Commentary/Mani Shankar Aiyar
How can anyone trust in the objectivity of a prime minister who,
as chief minister a bare nine months ago, retorts 'Not a drop
more' to farmers of a neighbouring state losing their winter
crop for lack of water in the Cauvery? And how can anyone
trust in the fairplay of a CM-turned-PM who thinks it witty to
riposte that Karnataka does not build dams to supply Tamil Nadu
with water?
And now can anyone expect justice from a CM who, the
moment he becomes PM, smuggles Rs 20 billion to dam the waters
of the Krishna from entering Andhra Pradesh from Karnataka in
the guise of an Accelerated Irrigation Benefit Programme under
which no irrigation project anywhere in India is going to receive
a tithe of the benefit which Karnataka's CM in Delhi has gifted
to Karnataka's CM in Bangalore? Does it surprise you that the
gentleman protesteth too much?
And having slipped up on this disingenuous sleight of hand, what
alternative has Deve Gowda got but to proclaim to the gullible
on Independence Day that he is the prime minister of India, not
the chief minister of Karnataka? The people of India, beginning
with the people of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, do not believe
him; and if the people of Karnataka ever thought that statement
really represented his policies, that would be the end of his
political career in Karnataka. Hence this politics of dissimulation
being paraded as the management of contradictions. This is the
prime ministership of a Dead Man Walking.
It is this dilemma which is at the heart of the larger question
of regional satraps cobbling together a national government. If
they sacrifice their national outlook to their regional compulsions,
the nation loses. And if they sacrifice their regional compulsions
to their 'national outlook', they lose their regional identity
and hence their regional base. And so the chief ministers of
distant West Bengal and remote Assam are asked to do what the
prime minister, but for his Kannadiga origins, would have been
required to do vis-a-vis his home state and Andhra Pradesh or
between his home state and Tamil Nadu.
Do you think even a Narasimha
Rao would have had to face such a crisis of credibility, such
a humiliating confession of no-confidence?
A hundred days of this coalition of country bumpkins has shown
- for those who care to see (and I confess that many, perhaps
most of my peers don't see or don't want to see) - that the country
needs the national outlook of a national party at the helm of
the nation if the national interest is to take precedence over
the regional interest. The next crisis will come when the AGP,
having been authorised so thoughtlessly to negotiate with the
ULFA without preconditions, places its demands. Who will then
sort out the mess? A technical committee of the DMK and the LTTE?
So far, Deve Gowda's problems give cause only for amusement; soon,
they will give cause for concern. Before that tragedy overtakes
the nation, we must find some way of returning, at least in some
measure, to that happy day when even a Charan Singh could be trusted
to place the national good above the regional imperative.
There is but one ray of hope in this enveloping gloom. I suggest
the prime minister give up his Hindi lessons. He is not going
to be required to make another speech from the ramparts of the
Red Fort. One of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse will take
over from him long before the nation celebrates the 50th anniversary
of its Independence.
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