Vajpayee strong in run-up to second term

PEOPLE WHO MADE A DIFFERENCE IN 2003

Beginning today, we start a series on the people who made a difference in politics in 2003. On January 1, 2004, we will provide insights on the three people who will shape politics in 2004

At 79, the tendency in most people is to look back at the life they have led. Not so India's Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

He has everything to look forward to""turning 80; being the only Prime Minister of a coalition in India to serve a full term and possibly another term as the Prime Minister; and being hailed as the leader who started the process of normalisation of relations between India and Pakistan.

For a man whose retirement pundits have been predicting for the last five years, Vajpayee shows no sign of giving up work.

In 2003, the lauh purush-vikas purush controversy had the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) scurrying to placate him when he announced that the party would march to victory""with LK Advani. Then, as before, speculation that he might retire proved groundless.

Instead, Vajpayee confounded his critics by demonstrating foxy political skills.

He held out a hand of friendship to Pakistan despite grave provocation represented by events such as the Nadimarg massacre; foiled the Vishwa Hindu Pari-shad's moves to resurrect Ayodhya by appointing (coopting) minister of state for home, Swami Nityanand, a sadhu counted by the VHP as one of them; and allowing the relationship between Mayawati and the BJP in Uttar Pradesh to crumble and break, recognising that it had no long-term potential, although he was under pressure to somehow let the alliance carry on ("let them fight and kill themselves. Why should we get involved in it," he told a senior minister when after the Taj Expressway scandal, Mayawati got the BJP minister's consent for dissolution of the Assembly under false pretences and threatened to bring down the government).

Vajpayee's ideological flexibility was much more on show this year than before. After Ram Janmabhumi Nyas leader Mahant Ramchandra Das died, Vajpayee swore on the banks of the river Sarayu that "we will never give up the dream of a Ram temple in Ayodhya".

Uma Bharati was projected as Madhya Pradesh chief minister to enable saffron to be identified with governance at the grassroots level.

Vajpayee deftly defused a hierarchy crisis building up in the party by rejecting Human Resources Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi's resignation from the government submitted in anticipation of a court judgment about his role in the Ayodhya demolition.

So in 2003, like before, he equivocated between being Hindu and being non-Hindu.

The Iraq war and normalisation with Pakistan were two testing events in 2003 where the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister alone was required to exercise judgment. Whatever impression the US might have got through its channels, Vajpayee was inflexible in not committing Indian troops in Iraq.

And the speech Vajpayee made in Parliament, arguing for a rational relation with Pakistan, was one of the best speeches made in 2003.

Till the end of 2003, Vajpayee proved that he viewed the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) partners as friends, not just allies. He parted with the DMK with the greatest reluctance and is still to make overtures to J Jayalalithaa despite being under pressure to do so.