COVER STORY

COMBATIVE MOOD

Even as the Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies celebrate the completion of a year in power at the Centre, the Opposition is in combat mode.

SUKUMAR MURALIDHARAN
SUDHA MAHALINGAM
in New Delhi

AT the moment when the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Government was at its most vulnerable following a series of electoral routs in the northern region, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee sought to make a fresh affirmation of purpose. He said little, but his actions were those of a man intent on frontally challenging those who had supposedly hobbled him from within, blunting his administrative will. In this sense, the Assembly elections of November 1998 constitute a distinct point of inflection in the year-long career of the Vajpayee Government, a point when a record of ineptitude and drift was seemingly transformed into a sequence of assertive and purposive actions.

One of Vajpayee's statements of affirmation against the hard-core elements who resisted any departure from the orthodox agenda was to appoint Pramod Mahajan to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. As unorthodox as they come, Mahajan had handled the sensitive aftermath of the Pokhran nuclear tests as a Cabinet-ranking Adviser in the Prime Minister's Office. His ability to transform every situation into adversity had been evident then, prompting a brief banishment into obscurity. Mahajan's track record made his rehabilitation in the Union Cabinet a risky proposition. And in resorting to this gamble, Vajpayee was unmistakably raising the stakes in his simmering conflict with hardline elements within his party.

SHANKER CHAKRAVARTY
Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee receives a bouquet from supporters on March 19, when the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Government completed a year in office. The "anniversary week" proved tumultuous for the Government, with a newly invigorated Opposition pillorying it on several fronts.

Mahajan has, by all accounts, since taken on the job of the Principal Information Officer of the Government, appropriating for himself the functions that are routinely performed by that particular official. He has also successfully managed to make broadcasting policy an opaque commodity, reversing the limited gains made by the United Front regime in the matter and providing ample evidence in every statement of hidden motivations.

It is not known how far the hardline element within the BJP would have endorsed the spirit of the celebrations that Mahajan organised on March 19 to mark the completion of a year in office of the Vajpayee Government. But aside from the speculation surrounding the identities of those who participated and those who stayed away from it, the show was a predictable farce. The Bomb, and the bus to Lahore, were advertised as the principal achievements of the year gone by, culminating in a whirl of song and dance. Five millennia of Indian history was compressed into two hours, after which the most glittering symbols of the BJP epoch were to be put on display. Subtle and figurative representation being an art form that the BJP is innocent of, a deafening detonation was set off at the venue of the performance, symbolising the Pokhran nuclear tests. Following this, the bus to Lahore was trundled onstage, to great public bemusement, causing the platform that had been constructed at Delhi's Hauz Khas monument to buckle under its weight. What had been projected as a grand spectacle had made the transition from exultant celebration to fiasco in little time.

ANU PUSHKARNA
Former Chief of the Navy Staff Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat. The Government's effort to evade a debate on his dismissal on the ground that the matter involved national security issues has strengthened suspicions that it has much to hide in the matter.

FARCICAL - that was a word that found numerous applications in the week leading up to the anniversary celebrations. Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha chose that characterisation for the debate that had taken place in the Rajya Sabha on the irregularities under his charge that a disgruntled understudy had blown the whistle on. But ironically, his effort to put a relatively inoffensive construction on these activities itself acquired unmistakably farcical colours.

It was a tumultuous anniversary week for Vajpayee. Parliament remained paralysed for extended lengths of time. When not putting the Government on the mat on the allegations of rampant financial malfeasance raised by Mohan Guruswamy, former Adviser to the Finance Minister, the Opposition was turning the heat on the dismissal of Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat (story on Page 17). Having held its fire for long, in part because it was undergoing a process of adjusting and realigning its internal equations, the Opposition in the Budget session has mounted a challenge that the Vajpayee Government may not be able to deflect easily.

SHANKER CHAKRAVARTY
Congress(I) president Sonia Gandhi. Having held its fire for long, in part because it was undergoing a process of adjusting and realigning its internal equations, the Opposition has mounted a challenge that the Vajpayee Government may not be able to deflect easily.

The points raised by Guruswamy indicate not merely that the Vajpayee Government is riven by divergent perceptions of policy, but also by differences over which business lobbies should be extended patronage. Although often spoken about, the differences between Vajpayee and Union Home Minister L.K. Advani were not really identifiable, aside from certain rather inchoate notions of policy differences. Guruswamy now seems to indicate that in part the discord stems from rival agendas of patronage. Irrespective of the substantive action, if any, that emerges from the Guruswamy allegations, their immediate impact has been a dramatic erosion of the moral authority of the BJP's two top leaders.

The Finance Minister did not help his party's cause by his manifest ineptitude in Parliament. In seeking to explain the undue interest he had in inducing the Unit Trust of India (UTI) to dump its holding in a major Indian tobacco company, he produced a letter which he claimed had been signed by 40 MPs, advocating precisely such a course. The intention, he said, was not to provide an overseas tobacco company with the opportunity to buy up a controlling interest in the Indian firm, but to enable the UTI to generate the liquid cash necessary to restore the viability of some of its investment programmes.

On being questioned about the authenticity of the letter, Yashwant Sinha faltered. He admitted to being unsure about the identity of the MPs who had signed the letter, since the one member he named lost no time in disclaiming it. He blundered further on the dates when he claimed to have received the letter on March 5, long after Guruswamy's exit.

Similar internal contradictions were evident in Yashwant Sinha's effort to explain away the charge of doctored steel prices. As for the evidence that public sector financial institutions had been seriously over-exposed in lending to the steel industry, Yashwant Sinha denied all responsibility, claiming that the lenders had full discretion without any interference from his Ministry.

There is little prospect that the Guruswamy allegations will vanish in the near future. The Lok Sabha is scheduled to take them up when Parliament convenes after its mid-session recess. And if Yashwant Sinha's performance in the Rajya Sabha is an index of the depth of his conviction, then he is unlikely to escape unscathed from the Lok Sabha.

AS the anniversary week wore on, Guruswamy was relegated to the secondary position among the problem areas for Vajpayee. By far the more serious threat to its internal stability and cohesion comes from Defence Minister George Fernandes' maladroit effort to evade a debate on the dismissal of Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat from his naval command. The plea of national security that he has all too readily proffered has done little to assuage well-founded suspicions that the Government has much to hide in the matter.

Bhagwat and Guruswamy have provided the ammunition for a newly invigorated Opposition to pillory the Government. But there have been areas of partial concord between the Treasury and Opposition benches. A notable success for the Government was the passage of the Indian Patents Act (Amendment) Bill in Parliament - a feat that had defied every incumbent government since 1995. The BJP had plunged into its adventure in Bihar, promulgating President's Rule in the State in the belief that the Congress(I) would lend it sustenance in the task of winning the endorsement of Parliament. That was not to be. But in economic policy, it looks increasingly likely that the Congress(I) will be a tacit ally of the Vajpayee Government.

P.V. SIVAKUMAR
Mohan Guruswamy, former adviser to Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha. His allegations indicate that the Government is riven by divergent perceptions of policy and differences over which business lobbies should be extended patronage.

This rather strange new configuration of forces was reflected in the passage of the Patents Act, to the evident displeasure of the Left Opposition. In the rush to the finish line, the Government was disinclined even to consider a serious effort by the Law Commission to modify the amendment bill so that it would incorporate a few additional safeguards against abuse, while remaining in compliance with World Trade Organisation (WTO) obligations. Successive governments had laboured in vain to get the bill passed through Parliament. And when opportunity finally beckoned in the shape of a contingent alliance with the Congress(I), the BJP-led Government was not about to be delayed by subtle nuances.

The move to bring foreign equity participation into the insurance sector is likely to gain fresh momentum with a Parliamentary Standing Committee having recently submitted its recommendations. The committee has suggested, among a few more cosmetic changes, that the foreign equity permitted in insurance should not exceed 26 per cent under any circumstances. This is a notable retreat from the bill that was introduced in Parliament in its winter session which provided for up to 40 per cent equity. The proviso then was that 26 per cent could be held by the foreign promoter and another 14 per cent by non-resident Indians or foreign institutional investors. This in turn was a desperate concession to stem a virtual rebellion within the BJP following the earlier decision to liberalise the rules for participation in the insurance industry. The compromise had then won the acceptance of the recalcitrant leadership of the swadeshi lobby within the BJP, though in grudging fashion. The further retreat is a signal that the truce was far from secure.

The new formula proposed by the Standing Committee has been accepted by the Union Cabinet. The bill, appropriately modified, is likely to be introduced in Parliament shortly after it reconvenes. It will encounter few problems in its passage, since the Congress(I) is today showing few qualms about supporting the BJP in its efforts to further the agenda of liberalisation that began under the P.V. Narasimha Rao regime. The problem, rather, is likely to arise from hardline elements within the BJP itself.

THE advocates of the swadeshi plan within the BJP are lying low for the moment. Their last upsurge of activism was in December, when the Government was already reeling under the impact of the November 1998 election rout. Alarmed at the conjunction with a renewed phase of discord within, the top leadership of the Sangh Parivar had managed to persuade the recalcitrant elements to hold their fire. Between acceding to the demands of economic liberalisation and witnessing the collapse of the Vajpayee Government, the latter, they were told, was by far the greater evil.

Perceptions within the Sangh leadership now are that Vajpayee utilised this rather conditional reprieve with undue alacrity, both to consolidate his position and marginalise the alternative viewpoints. The hardline elements intend soon to resume their campaign for a restoration of the traditional verities of the Sangh ideology.

Religious conversions are an issue on which pressure is likely to be mounted. It is an especially vulnerable point for the Vajpayee Government, which has just managed to win a brief respite from the wave of public outrage that followed the grisly murder of the Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two young sons in Orissa (Frontline, February 12). The judicial commission that was appointed under a sitting Judge of the Supreme Court recently came out with a scathing indictment of the Union Government for its obstructive and non-cooperative manner. It was a chastening experience for the Union Government, which had branded the Staines killing as an international conspiracy and appointed the judicial commission of inquiry as a demonstration of its confidence that none from the extended ideological fraternity of the Sangh was involved in it.

P.V. SIVAKUMAR
Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha. His inept handling in Parliament of matters in respect of which allegations had been made against the Government did not help BJP's cause.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's intention to restore the issue of religious conversions to centrality is not good news for the Government. Neither is its resolve to step up the resistance to the agenda of economic liberalisation. The contingent alliance with the Congress(I) on economic policy is, in this sense, likely to be a mixed blessing for the BJP leadership. It is only likely to raise the pitch of confrontation with its own ideological overseers in the RSS, imparting an additional degree of virulence to the final confrontation when it comes.

VITAL areas of legislative business have fallen into benign neglect as a consequence of the Vajpayee Government's multiplying preoccupations. The Supreme Court-ordained bill to endow the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) with statutory powers and the authority to oversee the functioning of the principal investigative agencies, failed to make it to the Rajya Sabha after its passage in the Lok Sabha. This was a consequence of the BJP's obstreperous attitude in the Upper House and its refusal to accept reasonable terms to discuss the dismissal of Admiral Bhagwat. The immediate consequence is that the CVC, which has been exercising its statutory powers on the strength of an ordinance, will cease to exist in its current form on April 4.

An element of mutual convenience of the main political players is evident in the failure of the CVC bill to obtain passage. Vulnerable politicians are not over-keen to have an ombudsman overseeing their financial dealings. But their sense of complacence may be misplaced. Anil Divan, amicus curiae (friend of court) in the Supreme Court in a batch of cases involving high-level corruption, points out that the ruling of the highest court is very clear - its verdict will set the parameters of the functioning of the CVC in the interregnum till Parliament passes the necessary legislation.

Parliamentary inaction, in other words, is not a viable strategy for politicians keen to evade public scrutiny and accountability. For a ruling party that has lost its two principal claims to eminence - its special attention to national security and its deep concern for probity in public life - this cannot be very good news.

SAVITA KIRLOSKAR / REUTERS
Congress(I) activists with an effigy of George Fernandes at a demonstration in Mumbai on March 19 to demand the resignation of the Defence Minister in the light of the allegations made against him by Admiral Bhagwat.

ONE year into its tenure, the Vajpayee Government is, in its own public declarations, discovering a new sense of purpose and cohesiveness. This claim is illusory for a number of reasons. The relentless needling from the BJP's allies has probably abated temporarily. Recalcitrant elements have been either appeased - as with Jayalalitha in Tamil Nadu - or dissuaded from pressing any further demands by the absence of options, as with Mamata Banerjee's Trinamul Congress. But the epicentre of the disturbances has only shifted to the inner councils of the BJP. And the Opposition is unlikely to provide the ruling coalition with the leeway to allow the inner turmoil to subside of its own.

Bus, Bihar and Budget - in the alliterative exertions of L.K. Advani, the BJP's newfound equanimity is founded upon these three events. In the fortnight following this formulation, the influence of all three factors has begun decidedly to wane. The Opposition today is in a combative mood - a mood that has manifested itself in rather subtle ways for now but may well be running deep. And quite apart from the ideological rifts, the BJP is in deep disquiet by the disingenuous and clumsy handling of the Bhagwat affair, by the licence that has been issued to Defence Minister George Fernandes to run riot over sensitive matters of national security. This matter is likely to provide the main focus for the Opposition offensive in the remaining half of the Budget session. But the battlefield could soon widen to take in a record of governance that remains among the most dismal in the last many years.