New Delhi, May 20: When India’s ruling Congress party swept back into power last May its mood was one of bullish self-confidence, but a year in office has revealed divisions and an unexpected political frailty.
After a lengthy period of cumbersome coalition rule, the 2009 election offered Congress a surprisingly strong mandate, giving the party 207 of the 545 seats in parliament — its best result in two decades.
With its partners in the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), it commanded a total of 262 seats and the promised support of smaller parties took its theoretical legislative strength to a commanding 322.
The result freed Congress — now coupled with allies of preference rather than necessity — to push through critical reforms that had previously been blocked by parties who held the key to the government’s survival.
The reality, however, has been a year of stop-start legislation, during which the government has been buffeted by strikes over soaring food prices, allegations of phone tapping, a high-profile ministerial resignation, and a confidence vote in parliament.
In March, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh found allies deserting him in droves as his administration pushed through a bill to reserve a third of the seats in parliament for women.
The thinning support sent Congress strategists scrambling for the numbers to defeat a confidence vote in April on the issue of unpopular fuel price hikes.
“It is paradoxical that deep divisions have surfaced despite the fact that after the 2009 elections, the government appeared more stable than it had been for the previous five years,” said analyst Paranjoy Guha Thakurta.
“While the elections resulted in the opposition becoming politically weaker, today the coalition government is more incoherent than ever before,” said Thakurta, co-author of a book on coalition politics.
Divisions have surfaced within Congress itself, with two senior party leaders publicly faulting Home Minister P. Chidambaram’s strategy to quell a Maoist insurgency afflicting 20 of India’s 28 states.
“For the first time in years, India’s ‘grand old party’ is riven with open clashes of personality and ideology,” Thakurta said.
Public spats between Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh and Transport Minister Kamal Nath on clearances for road projects also embarrassed the government, as did some critical “tweets” on policy issues by former junior foreign minister Shashi Tharoor on the micro-blogging site Twitter.
Last week, Ramesh offered his resignation after picking a fight with Chidambaram in public.
Tharoor was forced to resign last month, after news broke that a female friend of the minister was given a free stake worth 15 million dollars in a new franchise in the multi-billion-dollar Indian Premier League cricket tournament.
Days later, the government found itself the target of opposition fury over reports of the secret phone tapping of senior opposition politicians.
“Look at it this way — India is a complex country with a lively political environment. There is never a dull moment,” said Rasheed Kidwai, analyst and biographer of Congress party chief, the Italian-born Sonia Gandhi.
Kidwai blamed the government for its “self made” misfortunes, noting that its “approach seems to be ‘let the problem come and we will sort out a solution.’ That is not the best way of doing things.
“It should have a trouble-shooting mechanism in place to sort out differences between it and the party or even coalition partners,” he said.
Despite all the problems, Singh’s government is numerically secure and should have no trouble seeing out a full term, thanks in part to the fractured nature of the parliamentary opposition.
“The problems are awkward and embarrassing but there is no opposition unity,” said B.G. Verghese, former member of the Centre for Policy Research think tank in New Delhi.
“Also, no party wants elections just yet. So there is no question mark on the government’s survival,” Verghese said.
—Agencies