Comment

The CPM had moved into the post-Jyoti Basu mode long before the long-time West Bengal chief minister had died last week. There are not many post-Basu adjustments to be made in the party that is getting ready to lose the next assembly elections in the state. Basu was no theorist and he did not lay down any rules or ideas which are to be changed or altered. In reality, the Marxist party has become like any other bourgeois party, whose sole aim has been to win the next election, plot for plausible alliances at the national level whether they work or not. The Marxists will have to spend all their energy battling Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) and that leaves them with little energy and no ideas about national issues, if there are any.

The BJP, which has suffered two consecutive parliamentary defeats, has managed to get a new president for itself, Maharashtra politician Nitin Gadkari, who is bracing himself to face the uphill task of doing something with the national opposition party that does not know what it has to do and what it wants to do. Whether the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is pulling the strings and whether Gadkari is a RSS nominee is not much of interest because it does not add much to the big political picture. What is evident is that both RSS and the BJP are adrift. They are not inclined to redefine or reinvent themselves. They do not have anything meaningful to say either about what needs to be done about the economy? Protesting against price rise and pleading for Telangana seems to keep most of their leaders busy.

The Congress party is most comfortable in this kind of an unchallenging situation. It does not agonise over a lull. It loves the status quo and its leaders are happy to be dealing with the day-to-day demands of administration. Union home minister P Chidambaram is engaged with issues of internal security, counter-terrorism, Maoism. Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee is happy grappling with issues of taming the deficit and playing round with possibilities thrown up by disinvestment. The economy is running on its own steam again and all that he has to do is to give it a push now and then to keep it going.

Prime minister Manmohan Singh has time to think of improving ties with Pakistan and talking to separatists in Jammu and Kashmir. All this gives a respite to party president Sonia Gandhi and general secretary Rahul Gandhi. Telangana can become a headache but Mukherjee, party general secretary Digvijay Singh and law minister Veerappa Moily will handle it as best they can, until the next crisis erupts.

What happens to Mulayam Singh and his Samajwadi Party (SP), Lalu Prasad Yadav and his Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Mayawati and her Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) is neither of much interest or consequence at the moment.Is this a deceptive political lull? Is there a storm brewing? The storm, if any, can only be created by the follies of the politicians and the political parties and those they can commit anytime and anywhere.

At the moment, none of the political parties are making any effort to prepare for what is to come. They are not interested and incapable as well of gauging future challenges. The inane statements that minister for human resources development Kapil Sibal makes about reforming the education scene or Moily about the judiciary show that the picture of the future remains irritatingly hazy. The political lull then is just a lull. It is siesta time of sorts.

It is not a good sign for the country because when the future is upon us we will find ourselves caught unawares. The cities that need to be made liveable, the villages that need help will remain untended. There will not be enough schools or colleges or hospitals or roads or houses. At the time of the next political rush hour, politicians will not have time to think of these things. They will be busy fighting elections.