Delhi’s most interesting clubs are not the ones that have waiting lists that stretch into generations. The really fascinating clubs are unrecognized, unauthorized and have floating memberships.
To start on a note that is properly personal, one such is the club of former editors. I have been one and can report, with evidence seared on the mind, that there is no zone more arid than the space provided on the political-social space for ex-editors. Regular membership of this club of course comes with the track record; but there is a sort of associate membership grade also, consisting of those who want to be editors. The frustration of those who have been editors is matched only by the frustration of those who want to be. A second such invisible institution is the club of ex-foreign secretaries.
Nothing compares however with the club of ex-prime ministers. As in the case of editors, there are associate members consisting of those who think they can become prime ministers within their lifetimes. All of them live in Delhi. Most ex-MPs and ex-ministers wander around Delhi after having lost their jobs for a bit, but then wind their way home, back to the constituency that sent them to Delhi. An ex-prime minister has no real home apart from Delhi. There is a reason. Every ex-prime minister’s astrologer has told him that he will become prime minister a second time.
The names of former prime ministers is not a secret. Since the defeat and tragic assassination of Rajiv Gandhi we have had Chandrashekhar, Vishwanath Pratap Singh, P.V. Narasimha Rao, H.D. Deve Gowda and Inder Gujral. Atal Behari Vajpayee is the only ex-prime minister whose astrologer proved accurate if he predicted that he would become prime minister again.
Vajpayee did. He came close to being an ex-prime minister a second time, after he was actually defeated in the Lok Sabha by a famous single vote. But whether it was his astrologer or just unpredicted destiny, Vajpayee, fueled by some startling help from his official foes, strode through the ashes toward Kargil and from there marched to a general election victory that was a remarkable exercise in classy opportunism.
The associate membership of this club, as we have noted, consists of those who want to become prime ministers. Mrs. Sonia Gandhi is the obvious name on this list. But she is hardly singular in that wish. There are gentlemen in her party who would cry murder if their names were mentioned by a columnist as part of that wish-list, but their private dreams are hardly secret. Leaders of regional parties also have aspirations. The argument in their favor is simple: If Deve Gowda and Inder Gujral could become prime ministers with nothing in their hands, then why should any Yadav, Mulayam or Laloo, rule out the possibility of occupying 7 Race Course Road?
Every ex-prime minister has only one objective left in life: How to make the incumbent prime minister a member of their club by making him an ex-prime minister as well. Of course no ex-prime minister says this publicly, unless of course he is a Deve Gowda, who has nothing called a private thought. (And if he is a Narasimha Rao then he has nothing called a public thought.) Every ex-prime minister believes that, if the circumstances are right, or can be converted into being “right”, then an eager nation will call out breathlessly for the return of his valued services.
There are moments in the political calendar that tend to make ex-prime ministers in particular, and aspirant ones in general, gasp with hope. The gasping can be heard all the way from Delhi to Lucknow as the results of the elections in Uttar Pradesh finally emerge from the anxiety of the campaign and the darkness of the ballot boxes. This column is being written before the results have been announced, but that is no issue, really. No theory in Delhi ever needed the ballast of fact to keep it afloat. However the current heap of theories is based on a surmise that can be considered a fact: That the BJP will not win sufficient seats to be able to form a government on its own. Even the BJP concedes as much, and only hopes to be the largest party, or the leader of the largest alliance, after the dead have been counted.
The seductive power of such theories should never be underestimated. But how do they stand up to the cold touch of common sense?
It is always useful to begin from the beginning. Why did the allies who have ruled India since 1999 come together? They did not unite to usher India into the twenty-first century; or to give the country an annual GDP growth of 8 percent; or to wipe out every bitter tear from the eye of a sad, starving child; or to pole-vault a Third World nation into the First World at the pace of a China; or to eliminate the curse of communalism or casteism from the body politic. They came together to share a certain number of Cabinet seats, which is what they have done pretty effectively, and with minimum rancor (particularly after the departure of the cross-eyed Mamata Banerjee). They united to win elections and share power. That is the prime and possibly only magnet that keeps them together.
Nor does one expect any froth and turmoil in the BJP either. It would require courage beyond the available average among Indian politicians for any dissident BJP leader to blame the defeat of the party in Uttar Pradesh on the prime minister alone.
Nor does it make sense. The BJP takes decisions far more collectively than any other political formation in the country, so you cannot blame Vajpayee alone for sending the sterile chief ministers that the BJP sent to Lucknow before Rajnath Singh. I do not know how many seats Rajnath Singh will bring to the BJP fold but it is safe to suggest that he will have doubled the number his predecessor would have managed. The BJP was not a three-figure party in Uttar Pradesh before he arrived.
I know that this is not a kind thing to say to ex-prime ministers, particularly those of them with weak hearts, but defeat in Uttar Pradesh might have the paradoxical virtue of actually strengthening Vajpayee’s hand, if, that is, he knows how to play his hand effectively.
All he has to do is to tell his allies that on the one side is the prospect of at least two more years in a powerful and possibly lucrative Cabinet job; and on the other is at best a coalition government that does not have much hope of stability beyond the standard ten months of competing confusion that will demand its price in the subsequent election.
The only thing that can destabilize the BJP alliance is the construction of a large temple in Ayodhya, and that is a decision which is outside the parameters of the sequence and consequence in Uttar Pradesh.
The politics of temple construction is a different story, and there are hints, which one is not yet in a position to convert into decision-lines, that positions are changing across the spectrum. The matter will become clearer as we get closer to March 12, and one is again assuming that March 12 is a serious deadline set by those who are determined to challenge the Supreme Court directive that ensures a status quo at Ayodhya. Any turmoil over temple construction will only be resolved by a general election. Ayodhya might seriously wound the government, but this Parliament will be dead. Of that you can be certain.
Which, alas, is bad news for ex-prime ministers. Sorry.
