Muslim India

Sunday, May 03, 2009

Why CPI (M) is better placed than Congress or BJP to lead a stable coalition at the center and secure India?

The times have changed. No single party, whether they call itself, national or regional, can on their own get a majority in the Parliamentary elections to form a government of its own. And the way, coalition partners of UPA and NDA has gained in their respective constituencies; it is natural that they would bargain to get the best positioning with their share of contribution of seats to the central coalition.

Compared to Congress, BJP is more pliable to accede to the demands of its prospective coalition partners, but it has such a checkered record of its ideological excesses, that it has lost trust of even its old allies.

Congress under Manmohan Singh is run like a dictatorship imposed on the coalition. Manmohan Singh, a widely believed choice of the USA, maneuvered into the post of Prime Ministership, with hardly any sense of accountability to the people of India, however much he may assume that he is working for the best of his country. His democratic credentials are highly questionable, both, at electoral level and at the executive level, with his haughty style of working with keeping all his moves to himself with the steely notion that he is not answerable to anybody; least to his coalition partners.

He has an Idea of India and he has every right to have an Idea of India, just like any other citizen of India. But at his level, he has to share his views with his partners, his people at large and only after getting their full consensus he can make major changes in the direction in which he proposes to take his country along.

He has miserably failed in that quarter and with his public spate with the Left and even Right, he has become a big liability to any coalition, be that Congress, BJP or Third Front. He had been a career bureaucrat and like all bureaucrats, he loves to be left untouched, unquestioned and unaccountable in his private domain. That cannot win friends and influence people.

On the other hand, his party, The Indian National Congress was gripped with sudden panic of being left in the lurch in 2009 elections and had gambled to get its old glory by going it alone without seat sharing arrangements with any of its UPA partners.

It had no time to realise that in each of the state in which it is pitting its candidates against its potential coalition partners, it is getting the kind of reputation that it could have better avoided in these days of coalition politics. In each state, the feeling of sons of soil is getting heightened mainly due to the callous and insensitive handling by the so-called ‘National Political Parties’. The general feeling is that the High Command does no know what is best. The logical conclusion is for the regionals to be allowed to stake their claim on a national government, without becoming a vassal to the so-called ‘National Parties’.

With such a scenario now unfolding, CPI (M) is the only party that could find common ground with other secular regionals, without becoming a threat to them in their respective state. It may suit CPI (M) to remain confined to the state it is ruling and leave the entire country to its potential coalition partners. At the center it will have to rule by consensus.  A public commitment by CPI (M) would ensure that people will start evaluating the gains that they will enjoy by getting the Third Front into the saddle.

This will eventually shift the national focus from secularism v/s communalism to issues of welfare and development, so dear to the people within their own immediate enclave of existence. If Dilli door ast, let Delhi be far!

Besides, CPI(M) has the best credentials to protect the nation from the dangers from the north, without getting under the yoke of US/UK/Israel axis.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com

www.ghulammuhammed.wordpress.com