There is little to cheer the Bharatiya Janata Party in the likely scenario to emerge after the elections to the assemblies in the five states where polling is due today. Its presence in all these has been at best marginal so far and the chances of improving its position are pretty slim. What is far more galling for it is the prospect, judging from public opinion surveys, of two of its allies in the National Democratic Alliance - the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu and the Asom Gana Parishad - losing their majority. Such an outcome, with the results conforming to the predictions of the pollsters, may have no immediate impact on the ruling coalition at the Centre. But if the Congress comes to power in Assam, the coalition led by it wins a majority in Kerala and the party becomes a partner in the new government in Tamil Nadu, the changes in the overall balance of power will add to its clout. Even in West Bengal, if the Left Front wins by a much narrower margin than in the previous five elections, the prospects of a broader Congress unity in the state under Mamata Banerjee's leadership can give the party the elan it needs to give the Communist Party of India (Marxist) a good run for its money. In any case, it has taken less than three years for the BJP's dream - born in the flush of its surfacing as the largest party in the Lok Sabha - of extending its base to every part of the country, to go sour. The NDA partners among them have already lost Maharashtra, Karnataka and Rajasthan to the Congress. And if the leading opposition party now adds Assam and Kerala to its trophies, those who had written it off as a spent force will look very foolish. Some BJP leaders have been using the metaphor of 'a sinking ship' while referring superciliously to the Congress in the recent electoral campaign. In fact, some of the sinking ships happen to be in the rough sea of the NDA, with their captains having the honour of sharing the campaign platform with the prime minister. The BJP can of course console itself with the thought that, whatever the election results, the position of the NDA government at the Centre will be pretty secure. The important question, however, for a government besieged by a host of challenges - the Kashmir problem which is getting more menacing, the impact of the United States recession on the national economy, the next phase of the liberalization programme which has to contend with stiff resistance from those hit hard by it and widespread public fears about the costs and implications of a nuclear arms race in the subcontinent - is whether it has the nerve and the moral authority to meet these with confidence. Even if there is a change of government in three or four states out of the five which are to have new assemblies, it will further detract from such authority as the Central government is left with after its dismal record of going back on so many of its decisions under pressure from the more overbearing of its allies and taking too long to define with precision its policies in such vital fields as telecommunications. Even when it takes a policy decision, it leaves many grey areas, which often create uncertainties for new entrepreneurs and keeps enough arbitrary powers in the hands of corrupt state functionaries to harass those who fall foul of a fuzzy law full of gaps and ambiguities. The Tehelka exposé has already taken some of the lustre off the government's image. But what has soiled it even more is the offensive against it launched by members of the sangh parivar. These militant bodies have denounced not only official policies of privatization and freer import of a wide variety of consumer goods, which will mean loss of thousands of jobs, but also the prime minister by demanding the removal of his principal aide. No opposition leader has indeed damned the government and the prime minister in the kind of language used by Dattopant Thengadi, leader of the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh and close to the sarsanghchalak, K.S. Sudarshan. The many front organizations of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh are not so daft as not to realize the constraints under which a 23-party coalition government has to work. Nor are they so dumb as not to be able to understand that this country is in no position to opt out of the world market. Yet, that does not prevent their cadres from feeling peeved at their loss of identity and the change in the balance of power in the sangh parivar which has marginalized them to the advantage of the BJP. The surprise visit of Atal Bihari Vajpayee the other day to L.K. Advani's house for lunch was no social occasion, nor their four-hour talk a brief holiday from the exacting business of state. The main purpose of the conversation, it is safe to presume, was to persuade the home minister, who is generally believed to be closer to the RSS than the prime minister, to use his good offices with the sarsanghchalak and the more militant among the front organizations to pipe down and not make things more difficult for the government than they already are. What is likely to be more effective, however, than Advani's intervention in taming the dissidents and pulling out their teeth is provision of easy access to government funds by packing the boards of such organizations as the Council of People's Action and Rural Technology and the Centre for Bharatiya Marketing Development which allocate crores of rupees to non-government organizations every year, with men close to the RSS. This is precisely what the prime minister's troubleshooters seem to be doing. One adverse fallout for the Vajpayee government of the election results, in case they go in favour of the Congress in Assam and Kerala, lead to the ouster of M. Karunanidhi from power in Tamil Nadu and reduce the Left Front's majority in West Bengal, will be to make it more vulnerable to pressure from allies like the Shiv Sena. Bal Thackeray never misses an opportunity of having a dig at the BJP and outside supporters like the Telugu Desam Party which, with 29 members in the Lok Sabha, will have the virtual power to veto any decision of the Central government which, in its view, is likely to invite the hostility of voters in Andhra Pradesh. No theory about a more vibrant democracy, with greater devolution of power at every level, can wish away the logic of coalition politics which blocks effective action, promotes increasing fragmentation of political life and lengthens the shadow that inevitably falls between promise and performance. There is a double tragedy in the country being stuck with coalition politics of a particularly pernicious kind, which rules out effective governance, and the spread of cynicism to every pore of the body politic. There can be no more dismal demonstration of the general acceptance of corruption as a part of the prevailing political culture shared by all that the conviction of J. Jayalalitha on two charges has made no difference to the dramatic increase in her support in the opinion polls. There is indeed a fast growing tribe of politicians today who contend that the final court of appeal in matters of political corruption is the electorate, not the judiciary. All this is a chilling portent for the future of democratic polity here. A system which almost legitimizes abuse of political power to make illegitimate gains by bending rules to favour clients, and can do nothing to check bureaucrats from flattering the politicians in power by following their example in this regard, can never expect from the public the kind of discipline, initiative or work ethic which rapid and equitable development demands. If the ever-increasing size of the ministries, both at the Centre and in the states, shows a new fierceness in the struggle for a share in the spoils of office, the all-too-frequent exchange of insults between government and opposition leaders rules out consensus building, debarring in effect all policy-makers from going in for hard options. It is not surprising in this situation that whenever the choice is between two sets of tough decisions, the very policy-making process is often paralysed, or when a difficult decision is reluctantly taken and even gets the necessary legislative sanction, it is made redundant through resorting to extra-parliamentary action by those it is likely to hurt. This is indeed what lends a certain pathos as well as irony to the effort and money invested in elections. Though elected assemblies and parliaments are instruments of giving legitimacy to government decisions, the failure to follow the rules of the game and frequent recourse to foul play in effect delegitimize them. The most dismal part of the story is that neither the government nor the opposition is aware of the dimensions of the legitimation crisis or their contribution to its malignancy.