Three Professionals on Implications of INDI Alliance Govt at Centre

KS Muralidharan

Three professionals, a doctor, auditor and lawyer are discussing what will happen if Modi loses the 2024 polls and the opposition comes to power.

Doctor (D): Like some incorrigible patients tend to self-destruct and not mend their ways after a successful treatment, the opposition too, if it miraculously comes to power in 2024, will continue to oppose one another, even after coming to power, rather than govern the country. In short, a ruling dispensation, with an opposition mindset.

Auditor A): But how to figure out which party in the INDI Alliance will end up on the brightest side of the 2024 electoral balance sheet?

Lawyer (L): It is a sine qua non that each party has to retain its maximum status quo ante. Given Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity, the BJP ipso facto is invincible, but then Vajpayee in 2004 failed to make his case before the voters, even when all the arguments and circumstantial evidence was in his government’s favour. So Modi losing like Vajpayee is theoretically not outside the domain of possibility.

D: Election time is like Covid time. The diagnosis of issues, personalities, parties, can go wrong. All known parameters will give different results. It is a tough call. Especially when Rahul Gandhi is on the ticket against Modi!

A: The capital available with Indi Alliance for governing India is like a basket of currencies in the money market with no single reserve currency! Who is to tell which party’s diktat will have currency in the government and in which situation? I can visualise only a trade-off, and not any legit trade as such!

L: Another danger is the clutch of cases against most of the INDI Alliance leaders. They will surely be given a judicial burial officially or otherwise. The ED as an institution will lose its legal acumen and organisational teeth. In an absurd scenario, the accused leaders may even be given an acquittal or the cases allowed to die sue generis.

D: The first visible symptom of the INDIA Alliance government will break out in Kashmir. It will be a prescription for disaster, in particular for the people of Kashmir. Having turned the corner from acute to benign condition, their condition will revert again to chronic and result in an overweening appetite for guns and terror.

A: India’s governance record will be rewritten in 2024 by a prime minister from the tired old inventory of INDI Alliance leaders whose track record is overfilled with non-performing assets. Arvind Kejriwal’s fiscal prudence is an oxymoron, while Mamata Banerjee’s antics will rival that of the world’s most notorious audit agencies.

L: Rahul Gandhi as PM will be lapped up by many legal luminaries and some prominent Media moguls. Almost all major decisions will seem like an act of god in legal jurisprudence. The law of the land will be at the mercy of coteries, cronies, and comrades. It will be a travesty of justice but in the court of democracy, the corrupt and the clean, and governance and anarchy, are reduced to a matter of perception. The voter is the ultimate arbiter and her judgement is final and unquestionable like that of the Supreme Court irrespective of the merits of the case.

D: Perhaps, but I see a replay of 2004 in such a situation. Like it happened in UPA I, the condition of the country in the first few years will be good enough, thanks to the continuing after-effects of the strong diet and disciplined regimen followed by the Modi government. After that, it will depend on the appetite of the opposition to indulge or preserve the economy. The Congress’ political health is deteriorating by the day and it is especially vulnerable to the atmosphere in the power corridors of Delhi. It is like a bar hiring an alcoholic!

A: While Modi’s formula of governance was tried, tested and trusted, the INDI alliance’s formula is like expecting self-cancelling equations to deliver positive value. Their government will always be in pursuit of making 2 minus 2 deliver some positive measure and not zero!

L: Any proviso brought forward by one party will more than likely be quashed by another competing party and impugned by yet another. Kejriwal will push for soft Hindutva, while Congress will want to stay the course, and Mamata will want plum portfolios for herself. As if this conundrum was not enough, Rahul Gandhi will be the arbiter of the disputes and disagreements that will keep the government in perpetual motion.

D: Such episodic convulsions will only add to the disorder and traumatise the people who will feel depressed that they didn’t do what the doctor ordered at the time of voting. Unfortunately, we doctors can treat only a patient and not the society as a whole.

A: I would expect the opposition government to rely on one superstar of their own, namely P Chidambaram, whose mastery over cooking up books and budgets is such that one can’t tell a debit from credit, a good move from bad. A master operator, Chidambaram also can make fresh gains from his huge number of assets in the media.

L: Who knows, Rahul Gandhi as PM may announce a new version of Nyay as the universe’s biggest welfare policy, and become the darling of the western media. In reality, the Nyay scheme may well be infructuous and the height of absurdity in disguise. Or at best, a modified version of Modi-fied version of NDA.

D: We should not ignore Mayawati the dark horse for becoming PM. But first, she has to recuperate from an overdose of Dalit prescriptions. As for Akhilesh Yadav, he is yet to recover from the trauma attack from Yogi over the past 5 elections, and may see this as his best chance to be shifted to the general ward and discharged soon to fight Yogi in UP.

A: However optimistic one tries to be, the book values of the opposition parties like SP, TMC, DMK, NCP, BSP, etc. do not reveal any potential for fresh value creation. They have already breached their maximum value in their respective states. You can say that from here, their accruals will be zero and rather than increasing their influence, managing their asset quality will be the biggest challenge.

L: What about Sharad Pawar, the uncrowned Chanakya of INDI Alliance? He is certainly PM material, given the counsels for the competing parties. He is definitely uncanny as he knows how to revel and prosper in chaos. And he is as much unknown as he is well known. After 5 decades in politics, there is little clarity about where he stands on anything. In other words, he will always be innocent till proved guilty of anything.

D: OK, let’s sum up our diagnosis with a final word. I would say that an INDI Alliance in power will be a remedy worse than the disease. Or still better, like treatment given by the mother of all quacks.

A: To me, the INDI Alliance government will depreciate so fast that Rahul as PM will become even more deadly as a liability than Rahul as opposition leader.

L: It will be more an alibi of a government in charge, and the country will swing between bankruptcy of governance and amnesty for the ruling class.