Weakness is strength

Weakness is strength

Strange as it may sound, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Ram Prakash Gupta's greatest strength is his weakness. On Wednesday, he got a reprieve for precisely this reason. While everybody in the Bharatiya Janata Party, both at the Centre and in the state, is agreed that there is no redemption for the party under his leadership, there is also no unanimity on his successor.

Thus, on the presumption that a known devil is better than an unknown one, Gupta is allowed to stay on. Small wonder that the very meeting convened by the Prime Minister to find a replacement for Gupta ended with the decision not to disturb him. The consensus that had reportedly been evolved over Union Surface Transport Minister Rajnath Singh as the next chief minister of UP evaporated into thin air when Gupta's cabinet colleagues, Kalraj Mishra and Lalji Tandon, ruled out such a proposal. So Gupta is back in Lucknow even as the BJP claims the search for a replacement continues in right earnest. What is overlooked in all this is the deleterious effect all this dilly-dallying has had on the functioning of the government.

Almost every election held in the state since Gupta was brought in as a replacement for Kalyan Singh has proved beyond a shadow of doubt that the chief minister is more a liability than an asset for the party and the government.

Control of Uttar Pradesh, which sends the single largest contingent of members to the Lok Sabha, is central to the BJP's continuance as the ruling party at the Centre. Of course, it can be argued that even if the BJP loses power in Lucknow when the Assembly elections are held next year, it will not affect the stability of the Vajpayee ministry, which is dependent on the support of about two dozen political parties. But that is tantamount to taking an oversimplistic view of things. The saying that whoever rules UP, rules India may no longer be valid, but the consequences of losing Lucknow are bound to be serious.

It will strike at the BJP's ability to manage a heterogeneous coalition like the National Democratic Alliance. This, in itself, is a heavy price to pay for Lucknow's lapses.

It is, of course, easy to blame Gupta for the sad state of the BJP, which lost heavily in the Prime Minister's own constituency during the recent panchayat elections. But such nitpicking does not take into account the high hopes the BJP had generated in the state and its inability to fulfill them.

For instance, the people who had been fed up with the casteist politics of successive governments under Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati, expected the BJP to provide good governance as implicit in its "suraj" commitment. But by cobbling together a whole bunch of party-breakers, rank opportunists and outright casteists to form a government and thereby pay Mulayam Singh back in his own coin, the BJP forfeited the confidence of its own traditional supporters. The drift in the state is reflected in the worsening law and order situation, about which the government has no clue.

The party's redemption, therefore, lies in finding an able leader who can provide purposive leadership to the state. The pity is such leaders are a rare commodity these days even in a party that claims to be guided solely by nationalism.