On the face of it, the Vijayawada get-together of opposition parties, including four non-Congress (I) chief ministers, has been a washout. It has led to the formation of an opposition council and adoption of a resolution which holds the Congress (I) responsible for all the ills the country is suffering from. But the council cannot amount to much if only because it contains parties – from one end of the political spectrum to the other – which cannot possibly cooperate with one another on any concrete issue. The resolution could have been easily anticipated. It can convince only the converted. Indeed, some of the participants have already given expression to a pessimistic assessment of the exercise – Mr. Jagjivan Ram, for instance. There is, however, another way to look at the Vijayawada conclave.
To begin with, it should be noted that the meeting was a result of the Andhra chief minister Mr. NT Rama Rao’s initiative. Though he is relatively new to politics, he is no fool. His speeches are evidence enough that he has taken to politics as fish do to water. As such, it should be assumed that he had a specific purpose in view. The purpose is obvious. It is to project himself on the national scene. He is not content with chief ministership of Andhra though he has held this office for less than six months. Though it may be a bit rash or at any rate premature to say that he is offering himself as an alternative to Mrs. Gandhi, there is little doubt that he wants to play a major role on the national scene. To that end, he has made two sets of moves. First, he has sought to forge close links with the two other non-Congress (I) southern chief ministers, Mr. MG Ramachandran and Mr. Ramakrishna Hegde, so that non-Congress (I) MPs in the next Lok Sabha may function as a bloc and thereby acquire a significant say in the choice of the next prime minister should Mrs. Gandhi fail to win an absolute majority in the house. Secondly, he has sought to build bridges with almost all predominantly north Indian parties in order that at least some of them may be willing to cooperate with him in such an enterprise.
Mr. Rama Rao’s pronouncements on the issue of regionalism should be read in the context of his desire to project himself on the all-India scene. This is not to suggest that he is deliberately tailoring his utterances to this purpose. Even so, it is significant that instead of defining regionalism in cultural-linguistic terms, as most other Indians do, he holds the failure of the Congress – in all its incarnations – to fulfill the aspirations of the people as being responsible for the rise of regional parties. Moreover, he seldom misses an opportunity to emphasize that while he is unhappy with the way the Centre functions, especially in respect of the allocation of financial resources, he does not want a confrontation with New Delhi. Of course, other non-Congress (I) chief ministers speak the same language. But Mr. Rama Rao is different in that he alone among the south Indian chief ministers has taken the initiative to forge ties with opposition parties which have support in the north.
It is difficult to say whether the Andhra chief minister is sensitive to the possibility that as a result of the defeat of the Congress (I) in its two southern strongholds – Andhra and Karnataka – and the Akali and Assam agitations, the north Indian voter may conclude that the country is in the danger of falling apart and rally round Mrs. Gandhi in the belief that she alone can cope with the problem. But such a possibility exists. In fact, such a reaction on the part of the Hindu voter may partly explain the landslide victory of the Congress (I) in the recent elections to the Delhi metropolitan council and the Delhi municipal corporation despite a significant shift in the Muslim vote away from the party. It will be wrong to speculate on the possible outcome of the forthcoming election in Jammu and Kashmir, or on the allegiance of the Hindus in Punjab. But a number of observers believe that a large number of Hindus in both Jammu and Punjab are shifting their loyalty from the Bharatiya Janata Party to the Congress (I) because they feel that Mrs. Gandhi alone can protect their interests.
One can neither over-emphasize that this view is based on speculation (and not on evidence) nor ignore the fact that the Congress (I) has done reasonably well in the recent by elections in Karnataka. Even so, the need for avoiding a north-south polarization is evident and Mr. Rama Rao is well advised to do all he can in this regard. As it happens, he is well placed to play this role for Andhra is different from Tamil Nadu. It has for instance, not been as opposed to Hindi as Tamil Nadu or West Bengal. Telugu Desam unlike DMK or AIADMK is the product not of a long search for a political identity but of the inability of the Congress (I) to put its house in order and give a state government the people could respect.
Mr. Rama Rao’s approach to national politics is coalitional and not unitary which the Congress has represented all these years and which Mrs. Gandhi now represents in her person. His view would be that this approach can accommodate regional parties which are a fact of life in the country. It certainly can, but coalitional politics has been a failure both in the states – witness the collapse of the SVS governments in north India between 1967 and 1969 – and at the Centre witness the breakup of the Janata in a little over two years. The voter in north India is certainly sensitive to this fact and his counterpart in south India too may not be indifferent. Mrs. Gandhi is going to press this hard whenever the election to the Lok Sabha is held, in fact, she is already doing so just as she is stressing the external dangers.