Hindustan Times

Dipankar Ghose

Dhrubo Jyoti

Mayawati withdraws support for the second Vajpayee government, a campaign backfires spectacularly, a major alliance is born, and an inner voice is heeded.

No-trust vote, India Shining, UPA is born: 5 key moments

<h2 style="text-align:center;">A government falters</h2><p>&nbsp;</p><p>April 17, 1999 was not a good day at the office for prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. For the second time in his career, his government was at risk, dependent on the caprices of its allies.</p><p>For months, Tamil Nadu’s J Jayalalithaa had been intensifying pressure on the Centre to dismiss the government of her rival, M Karunanidhi. Eventually, in a letter to President KR Narayanan, she withdrew her support to the union government.</p><p>An intense scramble for support ensued, but the government still found itself short when Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati announced on the floor of the Lok Sabha that she would be voting against the Vajpayee government. The veteran leader lost the trust motion by a single vote; it was 269-270.</p>

<p>Yet, the debacle didn’t mar his personal appeal. In fact, it seemed to boost Vajpayee’s stature in the eyes of the people of India. In national elections later that year, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) tally of 182 remained unchanged, and its allies performed much better than expected, pushing an expanded National Democratic Alliance (NDA) within reach of the majority mark.</p><p>Vajpayee’s dexterity at handling allies also proved critical, as he convinced the Telugu Desam Party to extend support to a government that would go on to be the first BJP one, and the first non-Congress one, to complete a full term.</p><h2 style="text-align:center;">A slogan backfires</h2><p>In the winter of 2003, it seemed almost certain that the Vajpayee government would return to power the following year. The popularity of the prime minister was at a high, the economy on an upswing, and prosperity growing in urban India. The Opposition, meanwhile, seemed beset by problems and by leaders with competing ambitions. This prompted the government to advance the general elections and unleash a campaign blitzkrieg with the tagline India Shining, showcasing the economic might of a rising India.</p>

<p>The campaign was expected to reap rich dividends for the Bharatiya Janata Party in the 2004 Lok Sabha polls. Yet, it quickly ran into trouble. First, Opposition parties raised questions about the campaign’s finances. Then, the campaign was accused of ignoring rural distress. The Opposition was able to paint BJP as a party focussed only on India’s cities, with little regard for its villages. This helped the Congress draw a stark contrast, with a poll campaign focussed on the “aam aadmi” (or common man). And it hobbled the BJP in what would be Vajpayee’s last election.</p><h2 style="text-align:center;">A new alliance is born</h2><p>In 1998, fresh on the job as Congress chief, Sonia Gandhi learnt an important lesson. That year, even as a rebellion by J Jayalalithaa brought down Vajpayee’s government, Gandhi found herself unable to cobble together a rival coalition, as a gamut of parties chose to keep their distance from the Congress, wary of the party’s natural distaste for allies and for sharing power.</p>

<p>The 1999 Lok Sabha election came too early, but by 2004, Gandhi was ready. Taking a leaf from the BJP playbook, she toured the country and quietly stitched up one alliance after another — from Lalu Prasad Yadav and his Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar to the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, M Karunanidhi’s Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu and the Telangana Rashtra Samithi in erstwhile Andhra Pradesh.</p><p>The strategy paid rich dividends. While the Congress by itself just edged past BJP in the polls, the Congress-led alliance was much larger than the NDA. The United Progressive Alliance was only formed after the election, but the contours of the coalition that would rule India for a decade were drawn months earlier.</p><h2 style="text-align:center;">The inner voice</h2><p>When exit polls began predicting major gains for the Congress in the 2004 general election, a buzz began in the Capital: Would Sonia Gandhi be India’s next prime minister? It was a charged question. After all, the BJP routinely used Gandhi’s Italian origins to question her political credentials and nationalism. Even some key allies and senior leaders — such as Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar — had raised the issue.</p><p>When the Congress unexpectedly beat BJP, crowds gathered outside the Gandhi residence at 10, Janpath to implore Gandhi to take on the prime ministership.</p>

<p>As Gandhi dithered, pressure from allies mounted, as did criticism from the Opposition. Senior BJP leader Sushma Swaraj threatened to shave her head if a person born abroad became prime minister.</p><p>There are varying accounts of what happened next. Some Congress hands say Gandhi listened to her “inner voice” to reject the prime ministership. Others say it was an astute political move, to neutralise the Opposition’s only talking point. Still others say it was the family that convinced her to stay away. Whatever the reality, Gandhi’s decision to say no and anoint Manmohan Singh, a technocrat and economist, as PM instead would shape the course of Indian politics and history.</p><h2 style="text-align:center;">MGNREGA comes into effect</h2><p>A national rural jobs scheme had been on the agenda of every government at the Centre since PV Narasimha Rao took charge in 1991. Yet, when prime minister Manmohan Singh and United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson Sonia Gandhi launched the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) from the parched village of Bandlapalli in arid Rayalaseema, Andhra Pradesh, in 2006, it was a watershed moment. (The Act was passed a year earlier, in 2005.)</p>

<p>MGNREGS guaranteed at least 100 days of daily-wage employment a year to unemployed adults across rural India, and quickly became the showpiece of UPA’s social-security agenda.</p><p>Though it ran into controversy later over the quality of work and corruption, it was considered a political gamechanger because it lent credence to UPA’s claim of inclusive development. The success of the scheme was considered a key reason for the Congress’s better-than-expected performance in the 2009 general election, which saw it return to power with a strong showing in rural regions.</p>