Mehbooba v/s Mufti

That PDP’s bastion, South Kashmir, will be breached was a foregone conclusion. That it would be stormed was not expected. In this election, her political adversaries were not even of her own stature. Yet she lost. This time around people were her adversaries. Credit must go to Mehbooba Mufti for the courage to put herself in the line of fire. It is not an easy decision to contest in the face of such obvious and intense antagonism. Unless, of course, she rationalised her contesting as an atonement; to wash off her political and administrative sins. Paying the small price of humiliation in the parliamentary polls, in the hope of resurrection in the assembly polls.

The party, its president and its partisans are proffering the easiest and the most convenient reason for her defeat: she lost because of the alliance with BJP done by Mufti Mohammed Sayeed. True. But not the entire truth. There is more to it. Much more.

It is not just PDP that has lost. It is Mehbooba Mufti herself who has been defeated and how. She is not only a politician in her ownright, she is her own politician. Baji, as she is affectionately known, stands next to Didi, Behenji and Amma in the pantheon of women political leaders inIndia.

Mehbooba lost the election morally on the first day of polling when Bijbehara polled less than 2 per cent and her polling booth less than 200 votes. It was a sure sign of things to come. The seeds had been sown earlier.   In the last three years, Mehbooba has wittingly or unwittingly, but slowly and surely eroded the style and substance of Mufti’s realpolitik. A legacy in politics, contentious as it might have been, had been created with conviction. And wisdom. This has been replaced rather quickly by lies and caprice.

If Mufti was cerebral, she is visceral; if he was reflective, she is instinctive, if he was laconic, she is verbose, and if he was a strategist, she is a tactician. He relied on aides. She banks on acoterie. His strength: Sagacity and experience. Hers, intuition and emotion. No wonder it was a good team! He would swear by institutions, she swears at them.He built enduring political relationships across the ideological spectrum, cementing them with a personal touch. Her relationships are only personal whichare used to play politics.

For someone who has been in politics for two decades andmore, she has very few political relationships outside of her own party. It was Mufti’s enduring regret that she built no political network in New Delhi despite her two terms as an MP. As Chief Minister, this relationship vacuum was filled up by the family and cronies coming out of nooks and crannies.

Notwithstanding this, it is unfair to label her a “dynast”as her detractors do these days. She reached where she did by the dint of herhard work for 22 years. She may settle down where she will by the lack ofacumen. That is not how dynasts’ careers pan out. She didn’t get her positionon a platter as an inheritance. She was the one who built the edifice of thePDP brick by brick. She communicated. She connected. She convinced.

Yes, she did inherit from her father: an idea, an ideologyand an institution. He also bequeathed 28 MLAs, 12 MLCs, and 5 MPs, making itthe single largest representative party. All this was hers by right. If at allshe had an ill-gotten inheritance, it was the government. As she was to proveit in a hurry, she was neither fit to head it nor to run it.

In just about two years, she had squandered most of what she had got from her mentor. The government toppled. The party in a disarray. Half her cabinet left. A few MLAs rebelled, many dissented and most are disgruntled.     After enjoying the spoils of power, she started saying that the “alliance with BJP was like drinking poison”. Indeed, if it was so, Mufti drank it in a Socratarian tradition of greater good, not as a suicide mission as she is making it out to be.

The antidote to the poisonous partnership was to walk awayfrom the alliance not in bitterness but with understanding and reason. Instead,she renewed the alliance making it an emotional cause. And after BJP pulled theplug, she started singing sentimental songs!

For him, the alliance with BJP was never an emotional decision. The fact is, for Mufti, the alliance with BJP was a “queen’s gambit”: first move in a game of chess. For Mehbooba, it was an end in itself. She played it like a T-20 cricket match. The real difference was that when she took the plunge, it was more for personal than for political reasons.

For him it was a bold political decision not made under the lure of the chair or compulsion of the family. It was made with the conviction that he could defang the RSS of its anti-Kashmir/Kashmiri venom through engagement. His eyes were wide open to the possibility of his decision hurting the PDP into oblivion. It was not a mistake. History may judge it as an errorof judgement. There is a world of difference between the two in the real world,if not in the dictionary. The “toffee and milk” remark is a mistake.

Above all, the real problem with the alliance under Mehbooba's leadership was her approach: she bargained, he had negotiated.  Bargaining undermines; negotiation underwrites a pact. It puts allies in an adversarial positions. A bargaining led political pact is about a deal (becoming chief minister), while negotiations driven pact is about an understanding (resolving the crisis in Kashmir).

As if all this wasn’t enough, Mehbooba’s stated reasons for renewing the alliance, the post facto justifications, turned out to be more damaging than the alliance per se: “to prevent the party from a split”! These explanations reveal a lack of political maturity. The reason for continuation became more about coercion than conviction. Which is why she has had to become apologetic about the alliance.

Mehbooba is absolutely right when she says she was not in favour of the alliance. But then to be coerced into forming a government by a suspected conspirator in a coterie created conspiracy is neither reflective of her bold style nor indicative of the steely resolve that she was known for.

It is irony of sorts that post Mufti, Mehbooba the "daughter”, in reverence for her father, acquiescenced to the alliance. But Mehbooba, the “political heir”, couldn’t handle it because of her personal manner, political mettle and governance method.

The reasons for her failure as a Chief Minister are the same as that for her success as a politician. She ran the government as if she was running a political party. By far her biggest failure was in not being able to make the transition from an agitationist to an administrator.

Now, in the face of electoral debacle, her reversion reveals her frustrations. She has said that “PDP wasn’t formed for the sake of elections”. If so, then why did she contest so many so far! Or is now PDP on its way to become a political NGO? Enough to make one turn in one’s grave.