Beyond the Purno-Pranab contest
A few months ago, Purno Sangma, now the main Opposition candidate for the Presidential election, had come to a meeting that I had organized at Jamia Millia Islamia. It was the Annual Saifuddin Kitchelew Lecture and since I hold the Kitchelew Chair, I had invited him to preside over the session. The main speaker was Jaswant Singh, the former External Affairs Minister. As is his wont, Mr. Sangma made the audience laugh and listen intently to his points. And he made one significant remark, which in hindsight, explains a lot about the path that he has chosen.
“Isn’t it remarkable,” he asked, turning to Jaswant Singh and me, “that in this country, the so-called ‘national parties’ are controlling fewer and fewer states? Doesn’t that tell you something about the state of the nation, the minds of the public, thatin many large states and smaller ones, they feel that they cannot trust either of the so-called ‘National Parties’? And I don’t think this is a good thing – I think it is a very disturbing trend.”:
Perceptive remarks. Especially because Mr. Sangma has quit his party – thereby making remaining in the ruling national coalition a possibility for his daughter, Agatha, and for Conrad and James, his sons, who run the Opposition in Meghalaya, to still have a party that is virtually the Nationalist Congress Party (we could call it either S as in Sangma or M as in Meghalaya) in his home state of Meghalaya, in the style of the Congress (O for Organization or I for Indira as in the old days of the first Congress split post-1969).
Why has Mr. Sangma tossed in his hat at this time? He could not have surely been expecting the Congress Party, which owes allegiance to the Nehru family and right now to Sonia and Rahul Gandhi, to support him especially after the controversy he raked up some years ago about Sonia’s Italian origins and her ineligibility, in his view, to hold top political positions in this country. The Nehru-Gandhi family have neither forgiven nor forgotten that although he has officially made up with Mrs. Gandhi, having taken his daughter to meet her when the latter was taken into UPA II as a junkior minister).
Mr. Sangma says he is banking on a ‘conscience’ vote, positioning himself as a ‘tribal’ candidate. I have noted some of the expressions of support from forums and ediscussions. But he is unlikely to find such an idea of support translating into actual votes. Although he has appealed for a vote on the basis of conscience, he may find that this may actually backfire — members of the party sponsoring him, albeit reluctantly, the Bharatiya Janata Party, and other opposition parties may end up cross-voting, according to their ‘conscience’.
Even if we accept the proposition that he is contesting as a ‘tribal’ candidate since this range of groups has been unrepresented in Rashtrapati Bhavan, we should also note that while the tribes of the North-east do not mind being called ‘tribals’, there are groups in Central India and elsewhere, covered by the Fifth Schedule, who resent such a tag. they like to be called Adivasis or Indigenous People and include the Sorens of Jharkhand, the Meenas of Rajasthan and others.
Some years back, I remember participating in a ‘National\Conference’ of Adivasis, Tribes and Indigenous Peoples: the Northeastern groups were outraged by the suggestion that they should stop calling themselves ‘tribals’ and become more progressive and describe themselves as ‘Adivasis.’ At least one representative from the region pointed out that the tribes of the region were not only wielding economic and political power in their states but also numerically dominant in these states, however small, unlike those of Central India and elsewhere where ‘outsiders’ had virtually swamped the Fifth Schedule (non-Northeastern tribal areas) blocks.
Many from the North-east tend to get extremely emotional about a wide range of issues. But emotions can’t change facts, although for a while they may be able to hide them. One major reality is that the number of people from the Scheduled Tribes in non-Northeastern India, despite their political clout, is only a small proportion of those tribal groups elsewhere.
But in 1992, the Opposition also fielded a tribal candidate, also from Meghalaya, and one who was a Deputy Speaker of the Lok Sabha at one point — GG Swell, — against the Congress’ Shankar Dayal Sharma. He lost by a landslide. He was from Mr. Sangma’s state but from a different tribe (Mr. Sangma is Garo and Mr. Swell was Khasi).
There are some similarities between Pranab Mukherjee, the UPA candidate, and Mr. Sangma. Both are small statured men with great ambitions and significant experience. Perhaps Mukherjee has vaster experience having managed portfolios that even Sangma has not held: Home, Defence, External Affairs and Finance, of course. But both coveted and did not get the Prime Ministership, albeit for different reasons. Sangma is se3asoned in local politics having served as Chief Minister and Opposition leader (the latter, more recently; he rose through the ranks as a rookie lawmaker to become Speaker of the Lok Sabha. He lost out as Chief Minister because he refused to bow to factional demands and later migrated to the NCP and had a tacit alliance with the BJP in Meghalaya and campaigned for both across the North-east, saying conditions there were different from Delhi and elsewhere in the country.
It was Sangma who wrote the critical report as a party functionary on illegal migration as far back as 1992 and the need for the Congress to change its obstreperous position on Bangladeshi influx into Assam and other parts of India. This was not a right-wing position but a sensibly political view which had wide resonance across the region, not just in the Brahmaputra valley. And it was Sangma, who as a member of the National Commission to Review the Constitution about a decade back, put his stamp of approval on proposals we had researched and made including extending the Sixth Schedule, with suitable protection to other communities, to the Bodo-dominated areas.
Mr. Sangma’s daughter is also in a difficult pickle: she is a junior member of the ruling coalition in Delhi, her father is the principal candidate of the Opposition for the highest Constitutional position in the country while her brothers are sitting in opposition to the Congress regime in Meghalaya. To say that this is a complicated situation is to understate the matter.
So when Mr. Sangma threw his hat in the ring, he must have had good reason to do so. He’s a very sharp politician and by Indian standards, he’s still pretty young – 64. LK Advani is past 80, Manmohan Singh is approaching that age although ASrun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj and Rahul Gandhi as well as Akhilesh Singh are much younger. I was asked this question by the TV anchor (and a fine print reporter earlier – truly TV’s gain in the NE, in this case, is the print media’s loss) Mrinal Talukdar in his 8 pm popular programme (I won’t call it a ‘show’!) on DY365: what could be Sangma’s goal?
For one, I think he is assessing the national strength he could muster as a Presidential candidate which could give him – and the parties supporting him — of possible strengths and weaknesses in their own ranks as much as in the ruling coalition at the Centre and its allies (both are becoming clearer by the day). This could set the stage for national elections and tussles of strength in the general elections due in 2014 and the run-up.
The second is that if he puts up a good fight – and we are sure that he will – he is paving the way for a pretty seamless transition to the Bharatiya Janata Party or a non-NCP platform for himself, his family members and supporters. One can now see his remarks at the university event in New Delhi as a step in that direction of the evolution in his thinking and strategy.
Ultimately, what matters in a democratic exercise such as an election, be it for panchayats or presidents, are numbers. The party or alliance which musters the largest number of votes wins. At the moment, the dice and the numbers are stacked against Sangma. He still hopes, he says, for a miracle. But then it’s also, as he himself should know, not about a ‘tribal’ candidate or even the better candidate – but the winning one.
By the Brahmaputra / by Sanjoy Hazarika