It is 275

Shankkar Aiyar with Priya Sahgal and Shafi Rahman
July 24, 2008 INDIA TODAY

It was the Eureka moment for the Congress. A little over 30 minutes after the trust vote was over and just before the results were declared, Congressman Pawan Bansal excitedly shared a scribbled note with party President Sonia Gandhi.
Even as she read the note, Kamal Nath and P. Chidambaram, sitting right behind her, leaned across to look and let out a collective "wow" which was caught by Rahul Gandhi right behind.
As he whispered the magical 275 figure to his young colleagues, the thrill of the victory, it would seem, was transmitted across the UPA ranks. Victory, though, didn't come easily.
They say a week is a long time in politics and the UPA had to not only keep its flock together for two weeks but weather the gathering storm of unnatural alliances.
The combination of Left and Mayawati on one side and the BJP on the other, particularly at the fag end of its tenure, could have led to complete decimation.
Unshackled from the bondage of the Left, the Congress, it would seem, discovered a sense of purpose just when its survival was under dire threat.
In the two weeks after the Left pulled the plug on July 8, the party found its core and political relevance as its core team worked round-the-clock to get the arithmetic of its politics in place.
The crack team of Ahmed Patel, Pranab Mukherjee, Sharad Pawar, Vayalar Ravi at the centre and chief ministers Vilasrao Deshmukh, Y.S.R. Reddy and B.S. Hooda put together a dossier on 40 MPs across the political spectrum.
These included five from Uttar Pradesh, four from Madhya Pradesh, three each from Gujarat, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, eight from Karnataka and five from the North-east.
The list was culled using friendly political contacts, chief ministers in UPA states and friendly dissidents in the Opposition ranks. The bottom line seemed to be "impossible is nothing" and their credo was "just do it".
Armed with a war chest of promises and promissory notes, MPs, ministers and general secretaries worked the speed-dials on their mobile phones and the country to lure the vulnerable and the amenable. And displaying an astounding strike rate, they got 24 of the 40 targeted in the bag-10 abstaining and 14 voting across the political fence in defiance of party whips.
To get a sense of the magnitude of cross voting organised, consider this: if these 24 MPs were to have voted with their parties, the UPA score would have been 251. Even if one were to dub abstentions as genuine, the score would have been 261, well short of majority.
The contrast was stark. If the UPA team displayed an uncanny sense of purpose, the NDA was in total disarray. Of the 24 MPs, eight were from the BJP, including four from Karnataka where they had just won the Assembly polls riding a popular wave.
If the NDA was missing the presence of a Pramod Mahajan amidst them to effect split second acquisitions, the UPA seemed to have found its version in Amar Singh. The blend of gut-wrenching reality unleashed by the Samajwadi Party MP and the sophisticated but ruthless methods of the Congress brought dividends.
Unlike BJP, the Congress used its best players, not mid-level functionaries and independent Rajya Sabha MPs. The BJP's failure is best reflected in how the Congress snagged JMM leader Shibu Soren right out of the NDA net to add five MPs to its tally.
Soren had been wooed by the BJP which had offered him the post of chief minister of Jharkhand if he delivered five MPs. But even as he dwelled on it, the Congress got his chief whip to threaten a split and offered the post of deputy chief minister to the son and Union Coal Ministry to the father.
It helped though the Congress also reminded Soren that the appeal against his acquittal in the Jha murder case was open to debate. The combination of carrot-and-stick worked.
What helped was that the targets and interlocutors were intelligently chosen and aligned. If Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel and P.A. Sangma networked successfully to convince the single-MP parties from North-east, Sharad Pawar was used to crack the complex equations.
Getting Omar Abdullah to vote on the same side as PDP was no mean task but it was Pawar who worked on him. Of course, it helped that Abdullah used to stay with the Pawars while studying in Mumbai.
Take the case of the Karnataka MPs. It is no secret that the BJP was uncomfortable living under the support of the Bellary miners. Its solution was to beef up its numbers by getting Congress MLAs to resign and contest as BJP candidates, a replica of how the Congress wrecked the Shiv Sena using Narayan Rane.
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S.R. Reddy, who has known the miners, read this as an opportunity to tap and got the Bellary MLAs to work with him to lure four BJP MPs.
Interestingly, barring one, all were former Congressmen and even H.T. Sangliana was lured with a ticket from Mizoram. In their efforts, the party managers have combined arithmetic and politics. The Congress got the numbers and also succeeded in puncturing the euphoria created by the BJP's victory in the Assembly polls.
The campaign was not without hiccups. The weekend before the trust vote, they lost JD(S) and RLD as both Deve Gowda and Ajit Singh found the idea of the third front alluring to dump the promises made to the Congress. Indeed the emergence of Mayawati and the power play by a couple of corporate houses almost derailed the campaign.
Two tactical errors-the unveiling of the CBI case on Mayawati by spin masters and the open attack of Amar Singh on corporate interests almost created a new wall of resistance. Thinking on their feet, the Congress sent emissaries to the corporates.
A senior minister close to the tycoon assured immunity from the SP even as he read the riot act, armed as he was with some "interesting" documents. Just in case the tycoon got ideas. Amar too exercised discretion in his tirade on the battle between the Ambani brothers.
Once money power was neutralised, they worked on the political angle. Almost on cue, CPI General Secretary A.B. Bardhan anointed Mayawati as the future prime minister. That was the political equivalent of setting the cat among the pigeons.
Using the dissident network in the BJP, they spread the word that the emergence of UNPA would threaten the future of the NDA. Suddenly the idea of toppling the UPA Government didn't look all that attractive.
What was amazing is the persistence of the core team. Even though by July 20 evening the UPA was convinced that it had the numbers, it did not stop pursuing its quarry.
An emissary went and met Gowda and Ajit Singh just in case they would change their minds. They didn't but others did. Hooda got Arvind Sharma back while Reddy managed to break two of the five TDP MPs.
In both cases, the chief ministers aligned their local interests and that of the UPA at the Centre. For Hooda, it was important to quell the rise of the Bhajan Lal-clan while for Reddy, cracking the TDP ranks delivered dividends in Hyderabad.
The strategy of the Congress was both offensive and defensive in nature. Even as it worked on bagging new MPs, one group was focused on denying the Opposition the resources. Maheshbhai Kanodia, the MP from Patan in Gujarat, was strongly advised by doctors not to travel but his party needed him.
Former BJP MP from Mumbai, Kirit Somaiya, who was assigned the task of transporting the MP for the trust vote suddenly found no private aircraft available. Wary of the risks, he eventually moved the MP on a regular Kingfisher flight that reached Delhi just before the trust vote. Somaiya believes even the medical advice was doctored by the Congress.
The prime minister, however, kept out of the vote-catching exercise except for one call to the Akalis for support via a "negotiator". But Sonia played her part well meeting only those she wanted to and calling those who needed to be spoken to.
For instance, she made calls to some single-MP parties and to upset Congressmen like R.L. Jalappa, who assured her of his vote. Ajit Singh, who the Congress had tried to soften by naming the Amausi airport after his father Charan Singh, and JD(S) supremo Gowda waited in vain for an invitation to 10 Janpath.
Obviously for Sonia, Gowda was a one-horse party as of the three JD(S) MPs, Veerendra Patil was committed to the Left point of view and Shivanna was in the bag. The saga is not without its share of delicious irony.
While Amar emerged as the face of "horse-trading", it was the Congress that inflicted the maximum damage. Amar Singh caught in the worry of keeping his flock together eventually delivered just one BJP MP while seven were snared by Congress operators.
Considering the desperation and the means adopted, much could have gone wrong. Indeed, it did seem for sometime on July 22 afternoon that the campaign had come unhinged when the BJP MPs walked in to the well of the House with a wad of notes alleging horse-trading by Congress and the SP.
Even as the three MPs hurled charges at Ahmed Patel and Amar Singh, the Congress core team took charge. As the House adjourned, two teams were put to work. One was engaged in damage control in the media engaging those who had done the sting while the other team ensured that the trust vote was not delayed. The BJP, by then realised, it had been outwitted.
The trust vote saw Sonia in full control. It was almost as if her seat was the control console in the final hours of the trust vote. It was pre-arranged that those shy to press the "wrong" buttons in the presence of their party colleagues would not use the electronic voting system.
They would use the voting slips and vote in the lobby. That plan too was not without drama. Just before the vote, TDP MPs-D.K. Audikesavulu and M. Jagannath- bagged by Reddy to vote for UPA got cold feet. While Jagannath managed to use the electronic voting machine, Audikesavulu was cornered by Yerran Naidu.
Abdullah and another ally, AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi, who spotted this and signalled Sonia. She then despatched two Andhra Congress MPs, Renuka Chowdhury and Madhu Yaskhi to bring back the lost vote. Audikesavulu managed to defy the party whip and add to the UPA tally of 275.
The victory won't be without a price though. Already the signs are visible. The DMK has extracted a new affidavit in the ongoing Sethusamudram project case throwing up a new controversy on the Ram Sethu. In a few days, Manmohan Singh will have to accommodate Soren and the SP demand sheet is yet to be attended to.
Then there is the "notegate" scandal, which the Speaker will have to address. Already the CPI(M) and the BJP have both demanded that the tapes be made public and called for a high-level probe into the charges raised by the three BJP MPs.
It is early days yet but the Congress is clearly prepared to pay the political price of this arithmetic victory. After all, in free market economics or politics, there is no gain without attendant risks.
—with Shyamlal Yadav, Stephen David and Amarnath K. Menon
ENTERTAINMENT DEMOCRACY
As politicians get transformed into art forms, a country fixated on Bollywood and cricket celebrates the elevation of another spectacle.
There was Lalu Prasad Yadav asking his cow who would win the vote of confidence-for the record, the sacred but silly animal picked the wrong hand. Here was Amar Singh deploying all his poetic skills-the UPA was in a bloom and would wipe out the Opposition with a broom.
And yes, that was indeed L.K. Advani saying the Government was in the ICU. In the two-day television event that the vote of confidence became, ratcheting up the viewership of the otherwise somnolent Lok Sabha TV, the Bollywoodisation of Indian politics was complete.
Both in the Lok Sabha and outside, politicians stuck to the film formula. There were vintage songs, delivered by the nautanki specialist Lalu; an angry young man speech flung at his detractors by Omar Abdullah; the unveiling of a bashful beauty in Rahul Gandhi (sorry about the gender but the Lok Sabha doesn't have enough women); and repeated assaults on the great patriarch (so what if Somnath Chatterjee looks like a giant teddy bear and sits on what looks like a shaadi ki kursi?).
There was even the BJP rushing to the Speaker with a kahaani mein twist—their displaying of Rs 1 crore in the House being the equivalent of the bride's father yelling, "nahin, yeh shaadi nahin ho sakti".
Add to that a cast of fringe spoilers (Ajit Singh, H.D. Deve Gowda, and N. Chandrababu Naidu) who would do any true Ram Gopal Varma underground noir proud, and it was a blockbuster that was made to order. So was it a hit or a flop?
For those expecting politicians to have higher standards than the rest of this unsettling country, the tele-event was a flop. For those who know that we now live in a performance culture, where each individual is an art form, the drama had everything that was over-the-top, across-the-broad, and beyond-belief.
The joker in the new Batman, The Dark Knight, asks all his victims-to-be: "Why so serious?" Our politicians obliged by making laughing stocks of themselves. Mayawati declared with complete confidence that USA was going to attack Iran while K. Yerran Naidu was convinced that Manmohan Singh had sold India to "The Bush".
Is it any wonder that Lalu is a regular on television reality shows, especially when they require a little help with the TRPs? And that Omar Abdullah is playing himself in a new release this week?
With our actors increasingly behaving like politicians (the number of camps in Bollywood beats the number of political parties) and actor MPs having nothing to say (it was a surprise Govinda turned up at all), it's a good swap. About time television rating points got converted into television-rated politicians.
—Kaveree Bamzai