The politics of P Chidambaram the analyst

P. Chidambaram is still the finance minister of India, technically speaking, and yet his sighs of brooding can be heard a mile away. At the beginning of this election campaign, he was doing what he normally does best — engage in combative debate with his opponents, giving as good as he gets. Sallies and counter-sallies between him and BJP PM candidate Narendra Modi did not fail to enliven election-time proceedings to begin with, but not long after Mr Chidambaram chose to cast himself in an analyst’s role, surprising his own party most of all.

He declared recently that the Congress was the “underdog” in the contest for Lok Sabha seats against the BJP. This elicited a swift response from high-ups in the AICC, who differed with such a premise, as might be expected right when the poll campaign was warming up. After 10 years at the helm, the Congress does look to many like it is suffering from effects of anti-incumbency. But was the finance minister’s observation meant to undercut the Congress party’s campaign pitch?  Naturally, that is the political question many would be asking, especially after the finance minister declined to contest the Parliament election.

This was widely seen as odd, for Mr Chidambaram, in effect, did not come forward to defend his economics, which in a basic way is at the heart of which way the results would go, all things considered. At a book launch on Monday he took a further leap from his “underdog” remark and seemed to propose that the Congress-led UPA would suffer in the election for the sins committed in 2010 and 2011 (when Pranab Mukherjee — now the Rashtrapati — was Union finance minister.

He spoke of “missed opportunities” and “crucial mistakes” committed in that period which, in his view, would decide the election. He spoke further of not taking the right lessons from the reactions of the people who were out on the streets protesting against corruption. Without mincing words, the finance minister is saying that the Congress should have emphasised policies that would have pleased the “affluent” sections of society who had voted for the party in the last general election, and not dissipated its political capital working on programmes directed at the poor who, in general, he felt had not voted Congress, arguable as that point might be.

This is consistent with the view of the leading sections of industry, although that view was not stated in stark black-and-white terms. Nevertheless, attacks had begun on Mr Mukherjee for leaning towards the poor (populist budgets), and there was a sigh of relief when Mr Mukherjee went to Rashtrapati Bhavan and Mr Chidambaram took his place. Now the latter has openly professed his own cause.