Even the bitter critics of the Vajpayee regime will concede that his survival secret has been the frankness with which he handled the emerging issues. He was never rigid on any issue. He did not have his own or borrowed agenda to implement. As a natural leader, he went by the consensus within the party and among the colleagues. Hence the man who had written 'atom bomb ke peeda', ordered the Pokhran II. When his trusted friend Jaswant Singh insisted on India joining George Bush's missile defence system - Singh had publicly endorsed it even before the NATO allies did - Vajpayee went by the better sense of the party .

Unlike the present PM, Vajpayee's real strength was that he functioned as a repository of dominant views, not as an arbiter. He did not stake his government's future on personal beliefs. He was never a prisoner of doctrinaire obsessions. The NDA government had never recognized a holy cow, desi or New Jersey . In case a Pramod Mahajan smartly argues against an IMF dictum as displeasing the voters, it is readily dropped. There was no need for a Left or Karunanidhi to rise in revolt. If the NDA had been caught in its own elitist trap in 2004, it was a different story.

As against this, UPA spent much of its first tenure in policy confrontations - with the Left, allies at times and opposition and the well-meaning NGOs. Unfortunately, it always seemed as a tie between the PM and his adversaries with the party taking a neutral position. While in some cases, he got isolated and had to eat humble pie, on the nuclear deal he triumphed. It is here that one can discern a perceptible change in style.

True, the UPA government had so many consultations with officials, political colleagues and think thank. But these were mostly confined to defending the government position against the critics. These included the innumerable meetings on the logistics of defending the nuclear deal and its aftermath. What we see now is a more balanced and mature kind of consultations on positions to be taken on emerging issues. Not on how to justify a position. Discerning observers see this qualitative difference.


Some attribute this to the absence of peer pressure. After the PM's flip-flop on issues like India-Pakistan talks and Baluchistan , caution has been the watchword. Even the party establishment had shown a bit of its mind on the way things are being handled. Indian response to the incessant TV stories on Chinese 'incursions' on border is being cited as an eye-opener. For decades, the media, bureaucracy and the think tank were all accustomed to habitual China bashing. But the sudden government move to come down heavily on the ratings-hungry channels came as a surprise to most.

Clearly, the government's decision on China was based on hard realism founded on its own cold calculations. If the media-driven emotions cross a certain stage, the UPA will find it impossible to douse the fire. It will then get into an emotional trap from where it will be forced either to take the war cry to its logical end or face the charge of abject 'surrender'. The RSS has already called Indian response 'timid'. Simultaneously, the old style 'think tank' and strategic writers were ready with regular staple of dragon stories and things like Tibetan 'card'.

Apart from reining in the media frenzy, the decision marks a paradigm shift in Indian approach. During an internal meeting Pranab Mukherjee ridiculed the old drum beaters of the China phobia and pointed out that a nation, already an economic super power and depending on foreign trade for all its prosperity, would not stake all its ambition for the sake of a few acres of border land. The remedy the threesome - PM, A.K. Antony and he - have is this: to strengthen India 's own economy and defences and face up to the long-term challenges. This is the language of a fast-growing power, a self-confident nation.

One could see similar flexibility and pragmatism born out of self-confidence in economic decision-making. Last week, a rigid condition put on state governments for privatisation of power distribution was relaxed after years of coercion. Honest internal debates on the suitability of or need to indigenising peer programmes was unthinkable in UPA until a few months back. The best evidence of this trend has been a clear let-up in the usual media lectures by the committed economic writers.

PM's address at G-20 and role in insisting on IMF peer review of the finances and performances of the developed countries - something, again, unthinkable earlier - indicate a significant shift. How has all this come about? Clearly, demise of Bushism has been the most important factor. Along with it ended so many archaic concepts like unilateralism and military occupation of rouge states. Obama administration has signalled a clear departure from confrontation to conciliation. His compromise with Russia on missile base has been the latest evidence.

So much so, one no more experiences the awesome US diplomatic machinery to keep allies on leash. As for India , the country is no more projected as a regional super power to counter China. The 'democracy alliance' had collapsed with the advent of the new prime minister in Australia. Regime change in Japan may even quicken the process. If the US has insisted on signing the end-use agreement and such things, it was only for the limited purpose of obliging US firms bidding for India 's multi-billion dollar multi-role aircraft. Watch the ease with which the government had cancelled military exercises with US one after another. The exercises were part of the old regional power projection.

In economic terms, the collapse of the grandeur of the pre-meltdown capitalism is as significant as the breakup of the old Soviet system. In his last days, George Bush himself had a taste of the change. No more can the US and EU set agenda for others. It is not that the developed block will lose its clout all of a sudden. Yet things are not going to be as they were during the pre-meltdown days. If the signs of a homegrown paradigm prove true, the process was influenced by all such factors. (IPA Service)