Footloose MPs lead a merry dance

India's political musical chair is moving along merrily as the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seeks to complete its five-year term.

HOW long will the Manmohan Singh Government last? That question is beginning to be asked increasingly following the withdrawal of support by the Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Bannerjee.

The maverick Trinamool boss has pulled out her 18 MPs from the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA), thus reducing the government to a minority in parliament.

The Government is on the back foot with a series of corruption scams, a long period of policy paralysis, rising food prices and a fast slowing economy. Yet, most surprisingly, it looks as if it may still complete its full five-year term till May 2014.

Of course, it will be by sheer default since the main opposition, the Bharatiya Janata Party, is itself engaged in an internal leadership tussle. Besides, there are too many footloose players in Parliament ready to lend support if the price is right.

In fact, the day the Trinamool Congress officially withdrew support to the UPA Government, the Samajwadi Party (SP) with 22 MPs led by Mulayam Singh Yadav stepped in to fill the breach. The SP justified its stand, stating it was necessary to keep "communal forces at bay".

Yadav was referring to the BJP, which is considered a pro-Hindu party with a negative image among minorities, particularly Muslims. The Uttar Pradesh (UP) leader, who enjoys considerable Muslim support, kept the UPA Government on tenterhooks for a while. He also took part in a joint opposition rally condemning the recent economic reforms but he did not share the dais with the BJP.

Shekhar Gupta, editor-in-chief of the Indian Express, describes Yadav as "the most political of India's senior politicians."

In Manmohan Singh's first term in office, Yadav had come to the rescue of the UPA Government at the eleventh hour – when the Communists withdrew support after refusing to ratify the Indo-US nuclear deal.

The doughty former socialist is a leader of the intermediate castes. His son Akhilesh Yadav is chief minister of Uttar Pradesh.

Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) in retail and a diesel price hike may be against Yadav's socialistic instincts but he remains above all a pragmatist.

Observers believe one of Yadav's conditions for supporting the government could be an important ministerial slot for himself in the Manmohan Singh cabinet.

This may not necessarily be the case, but there is little doubt that Yadav will extract his pound of flesh both in terms of special favours for his home state and the dropping of cases filed against him by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which alleges that he and other family members had amassed disproportionate assets.

While supporting the Congress for now, Yadav nonetheless remains a slippery customer who could desert the UPA if he found that the unpopularity of the Central Government over price hikes was rubbing off on his party.

Yadav recently declared that both the Congress and the BJP, the only two national parties, are discredited and predicted that a third alternative would come to power in 2014. Understandably, he sees himself as the prime ministerial candidate of such a front.

Yadav is not the only regional leader the Congress is looking at to bail it out. The party is also wooing the Dalit czarina, Mayawati, Yadav's arch rival in the populous northern Indian state of UP.

Mayawati, who belongs to the lowest strata in the Hindu caste system, has 21 MPs in Parliament. So far she, like Yadav, has been providing outside support to the government. The Congress calculates that even if Yadav were to ditch the ruling party, Mayawati would continue to support the Government.

Mayawati is not keen on an early election at the present juncture. Three months ago, she lost the assembly election to Yadav in UP and is aware that her political rival currently has the electoral edge. She needs time to regain her popularity and is banking on the fact that the SP will, with time, face an anti-incumbency backlash.

Like Mayawati, the Communist parties are also wary of general elections in the near future. The Communist Party of India (CPI) (Marxist) was voted out of power in the southern state of Kerala and decimated in West Bengal by Mamata Bannerjee's Trinamool Congress.

CPI (M) leaders fear they are getting marginalised in West Bengal with the TMC eating into the party's anti-economic reform space.

In Manmohan Singh's first stint as Prime Minister, the Left was a powerful ally. But there was an acrimonious parting of ways over the Indo-US nuclear deal.

The Congress also hopes to wean away other political parties which are not with the UPA at present. Chief Minister of the eastern state of Bihar, Nitish Kumar, is one of the BJP's most important allies in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). Recently Kumar indicated that the BJP could not take his support for granted. Kumar does not want the BJP to take a stridently pro-Hindu line as it would upset his own Muslim support base.

He is particularly perturbed by the rise of BJP leader and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, who gained notoriety for the communal riots in Gujarat in 2002. Kumar has made clear that Modi is not an acceptable prime ministerial candidate.

Another source the Congress could tap as a potential ally is the Chief Minister of Orissa, Navin Patnaik, whose Biju Janata Dal party was earlier with the BJP but he ended his alliance a month ahead of the 2009 parliamentary polls.

At present, even the BJP is not prepared for an immediate poll. It is a divided house beset by in-fighting and until it puts its house in order, it cannot pose a full-frontal challenge to the Congress party.

In fact, BJP President Nitin Gadkari denied to Outlook magazine that the party planned to bring a no-confidence motion in the coming winter session of Parliament.

"We don't want to push the nation to early polls. This government is going to die its own death."

Aware that he has limited time to prove himself, a beleaguered Manmohan Singh last week, in a public broadcast, strongly justified the hard economic decisions he had taken recently. He reminded viewers that as finance minister in 1991, he had rescued the Indian economy from near bankruptcy and justified the Government's decisions to raise diesel prices, cap the number of subsidised cooking gas cylinders each family could buy and allow FDI in multi–brand retail. He explained that such measures were needed to avoid a financial crunch and to revive investor interest in the country.

Singh knows he needs to turn the economy around if he wants his government to retain power after May 2014, even though it appears a near-impossible feat, at least at this point in time.

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