The advent of yet another coalition regime at the Centre has suddenly raised questions about 'coordination' between the party and the Government. Already there are talks of power-centres, in turn setting a bad precedent at one level, and leaving a bad taste at another.
Elections-2004 has confirmed the earlier belief that coalition politics is here to stay at the national-level, at least for some more time to come. It will be prudent thus to evolve rules for the new game than playing without any - and blaming failures on the players, rather than on the absence of rules. To the extent the ruling Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) takes the coordination committee seriously, a lot of problems would have been solved.
The question remains if the Government should function under the guidance of an 'extra-constitutional' authority like the coordination committee. The erstwhile BJP-NDA rulers also had a coordination committee, and there may now be need to have some guidelines about what would be within the purview of the 'organisation', and what would be the exclusive prerogative of the Government, politically represented by the Council of Ministers. Again, it is an evolving process, and healthy precedents need to be set when occasions cause the demand.
In all democracies, elections are won and lost, based on party agendas. The performance of the Government is checked against this agenda. Or, at least that is the belief. In a way, more than the independent agendas of individual political parties, the common agenda of the coalition on the whole has received greater attention in recent times, be it under the BJP-NDA earlier, or the Congress-UPA, since. In the case of the UPA, such a coalition agenda has been drawn up in the post-poll scenario, yet the Common Minimum Programme (CMP) does not deviate much from the independent poll planks of individual partners.
Given the different pulls and pressures, which are for real in any ruling coalition the world over, the coordination committee can be a healthy apparatus to ensure implementation of the promises made to themselves, and to the people at large. It lays down the policy framework, and the Government becomes the implementation authority. While the working of the Government and its functionaries are not put in the dock by coordination committees, they could still carry mid-course reviews of programmes and suggest correctives. After all, it is the party that goes back to the people for a fresh mandate and they should know what had happened to the earlier promises made to the people.
There are tested models of coordination committees in the country, though at the State-level, which can be adapted, with being replicated, at the national-level. The 'West Bengal model' of the ruling Left Front in the State is a temptation that any leader of any coalition would like to emulate, but it requires the kind of brutal majority that the CPM leader of the alliance alone has. The BJP-NDA may have been fashioned on this, as events of the time proved.
The other one is the 'Kerala model', where there are two variants. Here again, the CPM-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) is closer to the 'West Bengal model'. The ruling United Democratic Front (UDF) is another model, where the Congress leader has accepted the inevitability of having to accommodate the allies, and their preferences, as well. The fact is that all three models have been institutionalised, are working in their own way, and have helped keep the respective coalition together - for decades now. The absence of such a coordination committee was also felt in the case of the National Front and United Front Governments, though that was not the only reason, they collapsed.
Of course, this does not address the question of 'power-centres', though no doubt the coordination committee is bound to be described as one, before long. The question arises because of the division of responsibilities between the Prime Minister and the person of the Congress president, leading the coalition. No such questions were raised either when Jawaharlal Nehru was the Congress Prime Minister, or Atal Behari Vajpayee, the BJP Prime Minister. Both, on record, had independent party presidents working with them - under them, to be precise. There are those who attribute electoral reverses of the times to the failure of the Government of the day, to take directions from the organisational wing.
At a more direct-level, it all depends on whose shoulders the act of winning and losing elections rest. In the present case, it does not rest in the shoulders of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, though one 'wrong step' and the voter may have a different view, the next time round. When politics has been reduced to the art of winning - and, not losing - elections, it makes sense, though. But here again, it need not automatically flow that Delhi will be another Chennai, and Manmohan Singh will be another Panneerselvam, though in the Tamil Nadu context, such an arrangement had its own relevance and justification.
The taste of the pudding is in the eating, though the temptation now will be to call it pasta.
* Views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Observer Research Foundation.
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