Commentary/Mani Shankar Aiyar

Basu should know the CPI-M's blind anti-Congressism is costing India dear

There never has been, nor will there evermore be, a more heartfelt tribute to Mani-Talk than Comrade Jyoti Basu's New Year's day mea culpa, weeks after the publication of If only Jyotibabu had not demurred... It really is white of the comrade (or do I mean red?) to concede my argument that in refusing to let him lead the UF government, the CPI-M had committed a monumental blunder that has cost the country -- and the CPI-M -- dear.

Unfortunately, however, that is not enough. For Jyoti Basu still fights shy of also conceding that the blind anti-Congressism of the CPI-M is costing the country -- and the CPI-M -- even dearer.

There are two basic reasons which led the CPI-M to their foolish decision last May. One is that the CPI-M would not have been in control of the other UF constituents. The other is that even with Jyoti Basu as prime minister, the UF government would have been wholly dependent on the Congress for continuance in office.

The CPI-M knows how to tackle refractory junior partners. It might, therefore, have got away with playing off the DMK against the TMC or Laloo against Ram Vilas -- or whatever it takes to keep the kind of coalitions going that have been running West Bengal since 1977.

What neither Jyoti Basu nor the CPI-M has any experience of is running a coalition which falls short of being a hegemonistic CPI-M outfit. Hence their inhibitions about becoming a partner in any sense with the Congress, even a Congress that would remain outside the government but on whose support the government would survive.

What happens to the Deve Gowda government on account of its failure to rope in the CPI-M is of no interest to anyone but, of course, poor Deve Gowda himself. Even someone less prescient than Jyoti Basu can see that it is but a matter of days before Deve Gowda passes out of the joke-books and into history. The point is -- what then?

Three alternative scenarios present themselves: one is of the UF government continuing sans Deve Gowda but with Jyoti Basu as PM. The second is of a Congress-led coalition. The third is an election followed, in all probability, by the need -- once again -- to put together a coalition of secular forces to keep the BJP out.

What Jyoti Basu and the CPI-M now need to do is less breast-beating about what they should or should not have done last May and more about what they are going to do in any one of the three alternative scenarios that are already emerging over the horizon.

First, a UF government without Deve Gowda. Clearly, the best alternative leader, indeed the only one with any credibility, remains Jyoti Basu. If Deve Gowda goes, only to be replaced by Laloo or Mulayam or Paswan or Chandrababu Naidu or Karunanidhi or Chidambaram or Moopanar (the alternatives are deliciously hilarious!), the inherent instability would persist of a hydra-headed coalition with no obvious leader and no failure mechanism of policy harmonisation or damage control.

It would be a stop-gap arrangement which would harm the country and leave it quite as vulnerable to sudden death six months from now as the Deve Gowda government has rendered itself within six months of assuming office. The blunder of May '96 would thus continue. Deve Gowda in -- or Deve Gowda out -- is no answer to the problem of Left in -- or Left out.

On the other hand, all the objections which the CPI-M had in May to becoming part of a rickety coalition over which they have no hegemony, and vulnerable as ever to the Congress, would remain in regard to the option of Jyoti Basu becoming Head Hydra.