The Congress cooked its own goose when it staked its future on the removal of the DMK ministers from the Gujral Ministry. As an inevitable fallout of this, the nation will soon be going to the polling booths for a second time in less than two years. The ill-fated 11th Lok Sabha began its session with a party enjoying the status of a pariah beseeching every member and party to support its government.

Thirteen days after Atal Behari Vajpayee was sworn in, the BJP realised that not one extra vote was coming its way. Rather than expose the party's chinks, Vajpayee thought it prudent to dash off to Rashtrapati Bhavan from the Lok Sabha clutching at his resignation letter.

Eighteen months and two other ministries later, the BJP's attempt to win over a sizable number of MPs from other parties ended equally dismally. This despite the various allurements it offered potential turn-coats.

However, it did not occur to its leadership that the attempt to cobble together an alternative government by hook or by crook was a deviation from its earlier principled stand that the party will not go out of its way to form a government.

If only it had stuck to the high moral ground, the BJP would have got a splendid debating point in the next election. If anything it shows how short-sightedness can deprive a party of a unique selling point.

But more pathetic has been the performance of the Congress. Almost every non-Congress MP had reached the 11th Lok Sabha fighting a Congress nominee in the 1996 election. Thus to expect them to help the Congress achieve its dream of attaining power was foolhardy. Nonetheless, the party with 140 members had awesome political power as no non-BJP government was possible without it providing a crutch. Yet, it could not influence policy decisions, busy as its leaders were in warding off CBI inquiries.

Its proclivity to threaten withdrawal of support at the drop of a hat made it a butt of ridicule.

It is significant that on both occasions that the party staked its claim to form a government not a single political party what really transpired between interned former Chief Minister Laloo Yadav and Sitaram Kesri's emissary Tariq Anwar in Bihar's Beur jail is not known -- came forward to support it. Not even Mulayam Singh Yadav, whose need for political allies is as acute as Rabri Devi's yearnings for her husband's advice in managing the affairs of state! What does this mean except the emergence of the Congress as the new pariah?

The party's new-found status owes itself entirely to Kesri, who never tires of reminding people that the huge majority with which he defeated Sharad Pawar for the party president's post could not be obtained in the past by leaders who were greater than him. Far from utilising the position for the party's good, he saw it as his only opportunity to achieve his ultimate ambition. Little did he realise that the message of the last election was that the Congress should sit in the Opposition, not hanker after power.

Unfortunately, his impatience got the better of his political judgment. The result of his adventure is that the Congress has to face an election for which it is not at all prepared. There is no inkling, let alone certainty, that its fate will be any better in 1998 than it was in 1996.

Where Kesri went truly wrong was in his assumption that the Congress could win an election by invoking yet again the name of its deceased leader. The Congress' loss of its moorings began even as Nehru's charisma began to wane in the wake of the 1962 Chinese aggression.

The emergence in 1967 of regional parties, which were able to wean away sections of its traditional vote banks, marked its decline as a political force. It could retrieve its lost position in 1971 only because of Indira Gandhi's imaginative garibi hatao slogan. Since then the party has won on grounds of either sympathy as in 1984 and 1991 or on a negative vote as in 1980.

In the interregnum, backward castes in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have realised that what the Congress had been perpetuating in these states in the name of socialism and secularism was upper-caste domination. One has only to go through the list of Congress Chief Ministers of these states to realise this.

The emergence of Mulayam Singh and Kalyan Singh in UP and Laloo Yadav in Bihar symbolises the party's total loss of appeal for the backward castes, whose support is crucial to win an election in the Gangetic belt. The alternative is to bribe MPs to get support, as Narasimha Rao tried successfully till one of the beneficiaries of the move spilled the beans.

Far from winning back their sympathy, which he could have done given his ability to implement Mandal in a painless manner, Kesri has been looking for short cuts to power. He mistakenly found in the specious Jain Commission report the way to the electorate's heart.

Whatever the Commission might have said about the DMK's role, it goes against the grain that the LTTE required the southern party's assistance to trigger the human bomb when it could bump off more secure men in a similar cold and calculating manner. Besides, it is presumptuous to expect voters not to ask why the party could not hasten the inquiry and punish the guilty when it was in power for five long years.

The bankruptcy of the party was equally manifest in Kesri's entreaties to Sonia Gandhi to ``take care of the party''. How the widow of Rajiv Gandhi, cocooned as she is in the fortress of 10, Janpath, lead a party in the elections is something which escapes everybody's comprehension save Arjun Singh's and Kesri's. Her greatest glory was when she declined to accept the leadership of the party when it was offered to her almost on a platter in the wake of her husband's assassination.

To presume that she will forsake her ivory tower to plunge into electoral politics is not to know her at all.

Even if Sonia Gandhi is prevailed upon to give up her hesitation, it is outrageous to expect that the people will vote at her bidding, when they had rejected her husband twice. If the Congress really has no talent for leadership, it may be a better idea to requisition the service of a foreigner like Margaret Thatcher, who has better credentials than Sonia Gandhi to rule this country.

As election stares the Congress in the face, the only way in which it can stage a comeback to power is through forging meaningful, state-wise alliances. Indira Gandhi had the foresightedness to think of such alliances in Kerala and Tamil Nadu to take care of her needs in Parliament. But by pursuing a suicidal policy, Kesri has ruled out the possibility of such alliances taking shape. And a chance to keep the party alive.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.