After all the barking so far, has the time finally come for the Left to bite? Is the UPA government entering that closing phase of its tenure when it will force the Left to withdraw support and precipitate early parliamentary elections? Will the Congress, which has suddenly begun to think that it is bound to return to power, become a victim of its own overconfidence, in the way the BJP did in 2004? Overconfidence in an electoral battle often feeds on underestimation of the strength and resolve of one’s rival. Only time will tell whether the Left’s strength will increase or decrease in the next Lok Sabha polls — it is, according to most observers, likely to decrease. However, as far as the Indo-US nuclear deal is concerned, nobody should doubt the Left’s resolve to make good its oft-repeated threat to the UPA leadership that it should choose between the deal and the government. Wishful thinking is an ailment that those in power easily catch. Thus there are many in and around the Congress party who think that the triumvirate of Sonia Gandhi, Dr Manmohan Singh and P. Chidambaram have, with the waiver of farmers’ loans to the tune of Rs 60,000 crore, ensured that Prakash Karat & Co dare not do something as foolhardy as to withdraw support and cause the government to fall. Those who believe that Chidambaram’s budget has tamed Karat know nothing about the mind of the CPM general secretary. He is a man committed to his principles. One may or may not agree with some or all of his principles, but he certainly belongs to that rare breed of contemporary politicians for whom core ideology matters more than being on the right side of the ruling coalition. Therefore, if Dr Manmohan Singh refuses, even at this late stage, to see the writing on the wall and recklessly pushes ahead with the nuclear deal, he should be prepared to see the Left leaders’ delegation heading to Rashtrapati Bhavan to communicate their decision to torpedo his government. If Dr Singh thinks that he must have the deal even at the risk of shortening the life of his own government, history will remember him as the prime minister who flouted parliamentary majority to bind India to a questionable international agreement that weakens India’s national security and strategic autonomy. On the contrary, if wisdom prevails in the Congress camp and Dr Singh is restrained from committing hara-kiri, history will remember Prakash Karat as the man who, more than anyone else, prevented India from succumbing to American pressure. Of course, Dr Singh showed no signs last week of respecting the will of Parliament. He has even tried an audacious trick to win over the BJP to his side by praising Atal Bihari Vajpayee as the “Bhishma Pitamah of Indian politics”. He has appealed to the former prime minister to rise above “narrow” party politics and support the Indo-US nuclear deal. For the first time in the last four years, he has praised Vajpayee. I presume that Sonia Gandhi, who has so far never uttered a word of praise for Vajpayee, must have given her green signal to this crafty strategy to create a rift in the BJP, which has so far staunchly opposed the deal. Who is advising the Congress in this? It is instructive to see what Dr Singh is praising Vajpayee for. He has done so for the latter’s “courageous” steps to foster peace with Pakistan. Kindly note that the praise for Vajpayee is not for what was indeed the most courageous act of his six-year premiership — namely, the NDA government’s decision to conduct nuclear tests at Pokharan in May 1998 and make India a nuclear weapons power. Dr Singh had opposed Vajpayee’s decision at the time in the Rajya Sabha. The Hyde Act, which governs the Indo-US nuclear deal, clearly bars India from conducting any further nuclear tests. It seeks to bring India into the NPT regime. Vajpayee’s courage lay in the fact that he had defied pressure from the US and other global powers to conduct Pokharan II. Hence, as per the plot hatched, Vajpayee is now expected to act according to his “conscience” and support a deal which, as the BJP has rightly said, threatens to undo the legacy of his greatest achievement. In all his four years at the helm of government, Dr Singh has never shown flashes of political leadership. Indeed, he has scrupulously left that job to Sonia Gandhi and remained content with working as the CEO of the government apparatus. In any case, he has never been a professional politician. Therefore, if he has suddenly tried his hand at something as wily as praising Vajpayee and attacking L.K. Advani, one can only surmise that the Congress party is being advised by someone not only to confront the Left but also to make the BJP take a highly embarrassing U-turn on an issue on which it has so far taken a principled, pro-nation stand.
