Commentary/Janardan Thakur

How long will this cabaret go on?

How long can the 13-party cabaret go on? Nobody seems to know for sure, at least of all the constituents of the United Front. The government is at crosspurposes with itself, if not at war. The prime minister makes announcement that his ministers have no linking of. The home minister, Indrajit Gupta, does not know what the prime minister is doing with his files or who he is going to get as his deputy.

The Cabinet meets, takes decisions, and then it goes various ways. One minister agrees to a decision jointly taken, another flays it in public. One part of the government wants a socialist economy, another wants to pull to the right of Manmohan Singh, One part of the government believes in Lohia and Mandal, another in Marx and E M S Namboodiripad, yet another in Adam Smith and the World Bank. And there is quite another part that just believes in Narasimha Rao and his like. This is no government of consensus, it is a stop gap compromise and nobody knows what they are stopping or compromising for.

The show gets curiouser and curiouser. One day CPI-M Politburo member Sitaram Yechuri hits out against the prime minister of carrying his entire clan with him on foreign jaunts, and the next day the CPI-M boss, Harkishen Singh Surjeet says that is not the party's view. The party hardly has any face to criticise Deve Gowda, for how would it defend similar junkets by Jyoti Basu?

Contradictions abound. The Left is against what it calls Congress clones like P Chidambaram and on the other hand Congress clones like P Chidambaram can barely stand the justice of the Janata Dal and the Samajwadi Party. The Janata Dal and the Samajwadi Party have their own reason to be unhappy: They think what is essentially their show is being run by rank outsiders, the main outsider being Prime Minister Deve Gowda himself.

People have seen catch as catch can governments during the great Congress raj, but their leaders knew what they wanted and they mostly got what they wanted, by hook or by crook. Here now is a government of push-as-push-can and pull-as-pull-can. Between the pushing and the pulling, little gets done.

Nearly all the institutions have collapsed or are in the process of collapsing. Which is why people sit up and begin to applaud when they behave the way they are supposed to in the normal course. The courts punishing the guilty becomes an event of national celebration, the due process of law earns itself an exaggerated sobriquet: Judicial Activism.

What is so unusual about prime ministers and ministers being brought to book for wrongdoing? What is so special about bureaucrats being asked to be honest and accountable? What is so out of place about a man doing what he is paid to do? What is so special is that men and women and the institutions they run have rarely done what they were supposed to do?

Parliament can barely get to pass legislation, ministers write tainted orders on their official letterheads and put their signatures on them, bureaucrats doctor each other's reports to please this master or that, to climb this rung or that. That is why the applause when someone is found not doing all that. That is why the applause for the judiciary.

The other day a commentator likened New Delhi to a stage crawling with characters in search of a play and a play in search of a plot. 'Nobody knows what to do next, nobody knows what happens next, nobody knows whose part ends where. Nobody knows when the curtains will fall. Who, after all, is H D Deve Gowda but a character who does not know what character he is? He came on stage accidentally, he could tumble out of it equally accidentally. He wears the prime minister's cap but the cap is actually more important than the man wearing it. It is nobody's fault that Deve Gowda is prime minister. It will be nobody's fault if he is prime minister no more.'

The other major players on stage, Narasimha Rao and Sitaram Kesri, are heading for a war, but then who knows what they might do next? Could they strike a deal together? Or would they keep going their separate ways? You get the most diverse views: 'Kesri could dump Deve Gowda, stick to Deve Gowda, woo back the Tamil Maanila Congress and the Tiwari Congress, fling them farther away, swing to the Left, swing to the Right.' He could do just about anything. As long as these leaders can remain on stage, they will try all manner of combinations and permutations. Abhi tamasha chalu hai!

In the meantime, the growing fashion among politicians is to debunk the media and thumb noses at journalists. Some, like Kanshi Ram and Mayawati, see no harm in even thrashing up mediapersons if what they write does not suit them. The late Gundu Rao used to describe newsmen as 'curs' and another former Congress chief minister, Dr Jagannath Mishra had come close to passing a press bill to curb the freedom of the press.

And now, Prime Minister Deve Gowda's contempt for the press and the news media is becoming more and more evident. Soon after he became prime minister he had rebuked some Delhi journalists, saying that they had not even bothered to come for his press conferences when he used to come to Delhi as the Karnataka chief minister, so why were they so eager to meet him now?

Deve Gowda can be very unpleasant when he wants to, and indeed he seldom has a happy look on his face. He is good at mocking people, and in telling them off. The other day he ordered journalists covering the CBI conference to leave the hall as he wanted to speak to the officers in private. It may have been his prerogative to do so, but it certainly did not leave a good impression on the media.

The prime minister has been fuming against the press ever since reports on the junkets appeared. He was angry with his press adviser for not having stopped the publication of the reports. Then came criticism from another quarter: CPI-M Politburo member Sitaram Yechuri created waves by attacking the prime minister had declared nonchalantly that all the expenses on the trip of his family members had been paid 'to the last paisa.'

Yechuri was obviously not satisfied. He wanted to know who had paid the money and where it came from. As though rubbing salt into the wound, Yechury remarked: 'A humble farmer can have very wealthy relations...' He even referred to Deve Gowda flying to Bangalore in a Reliance plane soon after being chosen to lead the United Front government at the Centre. That was 'a very wrong thing,' said Yechuri. 'Politicians must not have associations with industrial houses.'

Surjeet has now come to the prime minister's aid, but his surely is not the end of the story. Deve Gowda has begun saying he came to Delhi with just two suitcases and he could well return to Bangalore with his two suitcases!

Illustration: Dominic Xavier