Post trust vote: Experts take on road ahead for UPA

Q: But do you think that it is a more credible thing?

Adhikari: No, not at the moment, but it might happen later on. If something like that happens, certainly the Left can be far more accommodative.

Q: The relationship between the Left and the Congress is one aspect that is intriguing tonight, the other is the relationship between the BJP and Mayawati. Now, they were allies on the same side, this might provide grounds for them to become allies and forge firmer long lasting alliance in that sense?

Mitra: In fact, Mayawati launched a diatribe on the BJP blaming the party entirely for losing the trust vote and saying that BJP didn’t want to see her as Prime Minister, which is why they deliberately loss the vote. The BJP did try its best, but failed in seconds. After these kind of statements, it certainly doesn’t augur well for the BJP and Bahujan Samaj Party, or BSP, tie up. The BJP has been beaten not once or twice but thrice. I don’t think they will even entertain the thought.

I think Prakash Karat’s gambit to emerge as a leader of a third force in which Mayawati, Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party, and other regional parties that would like to open together is a factor. He hopes that post the next elections, the Left will regain the kind of influence and power it had on Manmohan Singh’s government through some other route.

Q: LK Advani used to like to call him the weakest prime minister ever - is that now disproved?

Bhartia: That’s completely disproved and I don’t think that was even the fact earlier. But by this last action of his where he felt strongly about the deal, he had the conviction to go after it, the strategic perspective to try and follow an alternative path and look for a new political alliance which is stitched together and which will perhaps allow the new Manmohan Singh to emerge. So not only he has got rid of the Left and got the Samajwadi Party to support him, but by this one move he will be able to go forward on all that he actually stood for and none of this actually points towards a weak or a politically naïve prime minister. So we are going to be very difficult for his critics also to call him a weak or apolitical prime minister especially after the last move of his.

Q: So Shobhana is very positive in her opinion, was this example of strong leadership, or would you call it a reckless gamble by a prime minister of a government you have often characterized as a one trick pony?

Ram: He has won on this one so he is obviously not weak and the party has been resourceful with its allies so it’s not the issue now but the issue is whether what their prospects are going to be in the Fifteenth General Elections and whether this helps in any way but have these alignments helped, that’s the sort of things we should be looking at and not so much the individuals here.

Q: So what’s your answer to your question, will this help or wont this?

Ram: I don’t think it is going to help very much, the things are very murky and it’s not going to make a huge difference. I would say that keeping the slots together particular the Samajwadi Party, so its going to be a big ask and you would even say its an unenviable challenge for the Congress party and in particular the prime minister who is on the clean image at least in terms of personal probity.

Q: How difficult a challenge would it be to actually ensure that he can work effectively with the Samajwadi Party and perhaps one should say with the commercial demands and quotations that Mr. Amar Singh might keep coming up with and there is also the Shibu Soren, how difficult is the task the two together?

Adhikari: Of course, it’s not going to be easy, collation politics are always fairly complex but surely it’s going to be easier than working with the Left which hardly allowed any reforms to proceed, it was putting its stamp on foreign policy and not letting a foreign policy initiative progress, how much more difficult can it get nothing could be done for the couple of years. So maybe it’s possible that with this victory and the credibility that the government and the prime minister have acquired, it will be possible to push a reform program through.

Q: Would you accept that easier than the Left, is this an opportunity for the prime minister to push through raising insurance caps and banking and reforms?

Mitra: I find myself in an odd position of actually giving a certificate to the Left, they were far better people and they had ideological issues and they didn’t have private agendas.

Q: So you mean goodness of character?

Mitra: No, its not goodness of character, they were united and not a single person abstained or cross voted and they had ideological issues and once the Congress entered into a common minimum program, the Left knew what was coming and the deal was not in the picture. That was the problem precisely the problem, the ideological issues. Our ideological issues would be preferable to personal/corporate agendas.

Q: Which is what you are saying that Amar Singh is going to bring fatigue?

Mitra: I don’t say this but almost everybody is saying this.

Q: So you won’t descent?

Mitra: No I won’t, and it’s very clear and Shibu Soren, its all clear.

Q: Let’s move on to Mayawati, until this evening, everyone had assumed that she was going to be the big winner of this political process, but do you think tonight its still the case?

Bhartia: I didn’t believe that to start with because the moment you assume that Mayawati is going to be like a king maker and it is going to be catapulted in centre stage in the sense of being projected as a possible prime ministerial candidate, so what happens to LK Advani’s ambitions then? The fact that she expected to be the prime Minster of the so-called third force obviously assumed that the BJP would be willing to back her. So to me that seems like a non-starter from the word go and after the altercations between her and all that she said about he BJP after the trust vote, I see her chances of actually staying in that position for very long being extremely dim. She has leveled charges against them; she has blamed them for the UPA getting the majority vote.

Q: Taking up the point that Shobhana was making, has LK Advani been eclipsed by Mayawati he was meant to be the prime minister and she suddenly looked that she was, but tonight has he suddenly been eclipsed?

Mitra: If there were ever a television driven political hype, this was it. Over the last 48 hours there has been this huge hype on television and channel after channel that Mayawati has eclipsed LK Advani and Mayawati is the flavour of the month, she is the rising star and the future prime minister, alternative government, LK Advani is gone but where was the substance.

Mayawati is yet to win seats outside the UP. Her allies Chandrababu Naidu and Chandra Sekhar Rao are in deep trouble in their own states and what are people talking about even in the Left has said that their assumption of Mayawati was limited to this vote.

Q: If the press had played up Mayawati, have they done the opposite to Prakash Karat, the feeling at least on the television channels that Karat is the big looser of this political process that ended this evening, would you accept that?

Ram: This is not a personal agenda, I know very well that Prakash Karat was representing the overwhelming position and sentiment from the Left. I know its not Prakash Karat versus somebody else and there may have been people who didn’t want early elections but now that’s ensured so why would the West Bengal usage be unhappy if its on the opposite side of the Congress and there are no early elections, so Prakash Karat represents a very strong trend on the Left and not just on the CPI but across the board and people who are with their post on the nuclear deal and as you said once “ even more the context than the text” and that is the position of the Left - so how is it a personal agenda?

Q: If the context is what the Left is really strong on, rather than the text, was AB Vardhan and beyond him the Left parties as a whole correct to endorse some one like Mayawati as a potential prime ministerial candidate given that she faces serious charges of corruption and personal money making, have they damaged their own undoubted integrity by in a sense lining up behind her?

Adhikari: I am in full agreement with Chandan on this issue. There was so much idiotic hype in the media bout Mayawati in the last couple of days, it was unbelievable, both her influences out side the belt that she has undoubted some influence over is not clear at all and she was being projected as the prime minister, but prime minister of what? Quoted by whom, the BJP and the Left together, no body seemed to be asking those questions.

Q: What about my question about Vardhan and the Left?

Adhikari: I don’t want to comment on people like Vardhan, the CPI is a serious party but the CPM is hardly there and Vardhan became.

I would defiantly therefore say that Prakash Karat made a mistake in my view in calling on her and giving her this kind of a leg up and then everybody went after her and the cameras went after Prakash Karat and started filming this person.

Q: Who made a bigger mistake in building up Mayawati, the press or Prakash Karat?

Bhartia: It was Prakash Karat and not the press as the press was simply reporting the events as they unfold and the fact is that where as we may say that she doesn’t have any great influence outside of UP, but in the past we have seen prime ministers who hardly had any influence at all, so I don’t think its something that could be easily done but for the fact that the BJP never seems keen at all on supporting her, but there was every attempt within a certain set of parties to try and project Mayawati as an alternative and the press was just capturing what was happening at the ground level to try and do what ever they could to ensure that the UPA gets acquainted and the BJP was trying to be one over on the same side as well.

Q: You heard Gautam Adhikari mention the possibility that Prakash Karat may find his continuation as the general secretary of the CPM, do you endorse that or it’s again the press getting it wrong?

Ram: I would laugh at that because it’s wishful thinking on the part of my friend Gautam, and whoever else doesn’t like this politics, wishful thinking because as I said and I re-iterate this now and this represents the overwhelming sentiment from the Left.