bjp panic


	Political earthquake Shakes BJP Govt Oasis A codenamefor milking workers funds to quench the greed of Big Business Football Calcutta no longer the Mecca.

It all may have started with a tea party, but it is much more than what the proverbial "storm in a teacup" suggests. The events in the last three or four days have unnerved the BJP as never before.

Only last week the BJP was busy celebrating one year of its stint in the government and posing as if this, in itself, was a big "achievement." Despite the mess the economy is in, despite the skyrocketing prices in open market, despite the recent hikes in PDS ration prices, urea prices etc, despite the new hikes in telephone rates recently announced, despite the recent patent amendment that threatens to worsen the people's life beyond measure, and despite all the attacks on minorities, national unity, secularism and our federal polity, print and electronic media were being manipulated to project as if the government has gone beyond all limits to take "pro-people" measures in this one year. But now events seem to have burst its balloon.

Of course the BJP leaders are still resorting to the bravado that there is no threat to their government from any quarter whatsoever. But the fact is that a single tea party has shaken them to the core of their being. Nobody is sure, least of all the BJP leaders themselves, as to when their government would breathe its last. While The Indian Express sees the BJP-led government "in hot water," according to The Times of India editorial on March 31, "Speculation regarding the possibility of the guest profile transforming into the building blocks of a future non-BJP government..... has shot up the capital's political mercury."

This should not surprise anyone however. The contradictions of the hotch-potch coalition currently ruling at New Delhi were known from the very beginning. So was the opportunism that brought together the whole array of disparate groups last year to form the government. The last one year saw the prime minister's emissaries -- political and non-political, including his adopted son-in-law -- running hither and thither and the coordination committee meetings appeasing this or that partner by one or another promise, just to ensure the government's survival. In one of such meetings, the BJP's allies sharply criticised its remote control -- the RSS, with its various outfits -- and even forced the leading party of the coalition to demarcate from the RSS, even if this demarcation was only verbal, aimed more at hoodwinking the allies and the masses at large. The stability of the BJP-led coalition government, not surprisingly, has been in doubt from the very beginning.

Trouble has now started brewing in allied parties as well, not to mention the troubles within the BJP. From the very beginning of this government, there were forces inside threatening to erode the mass base of the BJP's allies and making them anxious. Their working is now unfolding before our eyes. Samta Party, that was formed with a split in Janata Dal on an anti-Laloo platform and which fought elections in alliance with the BJP, has already split in Bihar and nobody is sure when the feat would be repeated at the centre. Akalis too are in a bad shape, and a split is not ruled out. The same with the Biju Janata Dal. The TDP, the central government's main prop today, is also undergoing rumblings. Chautala has already walked out. At the same time, the smaller groups from the north-east, which had extended support to the government in hope of some assistance for their respective states, are also rethinking their stand.

All these developments are such that any sensitive political observer could foresee them. That is why the Left on the one hand and the Congress on the other declared umpteen times that they would not resort to any move to bring the government down. Their constant contention was that this government would sooner or later come down of its own, under the weight of its own contradictions. Or as The Hindustan Times editorial on March 31 says: "an arrangement where loyalty is determined strictly on a quid pro quo basis -- a "package" in exchange for support -- cannot but be unstable." The editorial here had specifically in view the so called Bengal package, much tomtomed by Ms Mamta Banerjee, "for whatever it's worth," as the editorial writer put it.

The most recent developments, on which the attention of the whole country is focussed today, tend to show as to what pass the government has now come.

One thing is remarkable, however. This time the AIADMK chief, Ms Jayalalitha Jayaraman, has chosen to raise such issues as concern the very defence and security of the nation, and have therefore been agitating all the patriotic Indians. The sacking of the naval chief, Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, is an issue on which nobody is prepared to buy the government's plea that he had defied the political leadership. The charges levelled by the admiral against the defence minister -- that the latter has been involved in making money in defence deals and also helping the LTTE and the north eastern ultra groups -- are of serious nature and require thorough probe. But it was here that the government began dilly-dallying. In the beginning it was not prepared even to hold a discussion on the issue in parliament, the supreme law-making body of the country. And even after it was forced to concede the demand of such a discussion, which is to take place on April 12 when the parliament is reconvened, it is still refusing to constitute a joint parliamentary committee (JPC) to probe these charges. One naturally wonders what skeletons the government has got in its cupboard.

Ms Jayalalitha has now demanded that Admiral Bhagwat be reinstated, that George Fernandes be divested of the defence portfolio and shifted to some "less sensitive ministry," and that the admiral's charges be probed by a JPC. But this time the BJP leadership did not have the courage to send an emissary to Chennai, as they used to do in the past.

During Ms Jayalalitha's five-day sojourn in the national capital, the BJP tried to placate her in all conceivable ways including her praises and a tea party hosted by a Delhi MP, Vijay Goyal. Then she was sought to be cornered in a hurriedly convened coordination committee meeting, to make her fall in line. After the said meeting, an impression was given as if Ms Jayalalitha has bowed down to the views of the majority which did not endorse her demands of a JPC probe, sacking of Fernandes and Admiral Bhagwat's reinstatement. This way they sought to convey that the matter was over. Later, the defence minister too met Ms Jayalalitha to make his position clear, but apparently could not convince her. In the meantime many delegations went to meet the lady from Chennai whose support is very crucial for the very existence of the BJP-led government.

But Ms Jayalalitha soon exploded the BJP leaders' claims by describing the tea party, hosted by Subramanian Swamy on March 30, as "a political earthquake."

Swamy who organised the said tea party has been against the BJP for his own reasons, and to it he invited virtually all the important Congress leaders in the town, including the party's president, Mrs Sonia Gandhi. Naturally, all eyes were set on that tea party where the two ladies -- Ms Jayalalitha

and Mrs Gandhi -- had had an exchange of opinion. This sent shock waves in the BJP circles who were shaken to the core despite the bravado displayed by Pramod Mahajan and others.

A number of papers have editorially commented on the sorry figure the BJP is cutting after Swamy's tea party. Apart from The Times of India editorial quoted earlier, The Indian Express said, "the political significance of Subramanian Swamy's party went far beyond the fact that it took place. The presence of almost the entire top brass of the opposition, topped with the fleeting presence of the Congress president herself, could be the harbinger of a radical realignment of political forces. In case this was lost sight of, Jayalalitha underlined it with her seemingly innocent observation that this country was always in a state of political flux..."

To The Pioneer which has a soft corner for the BJP, "It would be premature to repose faith in the BJP's assertion that it has an alternative gameplan ready and is, therefore, prepared to meet any eventuality, including her secession from the ruling alliance. But even the BJP leaders have not been able to hide their concern at the brazen political promiscuity demonstrated by the AIADMK chieftain, especially her ominous remark about a political earthquake consequent to her conjugal tea-sipping with Ms Sonia Gandhi." The editorial's entire tone betrays the paper's uneasiness about the prospect of the government's fall.

On the same day, i e March 31, The Hindu editorially commented that Ms Jayalalitha's meeting with Mrs Sonia Gandhi "in itself should be a matter of considerable worry, not just embarrassment, to the Vajpayee government which has been dogged by survival problems from the very beginning. The way the ruling establishment sought to neutralise the "Swamy initiative"..... betrayed the sense of desperation, if not panic, that has gripped the BJP leadership."

But the way the BJP-led government is now behaving leaves no doubt about the fact that it is not mere desperation but panic that has gripped its leaders. It is now, for instance, talking of the need to forge cooperation with Russia and China which the Russian Federation had some time back suggested as a counter to the imperialist, particularly US, drive for global domination, and to which the BJP-led government had given no positive response at that time.

As for cooperation with China, this is certainly in the nation's interest and welcome, but yet it represents a somersault from the government's position in May 1998 when, totally ignoring the national consensus on the issue, the prime minister had written -- to whom?, the US president -- branding China as India's number one enemy and also allowed his defence minister, George Fernandes, a well known China-baiter, to make a number of wild allegations and statements against our northern neighbour, all to the glee of US imperialists.

Nay more, it was in the name of the so called Chinese threat that Vajpayee had sought to justify the May 1998 nuclear tests at Pokharan. His was in any case a bogus argument which forgot the fact that in case of a nuclear war there would be no winner country whosoever. It was thus that the Vajpayee government reversed the process of normalisation of relations with China that was started by the late Rajiv Gandhi in 1988 and that had got further boost with Jiang Zemin's visit to India during the United Front's tenure. Nay, that was also the beginning of the government going back on our consensual and time-tested foreign policy that had always stood India in good stead. Vajpayee still owes a clarification as to why at that time he preferred to engage in China-baiting if cooperation with that country is so essential for India's future!

Now, the BJP leaders are posing as if they have won the Lok Sabha's confidence two times and they are sure to do so once again. On the first occasion, it was the TDP that betrayed the United Front and gave a prop to the BJP-led coalition, enabling it to form a government at the centre. And on the second occasion, when the issue of president's rule in Bihar was voted upon, the government got the vote of several groups like the Akalis and TDP who shamelessly went back upon their old stand in favour of federalism; it also got the votes from six members of the BSP that was incensed by the merciless massacres of Dalit people in that state.

But the BJP leaders forget that the issues are not the same this time. Now it is a question of national defence and security, threatened from within the government by people like George Fernandes who have been extra-vocal in favour of Tibet and, if Admiral Bhagwat's contentions are to be believed, also compromising the country's defence through shady defence deals as well as by giving help to ultra groups. Naturally, when this issue comes up before parliament on its reopening and the opposition brings a motion regarding the constitution of a JPC, it will be an acid test for all the MPs in patriotism and that, it appears, will be the last day of the BJP in power. If that happens, that will be a good riddance for the country's men and women who have suffered so much at the hands of an anti-people and pro-rich, anti-national unity and pro-imperialist government of the purest water.

However, it does not mean that we of the Left are going to give up our struggle for forging a third alternative or to desert the parties and forces whom we have been contacting in order to take this struggle to its culmination. For, whatever change may occur in the national political situation in near future, the relevance of a third alternative for the sake of the country's future still remains and is not pre-empted by short-term changes in government.

Be that as it may, the coming few days are going to be very crucial for the country. It is, therefore, high time for the Left, democratic and secular parties to launch an agitation to put this government in the dock and also to consolidate the forces that stand for national unity, secular and federal system of governance, and a bright future for the country.