What does the future hold for Sharad Pawar?

No matter what the results of the Maharashtra elections reveal later this week, it is hard to get away from

the feeling that the basic problem with Maharashtra politics is that the state has four parties whereas it should have only two.

 

   To the extent that the Shiv Sena has any ideology at all, it is probably fair to say that this so-called ideology is not very different from the ‘ideology’ of the MNS. The difference between the two parties is not one of platform or policy. It has only to do with individuals.

 

   Raj Thackeray believes that he should be Bal Thackeray’s successor. After all, he looks like the senapati, has his humour and even draws cartoons. Unfortunately for Raj, Bal Thackeray chose his son Uddhav over his nephew.

 

   The sole reason for the MNS’s existence is this battle for succession. Raj has decided that if Bal Thackeray will not bequeath his constituency to him, he will grab it by force, even if he has to fight his uncle and his nephew in the process.

 

   Much the same is true of the other side of the political divide.

 

   If you ask the NCP and the Congress what the differences on political issues are, you will be met with a blank silence. There are virtually no ideological differences between the two Congresses. Once again, the only distinction is one of personal ambition.

 

   The Nationalist Congress Party owes its existence to Sharad Pawar’s desire to become Prime Minister. He created the party as a breakaway faction of the Congress after challenging Sonia Gandhi’s leadership on the grounds that she was born outside of India.

 

   In Pawar’s reckoning, the foreign origin issue was so powerful that droves of Congressmen would desert the mother party and join his offshoot. In fact, almost everyone who had made promises to Pawar backed out and he was left with the likes of Tariq Anwar (remember him?) and Purno Sangma who counted for nothing outside of the north east.

 

   My guess is that Pawar would have preferred to give the NCP less of a Congress character once he realized that his coup had failed. The Congress and the NCP fought the election that defeated the Shiv Sena-BJP government in Maharashtra separately. Pawar was not averse to an alliance with either the Sena or the BJP once the results threw up a hung Assembly.

 

   Unfortunately for him, his partymen – all raised within the Congress tradition – hailed the result as a victory for ‘secular forces’ and imposed a Congress alliance on the NCP.

 

   Since then, all of Pawar’s efforts to break free of the Congress have failed. Six years ago, a planned electoral alliance with BJP in the Lok Sabha polls went awry after Pramod Mahajan refused to grant the NCP the seats it wanted. This time around, Pawar had hoped for a Third Front government where he would have been a potential Prime Minister and had left the option of aligning with the BJP open. But the Congress’s strong showing in the Lok Sabha polls left him with no option but to stick to his existing alliance.

 

   Though Pawar will probably resent the parallel, in many ways, he is no more than the Raj Thackeray of the Congress. He broke his party because of personal ambition and his new party has no ideological raison d’etre.

 

   Like Raj, Pawar is a frustrated plotter. Raj had hoped to hijack the Shiv Sena’s entire base. If the exit polls are right, he will have to be content with a mere 14 or so seats in the new Assembly. Pawar had hoped to be Prime Minister – remember he fought Narasimha Rao for the job in 1991 – but is now no more than a regional leader who is seeing his hold weaken.

 

   The difference between Pawar and Raj is the long-term perspective. Raj is near the beginning of his career. It is not entirely unrealistic to expect that in the post-Bal Thackeray situation, the MNS could improve its standing and make further inroads into the Shiv Sena base.

 

"One, parties tend to be based more on personal ambition than on ideology. And two: while everyone is focusing on what the election will do to Raj Thackeray’s career, the story may be elsewhere.

   Pawar, on the other hand, is in the twilight of his career. For him, the long-term does not extend much beyond the next five years. Eighteen years after he first tried to be Prime Minister, he is even further away from that goal than he has been at any time in the last two decades.

 

   Worse still, the NCP appears to be cracking. There have been serious divisions within the party and all the polls say that even though the Congress-NCP alliance will be the largest chunk in the Assembly, the NCP’s share of MLAs will be reduced compared to five years ago.

 

   Contrast this scenario with the fate that awaited Pawar had he not chosen to break the Congress. When he left, he was already one of the party’s most senior leaders. Had he stayed, he would have been an obvious alternative to Manmohan Singh for the Prime Ministership and even if he had not got the top job, would have been a clear No. 2 combining the savvy of Pranab Mukherjee with a political base of his own.

 

   Small wonder then that the NCP has been trying, for many months now, to erase the disastrous mistake caused by Pawar’s miscalculation. Senior NCP Ministers tell journalists – off the record, of course – that they are not averse to re-joining the mother party. Pawar has already accepted Sonia’s leadership so even the ego issue has now been settled. So why stay out?

 

   The NCP’s problem is that the Congress does not want it. All attempts at re-joining have been rebuffed. And if Vilasrao Deshmukh and the other leaders of the Maharashtra Congress had got their way, there wouldn’t even have been a Congress-NCP alliance at this election. (Sonia Gandhi turned them down and opted for the alliance).

 

   The Congress reckons that the NCP is in disarray. There is no clear succession plan: there could be a battle between Ajit Pawar and Supriya Sule to replace Sharad Pawar. And increasingly, even the NCP’s own members are questioning their party’s raison d’etre.

 

   Why readmit the NCP, say Congressmen. This will only give Pawar increased importance and make him a virtual No. 2 in the Cabinet. Far better, surely, to treat him as a regional leader with a handful of MPs? And besides, it is only a matter of time before the NCP’s members trickle back to the mother party.

 

   That prognosis may be too optimistic – it would be a mistake to write off the NCP. But it does tell us two things about Maharashtra politics.

 

   One, parties tend to be based more on personal ambition than on ideology. And two: while everyone is focusing on what the election will do to Raj Thackeray’s career, the story may be elsewhere.

 

   The real question is: what does the future hold for Sharad Pawar?