Why the Deve Gowda brand of politics now threatens the center

My most intimate experience with former prime minister HD Deve Gowda was in a rather incongruous setting: the prime minister's aircraft traveling through the boondocks of eastern Uttar Pradesh. The year was 1996 and Deve Gowda was campaigning in the UP state elections: a Vokkaliga farm leader in the Hindi heartland, he was using his Sancho Panza and then union minister C.M.Ibrahim as translator. Long speeches followed by equally lengthy translations: Gowda on the campaign trail in UP was a cure for insomnia. As we wound up after a rather long and hot day, he glowered at me, "I know all you English speaking journalists are laughing at me. I don't care, I have been a legislator since 1962, grassroot politicians like me will always survive!" And then, the political Rip Van Winkle literally dozed off in the aircraft.

A little over a decade later, one must confess that Deve Gowda was probably right. Sure, he was a figure of fun for the country's chattering classes: a somnolent Deve Gowda was a cartoonist's delight. There are several anecdotes of how the "humble farmer" would mumble his way to drowsiness during important meetings. But he was also, as events in the last week in Karnataka have proven , a great survivor. If the Indian team won the 20-20 world cup, Deve Gowda has won round one in Karnataka's unique version of 20-20 politics, brazenly denying the BJP the prize of a southern state chief ministership for the first time after having completed his 20 months in power. The manipulative skills he demonstrated in the process were typical of when he was prime minister: for a consummate neta like Deve Gowda, there are truly no permanent friends or enemies in politics.

That he became prime minister may rankle those who feel that his ascent to the post devalued the august institution. His choice was pure luck (is it any wonder Deve Gowda swears by his astrologer), plucked out of obscurity to the highest post only because the other contenders eliminated each other. And yet, Deve Gowda will go down in history as one of only two Indian prime ministers (Charan Singh being the other) with well defined rural roots, a consciously non-elite leader and, in his case, the first to perhaps have virtually no connection with the Delhi durbar. In a sense, he was perhaps the first genuine regional satrap to become prime minister, a politician who derived his sense of power and importance, not from his proximity to the national leadership of his party but from his control over a particular state.

In 1996 though, Deve Gowda's ten month tenure was an aberration: he won out on the principle that the least deserving is often seen as the least threatening. He was a creature of a peculiar coalition arrangement in which neither the Congress nor the BJP exercised any direct influence. Instead, it was the (dis)United third front that was able to call the shots, thereby giving regional bosses like Gowda a chance to exercise a disproportionate influence. Eleven years, and two BJP and one Congress government later, the wheel could well be coming full circle: leaders like Deve Gowda may once again be in a position to hold the balance of power at the national level. Only this time, the presence of regional bosses with rising aspirations isn't an oddity, but a political reality.

As the mid-term election trumpet is sounded, the echo isn't being heard gleefully in the corridors of the big national parties. Both the Congress and the BJP privately concede that they will struggle to get a 150 Lok Sabha seats on their own (the BJP getting much less) , leaving them well short of a majority. The left is even more acutely aware that an election will further erode its double digit numbers. Into this hazy, fragmented picture, enter the real noise-makers: the regional parties with leaders who are convinced that even a dozen seats in the next Lok Sabha will offer a guarantee of ministerships and more.

Deve Gowda's 20-20 brand of politics - where the battle for power becomes an exercise in rapid deal-making -- is only symbolic of what can be expected in the next 12 months as and when elections take place: a brand of casino politics where principles are set aside, where every pound of flesh is extracted and very little is offered in return. The national party election rhetoric may be about nuclear nationalism and Ram Sethu, the 20-20 political rhetoric is about placing a price tag on each MP.

Then, whether it's a Karunanidhi or a Jayalalitha, a Mamta or a Mayawati, even a Sharad Pawar, the guiding principle for twenty-first century regional satraps is to deal with the national parties as a relationship between equals, one where the national party can be virtually bullied into submission by the small ally. Karunanidhi, whose party the DMK has the singular distinction of serving in every cabinet bar one in the last decade, has proven that even with 16 MPs, he has the political weight to force the Centre to bend to his every whim. During the 1996 United Front government, Karunanidhi was simply one among an array of leaders. Today, he can justifiably claim first among equals status, simply because an enfeebled central government has been made dependent on his support.

(The article first appeared on Hindustan Times)