INDIA bloc PM will be first among equals

New Delhi: Opposition parties, campaigning together or against each other, will join hands after the Lok Sabha polls, says Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, asserting that the people will get a prime minister who is first among equals and listens to others with an INDIA bloc coalition government.

Including the Trinamool Congress in his argument on opposition parties getting together after the “day of reckoning” on June 4, Tharoor said in an interaction with PTI editors at the news agency's headquarters that a coalition government is nothing to be afraid of. “The growth performance of the Indian economy has been better under such dispensations than under single party governments,” he said.

In his view, this is an election for "change" and as of now the BJP has "lost its grip" on the narrative. The Congress Working Committee (CWC) member also defended the party's decision to not attend the 'pran pratishtha' ceremony at the Ram temple in Ayodhya, saying it was right to turn down the invitation as it was "essentially a political platform for the greater glorification of Prime Minister Narendra Modi". "It would have been a mistake in my view had we done it. As a purely political decision, it was the right one," he said during the freewheeling interaction. Tharoor said it is true a coalition government functions very differently from a monolithic one-party government. "Given Mr Modi's style, the personality cult built around him, and the way the BJP has been ruling, I think it is fair to say that it (an INDIA bloc government) would be very unlike what we have seen in the last 10 years," he said, confident that the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) will form the next government.

The record and experience of the Indian public with coalition governments has been rather good, the former Union minister said. “So, in many ways the advantage of a coalition is that there won’t be any sort of autocratic tendencies whoever becomes prime minister... they will have to take into account the others. Frankly, it is the classic political theory of parliamentary systems of governance. Right now we are seeing a parliamentary system being run presidentially which is the worst of both the worlds,” Tharoor argued. “If you have a coalition government of the INDIA bloc, you are going to see, for the first time in a long while, a PM who is first among equals, who has to listen to others, take their point of view into account and who would have to be a good manager,” he said. “Mr (Atal Bihari) Vajpayee is considered in many ways an excellent example of that kind of consensus builder. He did not have a majority, far from it… he had 26 parties in his coalition but his government was able to deliver effective results and at the same time reassure Indians that they had a functioning government,” Tharoor said. The author-politician also hailed former prime minister Manmohan Singh’s style of governance, saying he was able to pursue “very relentlessly” his economic goal and preside over the best growth period India has ever seen. Noting that the coalition of UPA-1 broke and the Left quit the government and was not part of UPA-2, Tharoor said there is always the issue on which a prime minister may have to draw the line for one or more of his coalition partners. “So my own view is let us be reassured that our history in operating the system in the Constitution we have has by and large safeguarded the interest of the people. There have been many periods when people have been absolutely doomsaying about our country and we have come through all those periods,” he said.