Raisina on the Thames

The head of a government which had a comfortable majority in the legislature faced a lacklustre opposition led by a relic from years gone by and ample time before elections were due next nevertheless chose to go to polls in the hope of improving the position. In the ensuing campaign the leaders of the government as well as the opposition came across as anything but inspiring.  The confused voters said the equivalent of pox on both your houses and a hung legislature resulted.  Knives were out in the ruling party with several worthies wanting to oust the leader, who was busy in soliciting support from a hitherto unknown small party to cobble together a majority. The leader of the opposition was so buoyed by the unexpected good showing as to contemplate defeating the government in the house and coming to power, failing which plotting another election within the year.

Ho hum, Indian political junkies would observe, happens all the time here, what else is new. Except that this scenario unfolded not in Delhi nor any state capital in India but in the Mother of all Parliamentary Democracies, the United Kingdom, also known as Great Britain, firmly on its way to becoming Little England.  In the season when all the world (meaning four countries in South Asia and sundry antipodeans in Oceania and Africa besides the Blighty) is busy watching cricket, an Indian game accidentally invented in England, it seems entirely logical to infer that the Westminster model is essentially the preferred Indian form of government accidentally associated with the Magna Carta.

Countries the world over have espoused proportional representation, or run-offs between top two contenders, as means of ensuring the elected are the choice of the majority of voters.  But not so for us Indians. Where is the fun in such straight-forward outcomes? We much prefer the intrigue inherent in multi-cornered contests. Vote division can lead to any number of combinations and allow a small fraction to emerge as the will of a large body of people. Disenfranchisement, did you say? But that’s what happens in the first-past-the-pole, the very essence of the sacrosanct Westminster model, my dear fellow!

That also allows plenty of scope for the noble sport of splitting parties in a manner that would put an amoeba to shame, with the same DNA (that of sticking to power by any means) shared across the entire political spectrum. In biology recombinant DNA is a means of bringing together genetic material from multiple sources, creating sequences that would not otherwise be found in the genome. That has a whole new, if unintended version, in this mode of election-based politics. Disparate elements from numerous origins happily come together in pursuit of power and no one is bothered about introducing alien genes as long as that pairing brings some electoral vigour. Does the boring old two-party system provide such scope for experimentation and excitement in its wake?

Continuing with this political biology, the venerable Charles Darwin’s proposition of the survival of the fittest gets a working-over. In this new formulation, the most opportunist is the fittest. One astute part-time politician and a one-term member of the Rajya Sabha told me that it is better to be the head of a small or splinter group of members than a senior leader of the main ruling elite. That way you become indispensible to the governing dispensation.  Britons may have only now discovered the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland, which, with its 10 members in the House of Commons, holds the key to Theresa May’s survival.  But we have ungrudgingly accepted the Apna Dal, Lok Janashakti Party, Rashtriya Lok Dal and the alphabet factions of the Congress in Kerala for long.  They can combine with anyone and survive happily ever after.

The lions of this fauna (and some lionesses as well) fiercely tend to their pride. There may be no longer hereditary peerages in the United Kingdom, but those who already are their Lordships make their way to the Westminster Abbey, if not any longer to 10 Downing Street. Indian political lords have large and small clans to bequeath their powers and lucre to. And the party faithful unhesitatingly offer their fealty to the scions as the peasants once did to the Lords of the Manor.

But unlike nature, this political jungle finds space for those who were ousted from their alpha positions. They call it the House of Lords in the United Kingdom and we the Rajya Sabha. This is a nice sinecure for those over the hill as well as those who cannot be elected dog-catcher of their mohalla. They have all the privileges but no responsibilities, certainly not of the kind that can affect the life blood of politics, the specie of the realm. And their importance is strictly confined to the fine House of Legislature they adorn. Not for them the onerous responsibilities of the American Senators!

Had Ms May paid greater attention to Indian politics rather than enthusiastically restricting Indians’ visas in her earlier avatar as home secretary, she could have learnt how not just to cope with but exploit the Westminster model!

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