Khaleej Times, 26 July 2008

by Praful Bidwai (India Vision)

INDIA'S United Progressive Alliance won the Parliament confidence motion, but lost credibility by buying votes. It has inflicted great damage upon democracy by weakening the people's trust in its integrity. This harm will prove more enduring than any gains from the UPA's victory.

During the run-up to the vote — one of the worst periods of cynical manipulation in India's politics —,every fear that the democratic process would be defiled and subverted came true. MPs were offered ministerial berths, election tickets, new states/districts, and cash.

The most nauseating episode was the display of Rs one crore (10 million) in banknotes by three BJP MPs, who claimed they were given it by Samajwadi Party general secretary Amar Singh to secure their abstentions.

The Bharatiya Janata Party is trying to exploit this episode by playing the innocent victim of manipulation, of the kind Amar Singh is known for. But going by credible accounts, it too played dirty. One of its three MPs was unhappy at the prospect of losing his constituency due to delimitation.

He was approached by the SP, which was unaware that he had already made up with the BJP. He deviously set up not a sting but an entrapment operation, roping two other BJP MPs. Then, the BJP's dirty tricks department took over. The three MPs, with a tainted history, deceived the SP. The SP offered them Rs 9 crores (nine million), and delivered Rs one crore.

Whatever the finer truth, there's no doubt that the SP bribed them. It's equally incontrovertible that they accepted the bribe, and were as culpable as those who offered it to them. The BJP was as Machiavellian as the SP. It also involved a television channel. (The channel didn't air the footage. This doesn't condone its collusion in an unethical act.)

The BJP is adopting a holier-than-thou posture. But its credibility is questionable: 8 of its MPs defied the party whip while taking bribes. So much for this disciplined "party with a difference"!

The BJP also bribed defectors from other parties. And so did the UPA-SP combine.

In fact, the whole premise underlying the UPA-SP's efforts to manufacture a majority was that it could engineer defections or abstentions. Triggering cross-voting was essential to the strategy of the UPA-SP and the BJP and BSP too.

Finally, the UPA-SP won by 275-to-256. Had all "rebel" MPs obeyed their respective party whips, the motion could have been defeated 261-to-277. When Manmohan Singh precipitated this confrontation on the nuclear deal, he was aware of the indispensable need to use defections to win. He encouraged his colleagues to play dirty. The confidence vote showed up most parties in a poor light-with few exceptions barring the Left.

The degeneration lies not just in the votes' unprincipled character, but in their non-representative nature. Party-based democracy isn't about individual choice, but about structured decisions which are representative because they refer to party positions.

The vote saw democracy diminished from governance based on the people's will to a system of power, without legitimacy or purpose. This only shows that India has failed to build democracy based on robust conventions and norms, which outlaw the buying of legislators and discourage the rule of money and muscle-power. The episode has set India's democracy back by a decade, if not more.

It also witnessed three disconcerting trends. First, all the major alliances that drive Indian politics in the near future will be unprincipled and opportunistic. True, all cross-party coalitions involve compromises on policies, programmes and priorities. But they needn't be as completely devoid of content as, say, the present Congress-SP arrangement, or that between the BSP and what's left of the UNPA.

Even the UNPA, a lose coalition of regional parties, had a distinct political identity until the SP deserted it. Yet more programmatically cohesive was the UPA-Left arrangement.

But that's now history. In his anxiety to be free of the constraints the Left imposes on the Centre-Right Congress, Singh hitched his party to the SP with which the Congress has nothing in common.

Similarly, the UNPA has tied up with the BSP and elevated Mayawati to a secular progressive heroine — a complete myth. This will blur lines of political demarcation and result in the BJP becoming disproportionately important as a party with a distinct identity.

This doesn't bode well for political diversity and plurality, which is essential in a one-billion plus country. India's numerous political subcultures must not get subsumed under a couple of blocs.

Second, the Congress has fatefully decided to move away from the Left, to a party which has pronounced pro-Big Business policies and is deeply compromised with the Sangh Parivar. This will spur the Congress to move Rightwards and alienate it further from the poor.

Already, corporates are salivating at the prospect of Right-wing shifts in health, education, insurance, banking, and organised retail.

As between the early 1990s and 2004, this is likely to accelerate the Congress' decline as a broadly centrist coalition of different social groups, amongst whom the urban poor, Dalits and Adivasis figured, as did Muslims, Sikhs and Christians. This shrinking of the Centre-Left space doesn't augur well for democracy.

Finally, the Left has gravitated towards supporting Mayawati as a future Prime Ministerial candidate. This ignores her narrow agenda, spectacular opportunism and corruption. By retreating from principle, and by having truck with tainted politicians, the Left can only lose the high moral ground which it occupies because of its probity and pro-people policies.

The Left is unlikely to regain in the short run the political leverage which it enjoyed with the UPA-even if it retains its 59 Lok Sabha seats, an all-time record. The BSP/UNPA won't be even half as amenable to Left influence as the UPA. After all, the UPA came to power on a secular, pro-equity platform-and on a strong popular rejection of the BJP.

If the Left's parliamentary representation decreases, as seems likely, its moral-political weight and influence will decline rapidly. That too is bad news for the prospect of inclusive participatory democracy aiming at popular empowerment.

Praful Bidwai is a veteran Indian journalist and commentator. He can be reached at praful(at)bol.net.in