The display of political brinkmanship by the AIADMK underlines the fact that the BJP-led government at the centre will be buffeted by various contradictory pulls and pushes. One example of such contentious issues is the Cauvery water dispute.The BJP legislators in Karnataka are up in arms against any implementation of the interim award in the dispute, and any concessions to Jayalalitha on this score will have to take their sensibilities into account. The other constituents of the alliance also have their own agendas, their own political axes to grind, and quite a few inflated egos. It is widely feared that this will result in decision-making gridlock at the centre. The other alternative, that of appeasing all and sundry, will result in the treatment of the state as a populist feeding trough, and this will be even worse for the nation. Yet it is also undeniable that all the parties which constitute the government have been elected on mandates on which they will have to act. Jayalalitha, for instance, isprobably right when she says that the people of Tamil Nadu expect the Cauvery problem to be solved, and West Bengal would undoubtedly be behind Mamata in her attempt to locate fresh investment in that state.
Not that these pressures did not exist during the days when the Congress ruled at the centre. But they were contained within the party and were not allowed to spill over into the policy-making sphere. As a result, the cabinet made policy, and the party was kept aloof from the administration. This was of course helped by the fact that very strong personalities ruled both the government as well as the party. That is no longer feasible under a coalition government, especially when several members of the coalition are regional parties, and when a large part of the ruling party has very distinct views on a host of potentially thorny issues. Consequently, we need a mechanism whereby issues relating to friction between parties are thrashed out through discussion, while the cabinet continues with its job ofgovernance, on the basis of the commonly accepted "national agenda". This function was performed by the steering committee in the United Front government, and there is a need for such a committee to be set up by the new government too. This will ensure the separation of the political parties from the government. Basically, while the coalition's policy stance should be laid down in the committee and disputes between coalition partners taken up there, the decisions which follow from the laid-down policy should be left to be carried out by the cabinet.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
