The best way to know the self is feeling oneself at the moments of reckoning. The feeling of being alone, just with your senses, may lead you to think more consciously. More and more of such moments may sensitize ‘you towards you’, towards others. We become regular with introspection and retrospection. We get ‘the’ gradual connect to the higher self we may name Spirituality or God or just a Humane Conscious. We tend to get a rhythm again in life. We need to learn the art of being lonely in crowd while being part of the crowd. A multitude of loneliness in mosaic of relations! One needs to feel it severally, with conscience, before making it a way of life. One needs to live several such lonely moments. One needs to live severallyalone.

Tuesday 18 September 2012

TMC PULLS OUT OF UPA: THE MAMATA ANGLE TO THE INDIAN POLITICAL CIRCUS

Continued from:
SCAMS, POLICY HANDICAP, ILL-INTENT, ELECTORAL MILEAGE - THE POLITICAL JAMBOREE CALLED INDIA

And one of it is when would the next general elections be held. Now there are analyses and analyses. Now there are comments and comments.

Recently, Mulayam Singh Yadav spoke of early general elections during Kolkata meet of the Samajwadi Party.

Recently, Bihar’s chief minister Nitish Kumar said there was no possibility of early general elections.

Yes, there are pro- and anti- political views doing the rounds fueling speculative analysis of the media pundits, with the pro-early election views seeing big spurt today with Mamata pulling out of the UPA while DMK announcing to participate in September 20 Bharat Bandh called by the Opposition to protest diesel price hike, cap on subsidized LPG cylinders and FDI moves.  

Let’s see what can bring the UPA government down before 2014.

It all depends on UPA itself. Had the main opposition NDA led by the BJP been unite, it would have toppled the UPA government much earlier given the flurry of scams, controversies and coalition pangs Manmohan Singh’s government has generated.

If it has to be, it is going to be from inside only. Some coalition partners have been threatening the government regularly of pulling the support or pulling the ministers out.

Mamata, before pulling out today, has been especially acidic on this front bringing down many reform initiatives like earlier attempts on retail FDI, pension and insurance sector reform moves and causing price hike rollbacks like infamous rail-fare rollback this year that cost the then Minister of Railways Dinesh Trivedi, a TMC MP, his job. Today, when she announced to walk out of the UPA after the marathon meeting with her party members on whether to continue with the UPA government, she was highly scathing in her remarks. She had warned the government for rollback on FDI move and diesel and LPG pricing issues.

Other allies like the DMK and the RLD, too, have threatened the government on various issues. But unlike Mamata, others have not gone to the extent of clarity (unlike today) in saying that they intend to pull down their support in totality. And so, we keep on listening to the threat of pulling the ministers out while continuing the support from outside.

Clearly, none of them want an early parliamentary election, (and not even Mamata).  

Mamata’s government has had enough of controversies and she needs times to prove why she was voted-in before going to the electorate again. Apart from sincere steps, she also needed face-saving after many U-turns and her recent humiliation by the Congress party in the presidential polls. She had rejected Pranab Mukherjee'c candidature and had launched a campaign to prove her point before making a U-turn on supporting Pranab. There are multiple consipiracy theories behind this 'Mamata' move but it did one thing with certainty - it dented even more her image in the public perception.

The developments post her joining as West Bengal chief minister and her autocratic style of functioning have clearly put a question mark on her personal integrity and humiliate the style of politics that landed her with a landslide victory in West Bengal assembly elections. She needs time more than the central government's funding to come out of the mess she herself has created. 

DMK would like to see the anti-incumbency factor built against Jayalalitha before it goes to the electorate and certainly would not like to opt for an early election. Though DMK has said to participate in the September 20 Bharat Bandh of the opposition parties, it cannot be more than lip service – opposing the government accusing it of anti-people policies while supporting it to survive politically. After all, it is basically about the vested political interest of survival in the office or revival to the office.  Many prominent DMK leaders are facing corruption charges and are under CBI probe. And CBI is under the direct control of the PMO.

Anti-incumbency and corruption are the factors that are going to cost dearly to the NCP-Congress alliance in the next election and NCP would want to spend as much time in office as possible.

The UPA has current strength of 254 members minus Mamata’s TMC members in the Lok Sabha, 18 less from the simple majority figure of 272. SP (22), BSP (21), RJD (4) and JDS (3) form the outside support of 50 members, enough to make for Manmohan’s days in the office.

While RJD doesn’t matter here as Nitish is expected to win Bihar back comfortably and it's count too low like the JDS, it comes to the SP and the BSP then. If any of them pulls back the support, the government would be on a thin line of survival as any errant coalition partner would be able to bring the government down.

But even if Mulayam is looking to crave for an early general election intending to cash the public support that gave a thumping victory to his party in the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections this March, the BSP would not like to have it. Initial days of Akhilesh Yadav’s government have been a tale of an increased crime graph, administration’s excesses and ministers’ manipulations, very typical of an SP government. Mayawati would like to have these factors play out over a larger time-span to build a significant anti-incumbency base before she could go back to the Uttar Pradesh electorate and the time till 2014 elections can do it.

Also, the centre has been effectively using the CBI investigations hunter against the corruption tainted top SP and BSP leaders to toe them in the line.

So even if Ram Gopal Yadav says the SP would not join the government and SP’s support to the centre cannot be taken for granted, it can be said there is no immediate danger to Manmohan’s boat as BSP would like to keep the UPA's journey on, and that punctures any SP thinking that once the UPA government is down, there would be no threat of the CBI hunter. 

And even Mamata has kept the room open for further negotiations as her ministers are to pull out of the government on Friday only. (Why not today only?)

The Congress party is ready to open the channel of negotiation as evident from Janardan Dwivedi’s statement. He said, "We have always considered Trinamool Congress our valuable ally. Even after all that Mamata Banerjee has said, we still consider her our valuable ally till a final result comes out."

So it means Manmohan’s strategists would have to burn the midnight oil in meeting the fund demands of TMC and SP if, indeed, the backroom channels operate to diffuse the current crisis. And that might easily kill the spirit of reforms that Manmohan is looking to bank on as the demand of these two states run in over Rs 1 Lakh crore of funds.

But having said all this, there can be kept a little room for that political uncertainty like the DMK spewing over Congress’ maltreatment of its interests, especially on the issue of Tamil politics in Srilankan context.

The political circus in India is turning yet another green leaf in its questionable tradition of valueless politics.

To continue.. 

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/