ARE we in the era of the later Mughals where all that the Centre is able to rule is, like Shah Alam, ‘From Dilli/ To Palam?’ Or is the diversity that lies at the base of our unity now asserting itself, as much in our polity as it has always done in our cultures, our religions, and our composite civilization?

Take a look around our state governments. What happens at the Centre appears to barely affect the internal political dynamic of the states. Thus, in Tamil Nadu, the battle for forty years has been between two wholly Dravidian contenders, the DMK and its offshoot, the AIADMK. Whether Delhi is run by the Congress, the BJP or a motley collection of transients, Tamil Nadu remains supremely indifferent to the goings-on in South and North Block, incestuously obsessed with which claimant to Dravidianism it should put into office or kick out, with virtually no place in these calculations for any of the Big Boys of Delhi, be it the Congress or the BJP, the Left or the other regionals. Since Kamaraj was routed in 1967 – that is, before the birth of virtually every voter in TN – the DMK or its other incarnation has always been the TN favourite, but quite unable to win a single seat in any other state (bar, for a brief interregnum, the Kolar Gold Fields assembly seat abutting north TN).

 

Go up the coast to Andhra Pradesh. While the Congress had a considerable run under Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy, immediately preceding that was the era of the Telugu Desam, confined to Andhra Pradesh. We now have Jagan Reddy, another prisoner of his frontiers (but with Telengana veering towards its own sub-regional party). The Congress having shot itself in the foot, and the BJP never having figured as a force on its own in the state, and the Left having been spurned for its role in facilitating its failed armed insurrection in the 1950s, Andhra Pradesh is rapidly becoming a regional bastion (or, rather, two regional bastions!). The parties that boom loudest in Delhi are among the most muted in Andhra.

Cross the border and one enters Naveen territory, that highly unlikely denizen of the mansions that lie along Central Park, New York, now inheriting an entire state from his much revered father, the late Biju Patnaik. Setting himself up to win another huge electoral victory in Odisha in 2014, he neither has, nor aspires to have, a single seat in Andhra to his South, in West Bengal to his North, nor Chhattisgarh or Jharkhand to his West. The Biju Janata Dal is a contender only in Odisha.

Moving up to Mamata land, the Trinamool is having its fifteen minutes of fame, but despite efforts to live up to the ‘All-India’ in its name, apart from a stray seat or two in distant Manipur, it is yet to open its account in any neighbouring state, be it Odisha or Sikkim, Assam or Bihar. Moreover, the TMC’s split with the Congress also presages a possible return of the Left from its brief exile.

Next door in Bihar, we enter the Hindi belt that stretches South to Madhya Pradesh and the Dandakaranya states, West all the way across UP, Delhi and Haryana to the Thar desert, and North to the Hindi-speaking hill states of Uttarakhand and Himachal, as also Jammu. Yet, while Nitish Kumar reigns in Bihar, his is a non-presence even in Varanasi, virtually adjoining Mughalserai, let alone any other Hindi belt state.

 

Matching such absence outside the home state, neither Mayawati nor Mulayam have a significant political presence outside truncated Uttar Pradesh. Like the DMK and the AIADMK, they are doomed to a death struggle between themselves and can, at best, be no more than spoilers in a few neighbouring seats of other states. For all her trying, Mayawati is hardly a national Dalit leader like her mentor and idol, Baba Saheb Ambedkar. And Mulayam might want to be prime minister – but so did Sitaram Kesri. Neither had, nor has, any hope because, for all its pretensions, UP is not India, even as Bihar is not India.

In Punjab, the Shiromani Akali Dal rules itself out of the national reckoning by default of its narrow sectarian base. The National Conference, confined to the Kashmir valley and a few boroughs in other parts of J&K, is also ‘national’ only in name. As for another regional, the Nationalist Congress Party of Sharad Pawar, notwithstanding scattered pockets in a few other parts of the country, the NCP is essentially a western Maharashtra and Marathwada party, eliminating itself from even its home ground by the time it gets to Vidarbha.

The Left would bristle at the suggestion that it is ‘regional’. But while in a geographic sense it may claim a presence in two widely separated states, West Bengal and Kerala, and perhaps its most assured fortress in Tripura, separated by an entire country from its roots in West Bengal, the fact is that the Left (read CPI-M) has suicidally spurned every effort to make itself part of the national mainstream, both when Jyoti Basu was offered the prime ministership in 1996 before the hitherto unknown Deve Gowda accepted the crown of thorns (spurring hope in every unknown politician in the land that if Gowda can reach 7 RCR, why not I?) and also when it refused to join the Congress-led UPA coalition government in 2004. Persistently ruling itself out of the reckoning, the Left remains out on a limb, a limb which it insistently engages itself in hacking.

 

Thus we come to the tried, tired and discredited Bharatiya Janata Party. With its being driven out of Karnataka after what was probably the worst performance of any state government ever, the BJP is now truly cut to size, confined to a small wedge of West and Central India extending from the Great Rann of Kutch – famed for its wild asses – to the deep dark forests of Chhattisgarh, where it has comprehensively lost control of the tribals for whom the state was created. That’s it. Pretty thin, no, for a party that till but a decade ago was ruling the roost in Delhi? Under Atal Behari Vajpayee, whose role model was Jawaharlal Nehru (thus making him something of a surrogate Congressman), there was a mild whiff of the ‘national’ about the BJP; now, under petty factional chieftains, they look like what they are – a snuffed out lot. Come November, they will certainly lose MP and just possibly Chhattisgarh, leaving them, like Shah Alam, sultan of all the land between Godhra and Sir Creek!

 

The Congress may be the natural party of governance in Delhi but is also the natural party of Opposition in many of the larger states of the country. What makes it ‘national’ is that the Congress flag flutters, albeit weakly, just about everywhere. Certainly, my own state of Tamil Nadu has not seen a Congress government in 46 years – and probably will not in the next 46. Yet, amazingly, even in Tamil Nadu it exists, has its adherents and nurses its hopes. It is also sought from time to time as an ally in the internecine Dravidian electoral battles. The bottom line, however, is that neither in UP nor Bihar, nor in West Bengal or Odisha, nor in TN (or probably AP, post-2014) can the Congress realistically hope to make it on its own. Even in Maharashtra, it would be tempting fate to come out with its leaders piping for the Congress to part company with Sharad Pawar.

In the North East, of course, it is dominant in Assam and much of the NE hill country, except Nagaland and Sikkim (where, however, it has an extremely warm and reliable partner in Chief Minister Pawan Chamling). And its mountain bastions extend to the scenically charming but numerically not too significant Lok Sabha seats of Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and even, in coalition, J&K. In the rest of the North, Congress dominance is assured only in Haryana and Delhi. Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh/Chhattisgarh are up for grabs in opposite directions, but my betting is that Digvijaya and Ajit Jogi, between them, will promote a revival of the Congress in the heart of India and that, with a little bit of luck, Rajasthan will remain with Ashok Gehlot.

Kerala is wobbly because tiny voter shifts translate into pendulum swings against the ruling establishment in election after election. Goa too shows the same electoral pattern and so the two seats there might just slip to the Congress – or possibly not: no one can really tell. Chandigarh is also wobbly because of the sustained campaign in recent weeks of maligning the incumbent MP, Pawan Bansal. Puducherry remains with Rangaswamy, the dissident former Congress and now anti-Congress CM, but he might be weaned back. Lakshadweep will without doubt remain with Hameedullah, the bright young Congressman and son of the legendary Congress leader, the late P.M. Sayeed. And the Congress could, with the right candidate, restore its fortunes in A&N – but that is a big ‘if’, for factionalism is rampant in the A&N territorial Congress.

 

So, what are the immediate prospects? Karnataka is already in the Congress fold; it is the state elections in the autumn/winter in several states – Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and Mizoram – that will determine whether the Congress can have a national resurgence. Hence, the sotto voce (the understated voice) in some Congress circles that it would perhaps be best to bring forward the Lok Sabha elections to the same time so that the Congress might ride the favourable wave in these states to a third successive term for the UPA. But a word of caution would be in order. It was winning a string of state elections that persuaded the NDA to bring forward the elections of 2004, thus bringing upon themselves a decade – and possibly more – of political exile on the back benches (which they have since barely occupied because they prefer the well of the House).

What does all this add up to in terms of the Centre and its satraps? Well, hardly with a break-up like that of Alexander’s empire after his early death (which is where the expression ‘satraps’ for powerful local chieftains comes from) or with the break-up of our country as happened under the later Mughals – for the principal ambition of our regional hegemons is not to separate from Delhi but to conquer it. That they will together win a large number of seats is beyond question, but whether they will hang together even on the morrow of the elections is highly doubtful. For what unites them is their monstrous egos – and what divides them is their monstrous egos. None of them has a presence outside his/her state, but that does not stop them from fantasizing over moving from, say, Poes Garden to Race Course Road. Moreover, they do not have a Jayaprakash Narayan to paper over their rival ambitions – and even the Lok Nayak could not keep his flock together. So, even in the extreme but unlikely scenario of the regionals securing a majority of the Lok Sabha seats, manoeuvring for the elections-after-next will begin before dawn breaks on the results of the November/May elections.

If the next Lok Sabha is to last for even half its term, the iron shavings of the regionals will have to find a magnet that draws them together. There are three contenders for the role of the magnet in descending order of possibility: the Left, the BJP, and the Congress.

 

The Left will be in the running only if they gain at least as many seats as they did in 1996 under Jyoti Basu or the still larger number they secured in 2004 under Prakash Karat. That would require them to avail of the growing rift between the Congress and the Trinamool in West Bengal to re-establish themselves in their traditional stronghold, to buck their internal wrangling to swing with the pendulum in Kerala, to hang on to their seats in Tripura, and to pick up a few pockets of support from here and there. Possible, but not likely. But should the unlikely become the possible, the CPI(M) will be presented an opportunity to lead a transient collection of improbables. If the CPI(M) remains true to its character, it will once again pass up the opportunity.

 

Another intriguing outside possibility is of the Nationalist Congress Party doing exceptionally well and Sharad Pawar emerging as the magnet. But, as of now, the NCP has dismissed this floater, proclaiming its preference to remain with the Congress. Yet, to go by the historical record, for Sharad Pawar, let alone a week, seven seconds is a long time in politics!

That leaves the BJP and the Congress. The BJP will be the frontrunner for a coalition of incompatibles subject to two conditions – one, that they do not have Narendra Modi, who is unacceptable to all but the extremists within their own party; and, second, that they secure substantially more seats than the Congress. As of now, it seems the BJP is casting around for some way of avoiding the Modi honeytrap and the analysis above, if valid, shows that the BJP will run well behind the Congress.

Would then the Congress agree to lead such a multiplicity of satraps? Maybe. But much would depend on numbers. Perhaps ‘outside’ support might be a possibility. Far more likely, it would seem a year ahead of the scheduled date of the Lok Sabha elections, is of the Congress gathering less seats than the 206 it had in 2009 but with greater pickings in states that had left them in the recent past – notably, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh – compensating for possible losses in Andhra Pradesh. Therefore, bucking the conventional wisdom, I think UPA-3 cannot be ruled out.

But will UPA-3 be like UPA-1 and 2? I suspect that in one key particular, UPA-3 is likely to be different to UPAs 1 and 2. A return to an earlier era of the pre-1967 kind, when Congress domination at the Centre was based on strong Congress satraps in the states, strong in their states but loyal to the Centre – the party High Command – is on the cards. For this I would advance two reasons. First, the line-up of long-lasting state Congress leaders is impressive: Sheila Dikshit in Delhi; Virbhadra Singh in Himachal Pradesh; Bhupendra Hooda in Haryana; Ashok Gehlot in Rajasthan; Tarun Gogoi in Assam; Mukul Sangma in Meghalaya; Nabam Tuki in Arunachal; Ibobi Singh in Manipur; and Lalthanhawla in Mizoram, besides returning leaders like Ajit Jogi in Chhattisgarh, and Digvijaya or his hand-picked choice in Madhya Pradesh.

 

Two, the obvious inclination of the newly elected Vice President of the Congress, Rahul Gandhi, to restore the bottom-up approach to party posts, starting with the panchayats and extending to the states and the Centre – powerful, popular local leaders, ‘satraps’ in the best sense of the word. If the party leadership is to be elected, as initially envisaged by Rahul’s father, Rajiv Gandhi, in his celebrated Congress centenary speech, the ‘brokers of power’ will indeed be driven out and local leaderships will take root, the High Command eventually being as dependent on the support of party workers as the booth committee representative.

That is the way forward – and if we do not take it, ‘there is’, as Jawaharlal Nehru said on another occasion, ‘darkness everywhere’.