For Janata Dal and V.P. Singh, the recent crisis proves to be a damaging one

Call it high drama, dogfight, black comedy, farce. Whatever it was, the entire nation watched in helpless horror and growing revulsion a sordid battle that had come perilously close to destroying India's second experiment with a coalition government.

In the denouement a prime minister was virtually paralysed into inaction for 24 hours, offered his resignation and then took it back just as sheepishly as he had handed it in. A cabinet survived and a controversial chief minister bit the dust. Everybody survived, yet nobody survived. They survive but as rivals. Urban versus rural. Jat versus Jat versus everybody else.

For the first time in 40 years there is no core party with a discernible leader. Every manner of cook and scullery worker, it seemed, was churning up the political broth while the chief chef, Vishwanath Pratap Singh, skulked in the shadows.

He did everything but lead. That he survived, as did his government, was not because of fortitude or consummate action but because public opinion, a handful of determined party leaders and the National Front's parliamentary allies were resolute in demanding a halt to the spreading political inaction.

And the threat of even bloodier skirmishes erupting, is real. The wounds are ugly, dark and deep. For the Janata Dal, the crisis represented the end of an aura.

Ahead, instead of promises to keep, lies a confrontation with more threats and even more uncertainties, all wrapped up in a jumbled configuration of personalities and dangerous possibilities. The cauldron bubbles.

The original sin was for one to be born a Rajput and the other a Jat, scions of traditionally warring communities. The sin is compounded by a class distinction that may be even more irreconcilable: the raja a feudal Rajput with a public school background, the Tau a gravelly-voiced rustic. Both stubborn as mules. Normally, the twain should never have met. But pushed into a symbiotic mating through an accident of history they clash like fire-stones.

And why shouldn't they? Each tries to appropriate the same claim to fame-the destruction of Rajiv Gandhi. Both are right. Without Devi Lal's support, Singh may not have become prime minister and opposition unity would have been just a buzzword. But V.P. Singh did become the prime minister. If that were acceptable to Devi Lal what irked him was Singh's haughty aloofness. They barely greet each other. Except when there's a crisis. And then it's always too late.

The Jat may have swallowed his pride but certainly not his pound of flesh. And that's what he has been demanding incessantly. The village chieftain is now a national politician with appropriate media attention. Haryanvi Jats are no longer satisfied with crumbs in Haryana. They expect their Tau to bring them chunks of the national cake: ambassadors, chief secretaries.