The Rediff Special

Missing: The Great Helmsman

The Great Helmsman.

The problem is that that's what is missing - a Great Helmsman.

H D Deve Gowda has many qualities. But vision is not one of them. His relations with one of his closest friends, Chandrababu Naidu, are at their lowest ebb. It is not just Cauvery or floods; Naidu feels he put Deve Gowda in place, and Deve Gowda is not properly grateful for this.

Tensions between Laloo Yadav and H D Deve Gowda are growing. It is only a matter of time before Laloo is deposed from the presidentship of the Janata Dal. Laloo's people say that Deve Gowda toured UP 14 times and the United Front still couldn't form a government there. What does this say about Deve Gowda's crowd-pulling capacity?

The government has no presence among the people. Ministers are known only in their own constituencies, their performance in Parliament is lacklustre.

And Deve Gowda is only a nominal head of the government. Even the CBI, which reports to him, is now a plaything of the courts. Every new crisis the government faces robs it of authority.

And can you really blame Deve Gowda? He has a home minister who says publicly that there is nothing new about the results in Jammu and Kashmir because elections there are rigged routinely. Indrajit Gupta is also on record saying that the army voted in Kashmir.

He has a defence minister who'd rather be chief minister of UP. Deve Gowda ignores the CPI-M's whining. But there will come a point when he won't be able to bear it any more. A minister who sits in Lucknow nearly 25 days in a month, cannot do justice to a ministry as important as the ministry of defence.

And because he is such a creature of pressures and pulls Deve Gowda is beginning to react to prods and nudges, rather than to a thought-through policy. The United Front exposed itself in Gujarat and UP. ''Suresh Mehta was crying hoarse that he wanted to prove his majority on the floor of the House. Instead, you have a parade in Raj Bhavan and let the governor decide who has the majority. And these were the parties shouting from the rooftops about the murder of democracy when Ram Lal did exactly the same thing with Nadendla Bhaskara Rao in Andhra Pradesh,'' said Jagannath Mishra.

Mishra says everyone can't become partisan. ''I am opposed to the BJP. But does that mean I should murder democracy to keep the BJP out?'' he says. The UF leaders have many times in the past raised voices against the misuse of Article 356. However, despite their vocal stand on the issue within four months time, they misused the same Article twice during the crises in UP and Gujarat.

Besides, in UP, adds Mishra, the United Front's manoeuvres to keep the BJP out shows that Deve Gowda has no mind of his own -- that all the moves he makes are under pressure: either from the Congress or the CPI-M.

Even if this is not true, and Deve Gowda does have an agenda for the United Front government, it is so secret that it is known only to him. As far as India is concerned, the trial period of the five-month-old United Front government is over. It may be charged and convicted in this session of Parliament.

Courtesy: Sunday magazine