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VIEWPOINT: RIGHT ANGLE
Peeling Off The Teflon
The distinction between a good PM and an errant
PMO is fading
By Swapan Dasgupta
 Overwhelmed
by the dynastic underpinnings of its politics, the Congress has made a
virtue of its imperial leadership. Consequently, if the buzz in Congress
circles is to be taken at face value, Sonia Gandhi never commits a mistake.
She is inevitably "misled". Thus, Arjun Singh misled her during
the "we have 272" fiasco in 1999, M.L. Fotedar misled her at
the knee-dip in Prayag during the Kumbh Mela and Kamal Nath misled her
in West Bengal. Although this expedient formulation doesn't speak too
highly of the leader's ability to make up her own mind, it does serve
a purpose. By delinking Sonia from every tactical twist and turn, the
Congress upholds the old British constitutional principle that "the
Queen can do no wrong".
It is one of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's
great achievements that he perfected a variant of this imperial style,
with more telling effect. Before the dirt from Tehelka hit the ceiling,
the projections from Race Course Road followed a predictable pattern.
It was Vajpayee who made all the "decisive" moves, like getting
on the bus to Lahore, removing Kalyan Singh as chief minister of Uttar
Pradesh, taming the Hindutva hotheads and appointing Bangaru Laxman as
BJP president. Conversely, it was a set of errant officials in the Prime
Minister's Office (PMO) who were guilty of the misdemeanours, like mishandling
the onion crisis in 1998, tampering with the telecom policy and forcing
Harin Pathak's resignation from the Government to target Home Minister
L.K. Advani.
It was an expedient arrangement. Angry swayamsevaks,
including RSS chief K.S. Sudarshan, and disgruntled BJP activists would
routinely hit out at the Brajesh Mishras and the N.K. Singhs for misleading
the prime minister and misusing his authority. But none of the opprobrium
stuck to Vajpayee. No one even asked how and why the prime minister was
so indulgent towards those who ran a state within a state. Principal Secretary
Mishra would routinely claim he was a mere messenger but so considerable
was Vajpayee's authority that the identity of the controller was never
probed. Like the Italian Queen in 10 Janpath, the Indian prime minister
could do no wrong. He could get away by even letting it be known that
he no longer believed in the ideology of the party that brought him to
power. There was a defined Lakshman rekha for the NDA and the Opposition
but no such boundaries for the PMO.
Ironically, it was Vajpayee who demolished this
arrangement. Within the BJP, it was widely felt that the Tehelka tapes
would not have had such a devastating impact if the atmosphere hadn't
been vitiated by whispers of a PMO that had, in code language, become
excessively "RH positive" and high-handed. Expediency demanded
that Vajpayee now use the make-believe distinction between the PM and
PMO to full effect. But cocooned from the real world-a function of his
natural disinclination to interact and a recurring knee problem-he chose
to put a premium on loyalty and ride out the crisis with management by
inaction.
It isn't working. The PMO has become a favourite
whipping boy, with charges flowing thick and fast. But Vajpayee can hardly
count on anyone to defend his praetorian guards. He has been tarred by
association. The teflon layer has peeled off. Which is why he looks tired,
pained, isolated and vulnerable, a condition that seems politically ominous.
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