur which should have become extinct but still manages to trundle around, making a nuisance of itself on the margins.
The principal Congress worry is allies who occupy the space that Congress needs to achieve single-party majority status in the Lok Sabha. Under a very thin and transparent surface, Congress is in a constant struggle to defeat its friends. Mamata Banerjee knows that. Sharad Pawar knows that. Mulayam Singh Yadav will find out, if he doesn’t know that already.
The Budget on March 16 will be evidence of the new mood. A triumphant Congress could include measures which invite the wrath of allies, like FDI in retail, or permission to sell Indian airline shares to foreign investors.
A confident Congress would dare Mamata Banerjee to break the UPA alliance. A subdued Congress, on the other hand, will shuffle along, anxious to maintain the status quo, and it would be Mamata Banerjee who would raise the ante with a barrage of public statements, and join the opposition on select issues, threatening the government’s majority in any sudden vote.
There would also be trouble over the Congress nominee for president, whoever he or she might be. The government might not fall, unless it mismanaged the presidential election so badly that it lost. But it would reel from round to round like a battered boxer hoping for a quick end. Such a scenario would leave one unintended beneficiary: Dr Manmohan Singh. His stature would assure at least short-term safety for the government.
A veteran diplomat described the oil-and-nuclear confrontation between Iran, Israel and the US as a game of “choker”, a mix of chess and poker. The gamble in UP is less subtle: flush, in which whoever has the better three-card combination wins, and every bluff is called because all cards will be opened. There is a reason why the only certainty is uncertainty. Players do not hold the cards. Voters do. And they will let Big Brother know by noon on 6 March.
The columnist is editor of The Sunday Guardian, published from Delhi, India on Sunday, published from London and Editorial Director, India Today and Headlines Today.