The Praful Bidwai Column
Nuking democracy to win votes
INDIA'S United Progressive Alliance won the confidence motion in parliament, but lost credibility in society. It has grievously damaged democracy by weakening the people's trust in its integrity. This harm will prove more enduring than the UPA's temporary gains.
During the vote run-up -- one of the worst periods of cynical manipulation in India's history -- every fear that the democratic process would be defiled and subverted came true. MPs were offered ministerial berths, election tickets, new states/districts, and cash.
The most nauseating episode was the display of Rs. 1 crore in banknotes by three BJP MPs, who claimed they were bribed by Samajwadi Party General Secretary Amar Singh to secure their abstention.
The Bharatiya Janata Party is trying to exploit this by playing the innocent victim of manipulation, of the kind Mr. Amar Singh is known for. But on credible accounts, they too played dirty. One of its three MPs was unhappy because he'd lose his constituency to delimitation.
He was then approached by the SP, unaware that he had already made up with the BJP. He deviously set up not a sting, but an entrapment operation, roping in two other BJP MPs.
Then, the BJP's dirty tricks department took over. The three MPs, with a tainted history, deceived the SP. The SP offered them Rs. 9 crores, and delivered Rs. 1 crore.
Whatever the finer details, there's no doubt that the SP bribed them. It's equally incontrovertible that they accepted the bribe, and were as culpable for it as the bribers for this illegal act.
The BJP was as Machiavellian as the SP. It also involved a television channel in the entrapment. (The channel didn't air the footage. But this doesn't condone its collusion.)
The BJP is adopting a holier-than-thou posture. But what is its credibility? Eight of its MPs defied its whip while taking bribes. So much for this "party with a difference!"
The BJP also bribed defectors from other parties. And so did the UPA-SP combined.
In fact, the whole premise underlying the UPA-SP's efforts to manufacture a majority was that it could engineer defections/abstentions. Triggering cross-voting was essential to the strategy of the UPA-SP, the BJP, and the BSP.
Finally, the UPA-SP won 275 to 256. Had all "rebel" MPs obeyed their respective party whips, the motion would have been defeated 261 to 277.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was fully aware of the indispensable need to use defections to win the confidence vote. He allowed or encouraged his colleagues to play dirty.
The confidence vote showed up the degeneration of most parties -- with few exceptions barring the Left. The degeneration lies not just in the votes' unprincipled character, but in their non-representative nature. Party-based democracy isn't about individual choice, but about structured decisions, which are representative because they refer to party positions.
The vote saw democracy diminished from government based on the people's will to a system of power without legitimacy or purpose. This only shows that India has failed to build a democracy based on robust conventions and norms that outlaw the buying of legislators and discourage the rule of money and muscle-power.
The episode has set India's democracy back by a decade, if not more.
It also witnessed three disconcerting trends. Firstly, all the major alliances that will drive Indian politics in the near future are unprincipled and opportunistic. True, all cross-party coalitions involve compromises on policies, programs and priorities. But they needn't be as completely devoid of content as, say, the present Congress-SP arrangement, or that between the BSP and what's left of the UNPA. Even the UNPA, a loose coalition of regional parties, had a distinct political identity until the SP deserted it. Yet more programmatically cohesive was the UPA-Left arrangement.
But that's now history. In his anxiety to be free of the constraints the Left imposes on the Centre-Right Congress, Prime Minister Singh has hitched his party to the SP with which the Congress has nothing in common. Similarly, the UNPA has tied up with the BSP and elevated Ms. Mayawati to a secular progressive heroine -- a complete myth. This will blur lines of political demarcation and result in the BJP becoming disproportionately important as a party with a distinct identity. This doesn't bode well for political diversity and plurality, which are essential in a one-billion-plus country. India's numerous political subcultures must not become subsumed under a couple of blocs.
Secondly, the Congress has fatefully decided to ditch the Left for a party that has pronounced pro-big business policies and is deeply compromised with the Sangh Parivar. This will spur the Congress to move rightwards and alienate it further from the poor.
Already, corporations are salivating at the prospect of right-wing policy shifts in health, education, insurance, banking and organised retail.
This is likely to accelerate the Congress' decline as a broadly centrist coalition of social groups -- from Dalits and Adivasis to Muslims, Sikhs and Christians -- as has happened before in the early 1990s and in 2004. This shrinking of the centre-left space doesn't augur well for democracy.
Lastly, the Left has gravitated towards supporting Ms. Mayawati as a future prime ministerial candidate. This ignores her narrow agenda, spectacular opportunism, and corruption. By retreating from principle, and by hobnobbing with tainted politicians, the Left can only lose the high moral ground it occupies because of its probity and pro-people policies.
The Left is unlikely to regain in the short run the political leverage it enjoyed with the UPA -- even if it retains its 59 Lok Sabha seats, an all-time record. The BSP/UNPA won't be even half as amenable to Left influence as the UPA. After all, the UPA came to power on a secular, pro-equity platform -- and through strong popular rejection of the BJP.
If the Left's parliamentary representation decreases, as seems likely, its moral-political weight and influence will decline rapidly. That too is bad news for the prospect of an inclusive, participatory democracy aiming at popular empowerment.
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