An experiment to watch

Whether and how the non-BJP front will work is what makes it an interesting exercise to watch. Future alignments of parties may depend on the lesson they learn in the state. The UP pattern may come to be adopted for all India purposes, that is, the composition of another assorted front on the lines of the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) of 24 parties.

Without doubt, the Congress will be the one to decide whether such a front comes into being and in what form. The party counts because it has support in UP and elsewhere in the country. However, the party's dilemma is how far it can travel with Mulayam Singh, who heads the coalition. He is the same person who deflected Congress president Sonia Gandhi's claim to form the government at the centre five years ago.

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When asked by the President of India to give the names of her supporters, Sonia Gandhi could not produce the magic figure of 272 in the 545-member Lok Sabha. Mulayam Singh did not support her at that time although he had assured the CPI (M) to deliver the votes of his Samajwadi Party to the Congress. He wanted a share in the government. It looked like asking for the pound of flesh when Sonia Gandhi was only a few steps from the oath-taking rostrum.

Where does Mulayam Singh stand now? Is he deferent to the Congress because he needs its support? Has he accepted its leadership in the next Lok Sabha? Or is he expecting to emerge as a key factor? These are the reasons why the UP experiment assumes importance.

When the Congress allowed Mulayam Singh to include its members to prove his majority to the governor, the party seemed to indicate that it was willing to forgive him for what he did. Still it is obvious that Mulayam Singh has promised something in return. It may be his party's support to the Congress if and when Sonia Gandhi lays her claim to form the government at New Delhi.

In fact, the change is in the Congress' thinking. It has come to realise that a coalition of parties alone can have a majority in the Lok Sabha. The support to Mulayam Singh is the first indication of its inference that the party cannot go it alone. Probably it is testing waters of an overall understanding among the non-BJP parties before taking the plunge. The

Congress believes that Mulayam Singh in UP, Laloo Yadav in Bihar and possibly the DMK in Tamil Nadu, along with the communists, can consolidate the anti-BJP vote. It looks as if the parties will fight elections on their own symbol and may coalesce after the results..

The real predicament of the Congress is how to keep its lines with Mayawati open. It apprehends problems with Mulayam Singh because he will go hammer and tongs after her. Personal feuds between the two have made UP an arena of crime and corruption. He, like Mayawati, may use the government machinery to settle personal scores.

Many in the Congress have a feeling that it can capture a majority of the Lok Sabha seats in the state if they prefer Mayawati to Mulayam Singh. She had reportedly offered 48 seats to the BJP when she, as its ally, had discussed an alliance for the Lok Sabha polls. Her BSP is the only party which can transfer the dalit vote to any candidate in most states in northern India.

The UP experiment also suggests that political parties, however small, can be wooed. Take the NDA itself. Some of its constituents are secular in their thinking but have joined the BJP-led government because they want to be in power. Samata Party's George Fernandes, who was present at the oath-taking ceremony of Mulayam Singh, is one example. Ram Manohar Lohia, his leader of Socialist Party days, used to tell him: George, your problem was that you could not live without power.

Another thought tormenting the Congress is the message the alliance with Mulayam Singh will send. Togetherness cannot be at the expense of everything else. So say Kamal Nath and Salman Khurshid, the two Congress leaders. They have warned Sonia Gandhi that the support to Mulayam Singh may criminalise politics to the hilt.

Mulayam Singh's response can be judged from the first order he gave after being sworn in. He released Raja Bhaiyya, a person with a criminal past. Mulayam Singh also rolled out the red carpet for Akhilesh Singh, carrying a reward of Rs.10,000 on his head. Another absconder, Yeshwant Singh, is Mulayam's man on the strategy to win more MLAs.

But then the BSP-BJP government has no face to criticise Mulayam Singh because it was as thick as thieves with unsocial elements of the worst type. It was no secret that Mawayati's government was oozing with corruption. She had a machine, like in banks, to count currency notes. But her politics was confined to the dalits. Criminals from the upper castes presented no problem because they were grist to her mill.

Unfortunately the Indian politics is so caste-ridden that Mayawati may get away with her corruption and crudeness. All that she has to do is to play with the emotions of dalits while heaping the blame on the upper castes. She has already begun doing that. To the CBI, which questioned her on the Taj Heritage corridor, she reportedly said that the bureaucracy controlled by the upper castes had framed her. Once she came to know that about the clinching evidence against her, she broke the alliance with the BJP, a party of upper castes, as she puts it.

The BJP is the worst sufferer. It will take it long to rehabilitate itself. Never before has a political party lost so much for so little. This realisation may have been one reason why it did not want the dissolution of the state assembly, although the central government was waiting for the green signal. It would have meant immediate elections for which the party is not prepared yet. The BJP wanted Mulayam Singh's rule for another reason: it believed that the contradictions of the alliance would bring it down.

The BJP does not regret so much the absence of power as the loss of alliance with Mayawati. Her BSP averages 20 per cent votes in most Hindi-speaking states. The BJP is constantly tormented over the prospect of losing the dalit vote, first in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh and Delhi and then in the Lok Sabha next year.

The rift between the BJP and the BSP helps Mulayam Singh. But this advantage can go away if MLAs with criminal background are seen in the government or other positions. Mulayam Singh may still have the government but can lose the people, who want a break from past corrupt administration. Can he hold the flock together without dangling the carrot? That is the reason why the UP experiment will be worth watching.

Kuldip Nayar is an eminent Indian columnist.