NEW DELHI: Never since hi |lost power has V.P.Singh beer in such a combative mood as this last month, what engaged him is not so much who was going to occupy Rashtrapati Bhawan bu the next major step in what he dares to call the “Mandalisation of politics,”

Ashe puts it They are fighting in the electoral college, We are fighting in the minds of the people.” His lieutenants in UP have been reporting groups unlike they have seen in years were turning up to receive them and Congratulate them. Whether they are exaggerating or no the signal appears to have gone own: V.P.Singh did what he could to get a president from the scheduled castes or tribes.

Since the Mandal report’s implementation, politics has been polarized in a large part of north India, In Bihar, Laloo

Prasad Yadav effectively bound the scheduled and other backward castes along with the minorities into a powerful political bulwark.

Elsewhere, the backward castes and the minorities were swayed but the political combination did not get-not least because most schedule caste people stayed away

Gradually, Singh believes, the message of power sharing will sink in and “the weaker sections” realize that they must come together to attain power, It may or may not ultimately happen but the politician argument was obviously strong enough for him to have carried with him most of the party leader: who had initially been hesitant about the SC-ST demand.

Of those who have sought permission to vote according to their conscience, Gaimam bhai Melts has often tied to get himself expelled by the party since the Mandal days and Rajmohar Gandhi is not an MP any more because the ticket was given to V.P. Singh’s otherwise lightweight lieutenant, Sompa, instead, For Shahabuddin and Yunees Salem, an anti-BJP stand is more important than any other political factor,

And MGK Menon belongs to a class which has been thoroughly uneasy with the JD since the Mandal report’s implementation,

Yet it is a measure of the importance of this issue to Singh that he has undertaken to persuade them and not shrug off dissidence as he did even at points when the party was breaking up.

As remarkable as has been his persistent effort over the past week to ensure that the damage to the image of NF-left unity is minimal. Indeed, perhaps he is not exaggerating when he claims that the alliance “will become more mature, become closer” after the intensive deliberations of last week,

While they have allied one certain accepted platform, name of the NF-left partners has ever submerged its separate identity, The fact that the RSP broke rank with the left and the Congress (S with the national front shows clearly that the divide was not really between the NF and the Left. Rather, the wo dominant parties, the JD and the CPI (M), dug in their heels and the others were forced to choose between,

As for those two, their sands have been entirely consistent, While it isn’t as if the CPI(M) is against social justice, their option has always been for the safe and sure. That is why the IPF has been closer to the Janata Dal than the CPI (M) has been on the Punjab elections, on Kashmir as well as bet, not to speak of the manner which the Mandal report was implemented.

So for the CPI(M), and to a lesser extent the CPI, symbolism was as nothing compared with the need to ensure that, in these uncertain times, the best available candidate became president and to prevent BJP nominees from becoming vice president, In 1987, to the left was largely responsible for ensuring that Zail Singh was not put up for a second term as the joint opposition nominee because they did not want anyone who “might make mischief,” A CPM politburo member goes so far also say that “our reacting on the S-ST demand is irresponsible.

In any case, the left has always been uneasy about caste-based demands, since it finds it difficult to neatly fit case into the patterns of class struggle. A politburo member explains that on the implements he was closer to the NF than either the BJP or the Congress(I) but he added the rider that social justice is more than just reservations.

So hesitant is the party on caste that its MP, Aim Bala, was told to steer clear of the SC-ST MPs forum. “If the agenda was going to be the president, we were not interested,” explains the politburo member. But, he adds the party was impressed by the SCST convention’s socioeconomic resolution. On the other hand, Singh sees the forum as “a very useful forum,” with “a major role to press the nation’s polices towards social justice” and to change the status quo.

That these different perceptions are consistent with the politics and ideologies of each party does not mean that their alliance is finished just as much as their different approaches to the Punjab elections did not cause a parting of ways. Indeed, both sides over that, on the new economic policies and on communalism, their battle will be no less vigorous than before. Meanwhile, each side feels it has got what it wanted, the left thinks it will see the best man for the job in Rashtra patel Bhavan and MP VP Singh feels he has advanced his social revolution.

Article extracted from this publication >> June 10, 1994