A decade and more after the 'reforms regimen' caused a rethink of the 'national agenda', the Indian polity may be at the crossroads again. If cascading fiscal compulsion was behind the earlier re-think, this time round it has more to do with the evolving polity and ageing personalities. <br /> <br /> Two pointers are available to the current situation that may impact on the future to an unpredictable degree. One is the perceptible inability of the 'nationalist' BJP Opposition to accept the Lok Sabha poll defeat, and prepare for the future. The other is the sudden, if not surprising, interest of the various Naxalite groups in the country, to enter the negotiation process - thus, hinting at their possible entry into mainstream politics. <br /> <br /> In the light of the post-poll revival of the 'socialist mood' in policy-planning, and given the limitations of contemporary politics and political parties, the nation may begin looking for new options - or, at old and forgotten options in a new light. The return of the centrist Congress to the centre-stage may be a pointer. But a greater pointer should be the inherent of the party to return to the centre-stage with the same vibrancy and vitality of a distant past. <br /> <br /> Going beyond the 'socialist mantle' of the pre-reforms days, the Congress now wants to be every thing to every one. It's also increasingly giving the impression of being weighed down by this ambitious and ambivalent responsibility, taking the future of the political Opposition as nearly non-existent. Possibly having left the worse behind it, the Congress may be tempted to revive thoughts of national dominance -- but it cannot afford to repeat the BJP's mistake of acting like one before being one. . <br /> <br /> In a way, the BJP is also paying the price for the over-confidence while in power, and the consequent complacency. This in turn contributed to the party's failure to nurture a second-line leadership when the going was good. Deifying tall leaders had at least helped the Congress leaders on the popular front, at least up to a time. In the case of the BJP, it only ended up shifting the political and electoral responsibility of the party to a persona, who was a creature of his contradicting times. Today, it is unable to fill the emerging leadership vacuum, and is unwilling to re-call the political responsibility. <br /> <br /> As the oldest in the pack, the Congress can now call in its inherent advantages. It was ageing and tottering when new and younger elements were fighting among themselves, and also with it, for a share in the political space. Now when the rest of them are going through the ageing, the party has done its term, and is trying to get its act together. Yet, it is not where it had once been, and wants to be, and this has thrown up possibilities and opportunities. <br /> <br /> It's in this context, the possible mainstreaming of the Naxalites need to be viewed. Earlier editions of the communists had a substantial constituency identifying with their ideology, but the populism of the pre-Independence Congress first, and of issues-based regional parties later found the leftist political space shrinking with every election. The identity crisis now haunting the Congress and the BJP at different levels, coupled with their ideological confusion at other levels, may provide political space for the Left. But like the BJP of the present, the communists all along have been incapable of exploiting it at the national-level. <br /> <br /> Even at the regional-level, the Naxalites, if they entered the mainstream, would have to look for symbols that are identifiable for the un-initiated. Inevitably, militancy for them has become an end in itself - and not the means to an end. About the 'end', there is no clear understanding or idea any more than decades ago. For Naxalites, if they were serious about entering the mainstream, may have to sort out this contradiction. <br /> <br /> Their one hope however would be the Leftist successes in States like West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura. In these States, the focussed approach and consequent staying power of the Left movement also helped reverse political fragmentation, based on social identities. Elsewhere, the communists lacked focus, or staying power, or both, regional parties have fragmented politics on the basis of local and localised issues and concerns. Ideology in most cases was a convenient veil, hiding real identities and intentions. <br /> <br /> Today, the fragmentation is complete in many cases, and so is the twin-faced ageing factor. Having outlived their single or multi-point agendas, many of these parties, like the Congress of the Independence days, have outlived their utility and relevance. The process has absorbed them so much into the mainstream that they continue to be around only because they are already there - and their competitors either lack confidence, or combativeness, or both. <br /> <br /> Unacknowledged though, the churning process is on in many of them, as it has now commenced in the case of the BJP, too. Re-inventing the wheel has often been a painful, and at times a failed process - involving a re-look, re-orientation, and recast. It has to happen one time or the other, one way or the other, if parties need to remain continuously relevant. It's at times like this that the absence - and, not necessarily the presence - of an imaginative leadership would be felt. <br /> <br /> Flowing from Elections-2004, this process could mean the BJP national leadership, for instance, converting itself into an umbrella under which inward-looking leaderships of the party at the State-levels could recast and reorient them all. Conversely for the revived hopes of the Left, the absence of a national leadership of any force or presence could become to be felt, particularly if the outlawed fraternity seeks mainstreaming - and thus seek to reclaim the constituency that was hence lost to by-now-ageing regional parties that may have outlived their single-point agendas. Between them all is the 'eternally centrist' Congress, which is not as much unsure of its future presence at present as it is of its future course. <br /> <br /> <br /> <em>* Views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Observer Research Foundation.</em>
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