Aditi Phadnis: Psychological warfare

PLAIN POLITICS

Vilasrao Deshmukh used psywar tactics to become chief minister of one of India's most important states

Psywar "" or psychological warfare "" is an important strategic element in fighting modern-day battles, especially when the element of surprise is crucial to victory and you don't want to let the enemy know where the attack is coming from. Maharashtra's Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, who also had the job between 1999 and 2003, used psywar tactics to win the chief ministership of one of India's most important states.

When, with two seats more than the Congress in the Maharashtra Assembly elections, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) laid claim to the chief ministership, it was virtually certain that Sushil Kumar Shinde would not be sent back to Mumbai as CM.

There were several reasons for this. It would be hard to secure the chief ministership anyway but the party realised it was imperative to consolidate the Congress MLAs into one critical mass. Shinde was not the right man to do this. There was very little rapport between Shinde, the political sophisticate and ultimate non-Dalit dalit, and the MLAs.

In fact, during the election, it was Deshmukh who campaigned intensively, forging deep friendships with MLAs. Shinde was so confident of returning to Mumbai, he didn't even meet MLAs, not even after the elections. His confidence was rooted in his closeness to the Delhi high command "" not just Sonia Gandhi but also the general secretaries and observers. So he had Delhi's ear, but not necessarily Maharashtra's. If the MLAs had their way in electing a leader of the Legislature Party, it was unlikely that that person would be Shinde, it was generally felt.

And then, of course, there was the Maratha factor. There are today, in the Maharashtra assembly, around 140 MLAs who are caste Marathas, the powerful middle caste that wields both economic and political power. Of these 140, about 50 per cent are from the NCP-Congress alliance. The Marathas needed to have their man. Deshmukh is a Maratha.

There was another problem with Shinde that became the key to the succes of Desmukh's strategy. Sharad Pawar is a Maratha. As a caste brother, Deshmukh has been and will continue to be respectful of a man who is an icon of Maratha pride. But the equation betwen Pawar and Shinde has always been different. Because there was no competition, there was cooperation. At one stage during his chief ministership, Shinde had vigorously tried to bring Pawar back into the Congress.

Pawar did nothing to scotch those rumours but Congress MLAs suffered a prolonged bout of jitters seeing their future jeopardised by the prospects of the re-entry of Pawar and his NCP hordes into the Congress. In the minds of Congress MLAs, thus, Shinde was bookmarked as a Pawar agent.

Deshmukh, by contrast, was neither high-profile, nor constantly looking to Delhi for approbation. At one stage during his chief ministership he neither had the time nor any particular inclination to go to Delhi and appointed senior minister Kripashankar Singh his pointsman. So he had no godfathers.

As a Dalit Shinde could afford to be seen as being friendly to Pawar. But as a clansman, Deshmukh had to be demonstrably wary of the other Maratha "" to show that he was not being swamped by him. He did this in different and subtle ways. The Kurdukar Commission to enquire into the Enron deal was set up during Deshmukh's chief ministership. Had it completed its work, it would have put not just the Shiv Sena and the BJP but also Sharad Pawar in the dock. This would have been an embarrassment had Pawar been in the Congress. But as he was in the NCP, the enquiry turned into a political instrument to be taken out and held up when Pawar or his flock became restive. Deshmukh bought insurance against Pawar in the form of the Kurdukar Commission.

While he was chief minister, he also referred the running of sugar mills to a commision of enquiry headed by the state Lokayukta, Ratnakar Gaekwad. In Maharashtra sugar mills mean Sharad Pawar. So while the Congress was an ally of the NCP, these moves conveyed to MLAs that Deshmukh might be from Pawar's community and respectful for that reason, but he was very much his own man. As chief minister, he also went out of his way to oblige NCP MLAs, and so earned not just the Congress MLAs' respect by keeping Pawar at arm's length but also the NCP MLAs' respect by keeping them happy "" for a later date when they could be persuaded to return to the Congress minus their leader.

When he was removed from the chief ministership in 2003, Deshmukh had no black marks sullying his copybook, except specious charges "" for instance, that he had used his position to promote his son's "" virtually nonexistent "" Bollywood career. He was moved to Delhi as party general secretary in 2003. He recognised immediately that this was the chance to strengthen what was his weakest point.

He scored an important political victory when, with him as general secretary, the Congress-JDS alliance won the Karnataka election but the Congress installed its own chief minister. And well before the Chhattisgarh assembly election, also in his charge as general secretary, he had warned Sonia Gandhi that the Congress would lose if it relied too much on Ajit Jogi, a man of strong likes and dislikes. He was spot on.

Desmukh kept his own counsel after the Maharashtra election results came, letting the high command know that he was not in the race for chief minister. But when Shinde's name began surfacing, he did remind MLAs that not only had they lost to Pawar on the battleground but were about to lose to him in the matter of the CMship as well. MLAs came to Delhi to tell the high command what they thought. By then NCP had declared R R Patil as their deputy chief minister. The campaign by Deshmukh supporters was: not only is Maharashtra going to have an NCP deputy chief minister but also an NCP chief minister.

It was the interraction between MLAs and the high command that changed Sonia Gandhi's mind and Deshmukh has returned as Maharashtra chief minister. He faces two political challenges in the short term: managing Congress aspirations in the 17 ministerships available to him; and handling the financial crisis in Maharashtra.

Last time around, because the state had no money, Deshmukh had to take politically costly decisions like not witholding DA to government employees and freezing recruitment by the state. This time, with Zila Parishad and Panchayat elections two years away, he is getting a second chance to show his administrative mettle.