Why PM, Karat fell out

This could very well be the mother of all conspiracy theories. According to well-placed sources, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was compelled to give a provocative interview to a Kolkata newspaper asking the Left to either take or leave the India-US nuclear deal because he believed that CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat had it in for him. He would prefer to see a more pliant prime minister who would do the Left’s bidding.

This would explain why recent CPI(M) pamphlets target Manmohan Singh more than anyone else. One of them goes to the extent of attacking the prime minister for treating US President George Bush as a good friend when the rest of world hates him. It concludes: “This (Indo-US) deal should be seen as a part of the Manmohan Singh government’s attempt to integrate India more closely with the US.”

If this theory holds water, observers say, it would also explain why Singh chose to challenge the Left to withdraw support if it could. It was for survival.

According to this theory, after the India-US nuclear agreement was sealed in Washington at the end of July, events unfolded thus. Two days before the agreement was put in public domain, the Prime Minister made the text available to Brajesh Mishra, who was national security advisor to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, to the editor of a Left-leaning newspaper and to Sitaram Yechuri, member of CPI-M politburo and Rajya Sabha.

Mishra did not have much of a problem with the agreement, though there were a few caveats. Both Vajpayee and LK Advani let the Prime Minister know that they did not have serious objections.

The editor of the national newspaper, too, felt that the agreement was fine, and he also let it be known that the CPI(M) may not be averse to it. Stories filed in his paper also seemed to point in the same direction.

It was on the basis of this informal assent from the key quarters, that the Prime Minister had chosen to go public with the nuclear agreement. The strange fact is that the editor was seen as an informal emissary between the Left and the PMO.

In the CPI(M) politburo meeting in the last week of July, Yechury had apparently argued that the party should take credit for the agreement because it was the pressure exerted by the party that pushed the Prime Minister to bargain harder than he would have done on his own, and which included such major concessions with regard to retaining and using processed fuel. But Karat vetoed the argument.

And it was in a press conference at the end of the politburo meeting that Karat let it be known that government should not go ahead with the post-nuclear agreement negotiations with the IAEA and the Nuclear Suppliers' Group.

According to proponents of the conspiracy theory, Karat played this card in the hope that Singh would throw in the towel and step down.

It would open the door for Karat and the CPI(M) to help find a 'suitable' prime ministerial candidate in the Congress in the same way that the party had played a role in choosing the presidential and vice-presidential candidate.

But Karat's gameplan backfired because instead of resigning in a huff, Singh chose to hit back and challenge the Left. His famous interview to a Kolkata paper came days after Karat's statement called for halting the next steps in the nuclear deal.

There are, however, two weak points in this interesting spin on the political crisis that is pointing to early parliamentary elections.

First, what is the personal animus that Karat nurses against Singh? The unconvincing answer that is being proffered is that Karat is opposed to Singh's pro-American, pro-market biases, and he was determined to replace Singh after testing the party's clout in the choice over president and vice-president.

Second, why did Singh believe that Congress president Sonia Gandhi and the UPA would have yielded to Karat's demand for a Left-amenable prime minister? Even if Singh had chosen to put in his papers, Gandhi, the Congress and the UPA could have certainly prevailed upon him to stay on.

If Manmohan Singh had seen through the gameplan of Karat, why did he not share his apprehension with Gandhi instead of playing the counter-game through the deliberate remark in the interview?

The conspiracy theory, though interesting and plausible in parts, does not stand up to critical scrutiny. But internal coherence is not always needed for a conspiracy theory. It is the perceptions of the players, and their hurried responses to events, that unleash consequences which no one had intended.

Going by the conspiracy story, it becomes clear that Singh had reacted on the basis of the suspicion that Karat was out to get him. But the Prime Minister could have still stalled Karat's plan by refusing to quit, whatever the provocation.

He could still have played an adroit game by not throwing a challenge to the Left in that interview. But Singh did not want to pass up the opportunity to vent his spleen, and he did not worry too much about the crisis that was sure to follow. It seems tha’s what it was: the PM wanted to get his own back, having gotten tired of the Left's constant bullying tactics.