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Early Signals from the 12th Lok Sabha

The 12th General Elections produced India's fourth hung parliament in a row with a mandate that is by far the most fractured till date. The delicate parliamentary balance promised a stormy first session, the speaker's election being billed as the first decisive showdown. But at the end of the day, things turned out to be quite different. There were little fireworks and the first round in Parliament has been relatively plain sailing for the BJP-led camp.

The turning point was of course the coup the BJP pulled off in Hyderabad. The BJP's new equations with TDP not only gave Vajpayee the comfort of a narrow numerical victory on the floor of the Lok Sabha, by formalising the disintegration of the United Front it also succeeded in causing not little demoralisation in the Congress-UF camp.

This was quite obvious in the debates on the Speaker's election and the subsequent trust vote. The certainty of the eventual political outcome did have an obvious dampening effect on the morale and mood of almost the entire opposition. But what is more worrying is the opposition's, the Left parties included, tendency to walk into the ideological trap laid so carefully by the sangh parivar. The Speaker's election threw the first light on the BJP-TDP deal. This was post-poll opportunism at its shameless worst and it knocked the bottom out of the BJP's righteous tall claims about the supposed sanctity of pre-poll alliances. But the opposition could not make much use of this explosive exposure as it remained trapped in the rigorous routine of bourgeois decorum. In fact, the BJP had the cheek to claim the moral upper hand for having catapulted a dalit to the Speaker's post for the first time in fifty years of independence! And how easily did some of our veteran Left parliamentarians swallow this bait! The combined effect of decades of expertise in the formalism of bourgeois parliamentary etiquette and specialised subservience to the seductive stupidity of liberal demagogy can indeed be so sickening! The only saving grace was the forceful show of protest by the BSP MPs who exposed the BJP's pseudo commitment to the dalit cause with concrete reference to the despicable role of the UP Speaker in organising and legitimising illegal defections from the BSP legislature party in the State Assembly.

The debate on the trust vote was less constrained by considerations of parliamentary etiquette. Predictably enough, the discussion revolved around what most opposition speakers termed the BJP's hidden agenda. But much of the opposition's critique of the BJP's party manifesto or the government's newly adopted National Agenda betrayed a distinct vulnerability to the illusions being scrupulously sown and spread by the sangh parivar - swadeshi thrust to economic reforms, consensual approach to governance, the so-called RSS-BJP or Advani-Vajpayee dichotomy and the like.

While Sharad Pawar expressed concern over the BJP's swadeshi slogans and alleged anti-MNC attitude, Laloo Prasad Yadav wondered why the BJP was not serious about liberating the abode of Lord Shiva in Kailas - an obvious reference to the disputed Indian territory under Chinese control. He accused the BJP of betraying its own supporters and even Lord Ram for shelving the promise of building the much awaited magnificent Ram temple at the Babri Masjid site in Ayodhya as committed in the BJP's own manifesto. This is precisely the direction in which the BJP would love the debate to proceed. The repeated harping on Vajpayee being "remote controlled" only allowed Vajpayee to indulge in some tall talking during his reply to the motion. Vajpayee is obviously no Manohar Joshi. It was a calculated move on the part of the sangh parivar to project him consistently as the undisputed prime ministerial candidate. And it must not be forgotten that for all his pseudo-liberal pronouncements and craftily constructed moderate image, reinforced by Govindacharya's mention of him as the party's mask, all through his political life Vajpayee has always been a very committed RSS man. There was not much discussion on the various overt and covert threats that abound in the national agenda. On the economic front, there was not much sting in the opposition campaign, because instead of debunking BJP's pseudo swadeshi, Congress leaders chose to raise a false alarm, articulating the concerns of the MNCs and international investors. This however was only to be expected. Interestingly, it was the former speaker PA Sangma, who as labour minister under Rajiv Gandhi and Narasimha Rao had played a crucial role in misleading most of the major trade unions about the nature and direction of economic reforms, who seemed most concerned about the marginalisation of the working class in the Vajpayee government's national agenda!

Two major issues seemed to receive very little attention during the debates: the new government's declared aim of inducting nuclear weapons and appointing a commission to review the Constitution. The BJP knows it very well that a dash of jingoism in India's policy response to Pakistan has never found any lack of takers. Vajpayee managed to pre-empt any debate again by claiming in his inaugural speech while moving the confidence motion that his government was committed to maintaining continuity on the foreign policy front. It was indeed a measure of the political bankruptcy of the UF that its leaders, who till the other day never tired of tomtomming the so-called "Gujral Doctrine" of friendship with neighbours as the jewel in the crown of UF's achievements, had almost nothing to say on the question of induction of nuclear weapons and the consequent threat of a disastrous arms race and renewed tension between India and Pakistan.

Similarly, the sweeping subversive potential of the purposed appointment of a commission to review the Constitution did not at all figure prominently as a point of debate. Even on the issue of social justice, a slogan so close to the heart of the UF, we did not get to hear any effective exposure or strong condemnation of the BJP's hypocrisy on this front. Only Jaipal Reddy made a feeble attempt when he wondered why there was no OBC representation from North India in the Vajpayee cabinet only to be shouted down by BJP leaders who tried to rebut him with their census of chosen counter-examples. Incidentally, none of the heroes of the so-called social justice camp raised an accusing finger against the BJP's overwhelming feudal links including especially its nefarious nexus with the Ranvir Sena in Bihar. Laloo Prasad Yadav spoke not a word about this aspect of the BJP's aggressive feudal face in Bihar. It was only Comrade Jayanta Rongpi of ASDC who raised this inconvenient issue even as a former prime minister advised him not to "rake up" such controversial subjects!

Among the treasury bench leaders, Vajpayee understandably reserved his oratorical skill only to market his new-found "moderate" image and harp on the theme of governmental stability, emphasising the need to pursue a consensual approach to governance and asserting his "innate" defiance of remote control mechanisms! Advani hardly ever spoke. Murli Manohar Joshi, the man in charge of human resource development and education, spoke only to convince his listeners that he had the ability to take on Laloo Prasad Yadav - metaphor for metaphor - on what is considered the latter's home turf of verbal lumpency.

The "star" speaker from the saffron side this time perhaps was the irrepressible George Fernandez. True to his style, he kept playing on the manifest contradictions in Congress, JD and Left manifestos in a desperate bid to legitimise his own variety of political opportunism. But, by George, he also revealed some of the "ideological" roots of his current collaboration with the BJP. No, it is not restricted to a shared, superficial passion for swadeshi (in fact, George's favourite line these days is "I'm no MNC-basher"), it runs much deeper. The earlier non-Congress governments, according to him, were all quasi-Congress, Vajpayee's is the first example of a genuine anti-Congress government! He also more than shares the nuclear streak and his virulent anti-China stance can even put many confirmed saffronites to shame.

And George has no problem with Hindutva either. "After all we call India Hindustan, so what's wrong with Hindutva?" So runs his wonderfully ahistorical and treacherous argument. He chooses to forget that India had been given the name Hindustan during the Mughal period; that terms like Hindustan, or for that matter Hindustani, the popular linguistic synthesis of Hindi and Urdu, are rooted in the composite culture of India and that the aggressive notion of Hindutva rejects this very historical foundation and reality of modern India!

Tailpiece: The 11th Lok Sabha had a lot of discussion on criminalisation of politics. The special Golden Jubilee session of Parliament had adopted a unanimous resolution against criminalisation. The law of this land however only forbids people convicted in criminal cases from contesting elections and it is common knowledge that criminals, especially political criminals, do not get convicted in our democracy! So on last count the 12th Lok Sabha continues to harbour some 27 criminals of different shades! Disconcertingly visible on the small screen was the presence of the notorious RJD MP from Siwan, Shahabuddin, who sat next to his leader, Laloo Prasad Yadav. The dutiful disciple could always be seen and heard having a roaring lumpen laugh every time his guru opened his mouth. Outside the criminalised portals of Parliament, people could however still be heard demanding justice for Chandrashekhar on the first anniversary of his assassination.

Dipankar Bhattacharya

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