Being the financial capital of the country, politics in Mumbai has always been a matter of bait and rebate. Mumbai’s conscious keeper in the 1950’s, Frank Moraes, then Editor of The Times of India (TOI) (and the Indian Express) put it rather succinctly. The Birlas — (was it just the Birlas?—always wanted, he said, freedom plus ten per cent. The political activists have since then substituted freedom with other baits—secularism, Hindutva, Muslim appeasement, Masjid/Mandir ‘Vivaad’, Ambedkarisation, Tribal Welfare and last, but not the least, Mandalisation. But that was only for public consumption. It was rebate that moved the mountains. Last month, the baiters and rebaters had started their war games, much in the spirit of the two armies on our western border.

Some acid-tongued critics felt they would be right on target if they had a fling at the hapless Vilas Rao Deshmukh government that it was putting up an inept show of governance. Despatching their MLAs to distant destinations was an obvious indication that the Congress (I)-NCP combine had lost its nerve, if not the majority in the Assembly, yet. His dash to Bangalore to meet his MLAs in the cosy comfort of a luxury hotel completed the picture; here was a chief minister who could not operate in his own State. Neither of the two parties had the kind of control over their flock that could keep their alliance in the saddle. In the beginning, the alliance had at best looked like a scene from ‘Sleeping with the Enemy’. But the power game soon cooled down frayed tempers. There were bumps like the municipal and local board elections. But on the whole, Deshmukh and his deputy, Bhujabal, learnt to get along with each other before the People and Workers Party gave them a rude shock by withdrawing its support.

The blame now no doubt lies on their doorstep. They failed to manage their show. But the real trouble was elsewhere - in Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi where the BJP lost face. The Congress (1) President and Leader of the Opposition, Sonia Gandhi, coyly claimed before the captains of Indian industry that her party ruled 13 States where it provided good governance. Elsewhere, she observed that the country was in a nostalgic mood and was remembering the good old Congress governments. As if that was not enough, her political tone became shriller on Gujarat’s communal situation attacking no less than the prime symbol of the TINA (There Is No Alternative) effect so assiduously builtup by the BJP and its allies. Atalji was losing his cool (or was it his mind?), she said.

Now any decent adversary would have gone for the panic button. If the BJP thought that the lady was getting ready to close in for the kill, they could not be blamed. Sonia Gandhi was not making a secret of it. What must have alarmed her "admirers" on the Treasury Benches was her sudden, almost unanticipated, blooming into maturity and acquiring new incisive overtones. She was bubbling with political energy winning the admiration of people like Pritish Nandy who complemented her for managing her party’s affairs with commendable insight.

The man who had "lost his cool" decided to give a bit of "cooling time" to the Leader of the Opposition by winning the vote on the Gujarat issue in the Lok Sabha and by voicing sweet reasonableness in the Rajya Sabha where the NDA had no majority. He kept Modi in Gujarat, ensuring an electoral victory. But the real flip came from the BJP’s victory in Goa. What is now happening in Maharashtra is only an indication. Soniaji’s comfortable perch on the commanding heights of democracy has suddenly become very shaky. In Maharashtra, it seems to be shakier.

The next trouble spots after Mumbai are Bhopal and Jaipur, where the managing skills of Soniaji and her advisors are going to be put to severe test. It was not for nothing that the BJP showed its muscle in Indore when Maharashtra’s NCP MLAs arrived on a working holiday. Sharad Pawar, NCP chief, took the hint and shunted them to the safe haven of Karnataka. The BJP strategists feel that Madhya Pradesh will fall into the party’s lap. The areas that enabled the Congress (1) to install its government have been sliced away to form another State.

In Rajasthan, a strong pro-BJP wind is seen blowing in areas adjoining Gujarat which supplied cheap labour to Ahmedabad, Baroda and other industrial areas. Here unrest against the minority community was noticed during the crisis in Gujarat. The BJP leaders could not have missed the communal incidents in the rural areas of Rajasthan.

The BJP has no choice. It cannot come back to power in Delhi at this stage without destabilising as many Congress - run States as it can. But the worst hit by the Maharashtra crisis will be the NCP: Sharad Pawar admitted on TV that some talk of his party MLAs joining the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance was brought to his notice. Ostensibly, he was aware of the discontent among his MLAs which was seemingly generated by a general impression that as a potent political force the NCP had lost its momentum. Pawar could not attract large-scale defection from the Congress (1), nor did he try vigorously to extend his area of influence beyond his old stronghold, Marathwada. Whatever support he had generated on his stand that Sonia Gandhi was not acceptable as Prime Minister because of her Italian origin was severely eroded when he entered into an alliance with the Congress (1) to form a government. He is now saying that his party does not have the chief minister’s post, meaning Deshmukh should have managed the Peasants and Workers Party better as the leader of the ministerial team. But managing NCP MLAs was his responsibility from which he cannot get away.