Commentary/ Mani Shakar Aiyar

Gujral should work on the Left to let the Congress in

Of course, the Congress does not have the numbers to give Gujral a safe majority, but because the Congress cannot come in unless the Left lets them in, whenever - and if ever - the Congress does come in, the Left and the Congress will command between them some 200 seats.

Gujral could then stare down any UF partner attempting to get above its station in life. But will the Left let Gujral let the Congress in? On the face of it - no. On the other hand, the only person in the present Parliament who can bring the Left around is Gujral.

After all, he is almost one of them. And his physical resemblance to Lenin must be reassuring to our comrades whose other icons have crumbled to dust.

But, alas, mere physical resemblance will not persuade the Left. Gujral will have to prove that something of Lenin is left in his thought processes.

His pre-election interview on Doordarshan struck the right note or, should I say, the left note. He had asserted unambiguously that this country could be held together only on the basis of "left-of-centre" policies.

That assertion stands totally belied by his government's first policy decision: the wholesale, uncritical adoption of Chidambaram's budget, the most right-wing budget that any finance minister in 50 years of Independence has dared present the nation.

Chidambaram's budget is the repudiation of everything that Jawaharlal Nehru stood for. That is why the Confederation of Indian Industries is exulting. And that is why Gujral, seeking a vote of confidence from the CII before seeking it from Parliament, is so disturbing. It flatly contradicts his avowed espousal of left-of-centre policies.

Never mind. For a budget is a budget. All its figures are wrong and it will take just about the time the Gujral government will last without the Congress - six months - for the chickens to come to roost.

There is no escaping a supplementary budget this autumn that will drastically alter the direction and content of the Deve Gowda government's economic policy. That would be the time for the real Gujral to stand up.

At the moment, he is under compulsion to adopt Chidambaram's wholly illegitimate baby. Six months down the line, Gujral can insist on his own baby. In doing so, he will have to invoke his second portfolio - minister for national unity.

A CII-led democracy is a contradiction in terms. When the coming crisis arrives, when Chidambaram's figures are revealed to be the fudge they are, Gujral, in re-doing the sums, will have to heed his Nehruvian conscience.

He has already declared that he does not believe in growth without social justice. Chidambaram and his budget epitomise growth without social justice. That is because Chidambaram's role model is Lee Kwan Yew, not Jawaharlal Nehru.

Gujral will either have to become Chidambaram's Goh Kok Cheng - or remain himself, a true Nehruvian. When the imperatives of social justice catch up with him - at the time of the supplementary budget, no later - the Left will rediscover itself.

And Gujral will then have to tell the Left that if right-wing pressures within the cabinet are to be resisted, the only way of doing so without risking the disintegration of his government, would be to allow in the countervailing force of the Congress.

If Gujral fails in persuading the Left to see sense, he will be back in Maharani Bagh before next winter is out. I do not wish to boast - but the seven-year track record of these columns in predicting the eventual outcome, has been dangerously accurate, especially when swimming against the tide of other people's opinion.

But because I am convinced that the real Gujral - as distinct from the ersatz Gujral who is today begging the TMC to come back - is the best prime minister this country can, at this juncture, have.

I hope, I pray, that Gujral will read the writing on the wall (or at least this column) and work on the Left to come in with the Congress into a Gujral-led government.

That will take the country back, in the 50^th year of its Independence, to the moorings from which it has cut itself adrift. That - and that alone - will give us something to celebrate in this golden jubilee year of our freedom.

Gujral must re-establish the continuity of this nation's destiny with the legacy of that great man who first unfurled the flag of freedom from the ramparts of the Red Fort. Jai Hind!

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