The Hindu Business Line : Political ingenuity

HOW can a country which gave zero to humankind be allowed to lag behind in political innovations? Indeed, politics in India has (or `have' as per old style of writing) been characterised by stunning ingenuity and sparkling originality. I am giving a glossary for the information of practitioners of the esoteric art-cum-science in the rest of the world so that they can emulate and benefit.

Many countries, especially in Europe, have had coalition governments. At the most, they might have been made up of four to five parties. To India's political class belongs the credit of inventing coalitions of close to 30 parties, some with single-digit members, and running them successfully for the full term of five years. The wonder of wonders is that the parties in the coalition at the Centre may be electorally at each others' throats in the States and fighting each other to the finish! No other head of government any where in the world can match the sheer genius of a Prime Minister heading such an `alliance' in India and effortlessly balancing the egos and interests of all the partners and the large number of 80-100 Ministers with a bewildering array of agendas and ideologies.

Jumbo cabinets in which nearly 80 to 90 per cent of the total strength of the Assembly ends up as Ministers, are another of India's incomparable innovations. Years ago, R. K. Lakshman came up with a delectable cartoon in which a tourist guide taking a first-time visitor to the State capital to a cavernous auditorium with 200 seats is shown as saying, "No, no, this is not the Assembly hall, this is the Cabinet room"!

Only an Indian mind could think of an arrangement whereby different parties lusting for power agree to rotate the post of Chief Minister among their nominees, or a Chief Minister can coolly induct his own wife, totally new to politics, in his place with the acclamation of his followers. Yet another marvellous idea is that of parties supporting minority or coalition governments from the outside and keeping them in constant jitters with threats of pulling them down unless they do this or that.

What is missing in this highly enviable repertoire is a government which, like the Left Front in West Bengal, has been long in power, adopts the cricket analogy, and `declares', asking its adversary to take over. This is one innovation which, we can be sure, will never to come to pass!

B. S. Raghavan