A big to engulf

The ruling coalition, led by the Congress party, has the votes to push its presidential candidate through. And no Congress politician seems so deserving of the honour as Mr Mukherjee. Now 76, he has been moving and shaking in Delhi for over four decades; since the government of Manmohan Singh, the prime minister, was elected for the first time in 2004, he has been the coalition’s indispensable political odd-job man, entrusted with the fiddly intricacies of coalition politics and with implementing policy.

That he is simply too useful in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament, of which he is the leader, may be one reason why Congress’s boss, Sonia Gandhi, widow of a former prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, has seemed reluctant to endorse him as a presidential choice. Almost every politician in Delhi, however, seems to suspect another: that she does not trust him to do the right thing by her presumed candidate for the next prime minister, her son Rahul. They recall the events that followed the assassination of her mother-in-law, Indira, in 1984. Mr Mukherjee, then, as now, finance minister, is said to have been consulted on who should replace Mrs Gandhi as prime minister, and to have suggested that it should be the second-most senior cabinet minister, that is, himself. The dynasty prevailed, and Rajiv Gandhi succeeded his mother.

So when Sonia Gandhi earlier this month presented her two candidates for president to Mamata Banerjee, the chief minister of West Bengal and a coalition member so truculent as to be a virtual member of the opposition, it may well have been in the hope of her vetoing Mr Mukherjee, a bitter rival in West Bengal. Instead, Ms Banerjee objected to both Mr Mukherjee and the other (lesser) candidate, Hamid Ansari, India’s vice-president. She suggested three names of her own, including that of the prime minister, Mr Singh, and a former president, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. He seemed a shrewd choice. Mr Kalam is enormously popular: he is not a politician; seems a nice man; and is revered as a father of India’s nuclear programme (he used to be a rocket scientist).

Ms Banerjee’s manoeuvre backfired badly. It had the effect of cornering Mrs Gandhi into endorsing Ms Banerjee’s foe, Mr Mukherjee. Mr Kalam has ruled himself out, leaving Ms Banerjee with no credible candidate. Her alliance over the presidency with another party, Samajwadi, lasted barely a day. Congress has been assiduously courting Samajwadi, and now seems well placed to use it to fill the hole left in its coalition by Ms Banerjee’s lurch into overt opposition, and so avert an early election.

With Ms Banerjee looking a diminished figure, Mrs Gandhi has come out on top for now. The main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, meanwhile, is still bickering over its own presidential candidate and appears in a shambles. Moreover, Mrs Gandhi may reflect, shunting Mr Mukherjee upstairs may be no bad thing, so obvious were his differences over economic policy with Mr Singh. Hence the optimistic take on Mr Mukherjee’s candidacy. Economic growth is now at its slowest rate since 2004. As the arch political fixer, Mr Mukherjee was an obstacle to reform, since it involves overriding the interests of some coalition partners and, often, may be unpopular with voters. But a slowing economy is probably an even surer way of losing an election.

So there is almost a consensus that reforms are needed urgently, and Mr Singh has been talking again like the reformist he was, as the architect, when finance minister, of India’s liberalisation in 1991. Speaking at the G20 summit in Mexico this week he promised “tough decisions, including on controlling subsidies”. Having apparently rejected the presidency himself, and with just two years at most left to leave a legacy, he has nothing to lose. With a like-minded liberaliser as finance minister (some think he himself will assume the post), he could force through some crucial reforms that Ms Banerjee was instrumental in blocking—such as allowing foreign supermarket chains to set up in India.