NEW DELHI: India could be heading for elections in 2008, a year ahead of schedule, after a row over a nuclear deal with the United States exposed deep faultlines between the government and its communist allies.
The communists have virtually threatened to withdraw support to the ruling coalition over a controversial civil nuclear cooperation deal with Washington and tempers are running high.
The two sides might live through the current crisis, since neither side wants an election this year, but relations have become so fraught that an eventual separation now seems likelier than not before the end of the government’s term in May 2009.
“It is the beginning of the end,” said political analyst Mahesh Rangarajan.
“I think early elections are becoming a reality. It will not happen in the next two months but certainly we are looking at general elections ahead of 2009, most probably in early 2008.”
Relations between Congress, which heads the ruling coalition, and the communists were never good at the best of times, and their alliance was little more than a marriage of convenience to keep the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) out of power.
In the two communist bastions of West Bengal and Kerala states, Congress is a bitter opponent of the left.
“The Congress never had any faith in the (communists) and the left never had any faith in the Congress,” Shekhar Gupta wrote in the Indian Express.
“Whatever happens, the die for an early election is cast and it is for the Congress to decide the timing.”
The communists, who have 60 MPs in parliament split between four parties, say the nuclear deal hurts India’s sovereignty and could make its foreign policy beholden to the United States.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has refused to back down over the historic deal, which aims to end three decades of nuclear isolation for India, and threw down the gauntlet by daring the communists to withdraw their support in parliament.
NOT READY FOR POLLS: On Saturday, the left called for negotiations with the International Atomic Energy Agency over the deal to be put on hold until its objections were “considered ... and evaluated”.
It also threatened “serious consequences” if Congress did not bend. But political analysts say the left is unlikely to bring the government down just yet by opposing it in a confidence vote.
For a start, neither side wants to fight an election on the nuclear issue, partly because it is not seen as an emotive one for most Indians. More importantly, neither side is battle-ready.
“The left will roar and scream, but unless Congress goes on the warpath and utterly humiliates them, they will not leave, they will find some face-saving formula,” said independent political analyst Prem Shankar Jha.
“The left knows that if there was an election now, it would do very badly.”
Unpopular attempts to seize farmland to make way for factories have seriously embarrassed the left in West Bengal, while infighting has damaged their prestige in their other stronghold, the southern state of Kerala.
Columnist Karan Thapar says the communists left room for compromise by not explicitly demanding the nuclear deal be renegotiated or spelling out what those “consequences” would be.
“The problem is both sides are tightrope walking, and one side or the other could slip,” he said. “Accidents can happen, caused by anger or damaged prestige, but assuming everyone is agile and adept, there is wiggle room”.
But even if a compromise is found, the chances of elections rise next year, political analysts said.
NO CLEAR WINNER: One Congress official said the party was already mentally gearing up for the possibility of elections in 2008, to coincide with state elections in three states now ruled by the BJP.
Congress hopes that a traditional anti-incumbency vote would work in its favour in those states, he said.
Nevertheless, some analysts are hedging their bets.
Thapar said a vote was more likely but not inevitable next year. Congress politicians are too “comfortable” to want to relinquish power early to face an election likely to throw up a “patchwork of gains and losses”.
The party is unlikely to fare well in key states such as Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.
It would also like more time to roll out policies such as a social security plan for the self-employed and people running the smallest businesses, and for the benefits of a national rural employment guarantee scheme to spread through the countryside.“I would bet against it,” said Jha, when asked if Congress would go for an early poll.
Either way, the prospect of major reforms to liberalise India’s economy look clouded by the realities of coalition politics, as no party would be expected to get a majority even if elections are held next year.
“I expect elections before the scheduled time, maybe before the end of 2008,” said N. Bhaskara Rao, a pollster at the Centre for Media Studies.
“But I don’t see any stable or definitive government emerging, no matter when the election takes place — which means the economic reform agenda will not pick up any speed.”—Reuters
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