UP virus at the Centre

What distinguishes the current political scene in Uttar Pradesh is not the sudden spurt in defections, it is the near total separation of ideology from party. The gap between the promises and performance of the politicians and the parties was always there. But it was never so yawning as now. You can fight elections to keep outfit X — be it the Congress or the BJP out of power only to end up sharing power with it. No wonder, the BJP sees a Naresh Agrawal in every Congress MP!

The case of Uttar Pradesh’s former speaker Harischandra Shrivastava, is illustrative. A frequent party hopper, who takes a holy dip in the river Ganges to wash away his sins every time he changes, Shrivastava has flirted with all the three viable political outfits in Uttar Pradesh which have ruled the state since 1991 — Mulayam Singh’s Samajwadi Party, Kalyan Singh’s BJP and Mayawati’s BSP.

If Shrivastava epitomises a typical UP power broker’s amoral hankering for power, United Front MP Ajit Singh demonstrates how fast the UP virus starts infecting the scramble for power in Raisina Hills.

Once a leading light of V.P. Singh’s social justice brigade, Ajit caused a series of splits in the Janata Dal during the 10th Lok Sabha ultimately landing in the Congress lap, with a lucrative Union ministership as his prize.

The moment the Congress lost power, Ajit left it and floated his own Bharatiya Kisan Kamgar Party to join the new ruling bandwagon of the United Front. His rediscovered hatred of Mulayam Singh indicates that he is looking for greener pastures once again.

Shrivastava and Ajit Singh are today not exceptions to a rule. Together, they have codified a new rule. When defector-made-minister Naresh Agrawal expresses his concern for political stability and development of UP or when youthful Congress MP Satyajitsinh Gaekwad says he doesn’t want to impose the burden of yet another election on the poor people of India, they speak in the same voice. The only difference is Naresh got an opportunity in UP and grabbed it, while Gaekwad is simply waiting in the wings.

Ironically, it is the Congress and the social justice parties like the Janata Dal and the Samajwadi Party — which are on the receiving end of the defection game today which started it.

In Uttar Pradesh, for instance, Mulayam split the Janata Dal in November 1990 to rule the state with Congress support. After a period of hibernation between 1991 and 1993, when V.P. Singh’s Janata Dal continues to split, Mulayam causes splits in the CPI, the Janata Dal and the BSP — all his one-time allies — in a desperate bid to convert his legislative minority into majority.

His fellow-traveller Laloo Yadav had done the same earlier, when he converted his 1990 minority into a legislative majority in the state assembly by splitting the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, the CPI and the IPF in Bihar.

The defection bazar in UP remained abuzz till the last day, when a large chunk of around 40 of the remaining 53 and odd BSP MLAs hurriedly summoned a press conference hours before Governor Motilal Vora dissolved the state assembly to say that they backed Mulayam’s claim to form a government in UP.

Mayawati disputed their claim later, but the defections would have been completed had Vora not dissolved the assembly the same day but given Mulayam a chance to prove his majority.

While Mulayam and Laloo were up to their tricks in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, a wisened P.V. Narasimha Rao was doing it on the sly in Delhi. He started by breaking the Telugu Desam Party in March 1992 when the Lok Sabha was to take up the no-confidence motion against him. Six of the 18 TDP MPs led by B. Vijaykumar Raju broke away to support Rao’s new economic initiative.

The second major split in the last Lok Sabha once again occurred on the eve of another no-confidence motion against the Rao government in July 1992 when the speaker recognised 20 JD MPs, including 16 expelled from the party in two installments, as a separate group. Six of this group later formally joined the Congress under Ram Lakhan Yadav, soon to be rewarded with a berth in the Cabinet.

The JMM MPs were also persuaded to vote for the Government the same day as part of a deal which is now being scrutinised by the judiciary in the infamous JMM bribery cases with the likes of Rao and Ajit Singh in the docks.The fractured verdict of 1996 Lok Sabha polls provided an ideal hunting ground for the new breed of political mercenaries. In Lok Sabha, the Janata Dal continued to fragment, starting with Ram Krishna Hegde’s expulsion and splitting vertically when Laloo Yadav walked out to form his own RJD.

Smaller UF outfits like the Congress (T) virtually evaporated with the return of N.D. Tiwari and Madhavrao Scindia to the parent organisation.

Manipulation of an artificial majority in the legislatures had become an established practice by this time. The BJP, which had used the trick to upstage Mulayam by propping up a minority Mayawati in government in UP in 1995, itself became a victim in Gujarat when Shankarsinh Vaghela split it to become the Chief Minister with the Congress support.

Today, like the Mark II version of the UF government at the Centre under Prime Minister I.K. Gujral, the second edition of Vaghela’s RJP government under the new Chief Minister Dilip Parikh is surviving on a day-to-day lease.In UP, having rewarded each and every defector with a berth in his ministry, Chief Minister Kalyan Singh may think he is on a good wicket. But the simmering resentment among a section of original’ BJP men and the ever increasing demands of the neo-converts make the ground on which he walks slippery.

What is worse, there is little chance that things will change — either in UP or at the Centre. Another election will bring through another hung legislature at both places.

This will give added inducement to the country’s political class, which has now started treating the legislature as the general body of the shareholders of a private company. Instead of representative institutions for policy making, the legislatures are only needed to endorse the installation and continuance of a government. After this, the government functions as the Board of Directors of a company — theoretically accountable to but practically unbridled by the concerns of those who form its primary units.