Independents146; Day

You don8217;t need to glance at Madhu Koda8217;s busy political graph to say this: Jharkhand8217;s new government-to-be heralds a new promiscuous moment in India8217;s representative democracy. A political crisis that began with an enterprising group of independent MLAs and ministers resigning from a BJP-led government they had helped instal just 18 months ago, will be capped by a government led by one of them, unstable at birth, with political parties reduced to being cheerleaders and playing minor supporting roles. The man who will be chief minister entered the assembly as a BJP member in 2000, went on to be a minister in the Marandi and Munda governments but contested as an Independent in the last assembly elections after being denied a BJP ticket. Now having dislodged the NDA, this RSS-BJP man is on his way to becoming the mascot of a 8216;secular8217; government.

For sure, these are not simple times. Government-formation does not observe the old rules or accepted pieties 8212; it hasn8217;t for well over a decade now. In these years, we have seen many strange political partnerships unabashedly sewn up for power alone, and minority governments dictated by large supporting parties that formally remain on the outside. Yet the Koda government will be unprecedented. It will signal that no boundaries are safe to draw any more. And that the centre of gravity is shifting not just to the smaller parties that have little or no stakes in stable outcomes, but more dangerously, to the maverick and the independent political entrepreneur. He cannot do it alone, of course. So he will be propped up by the political party, like the Congress in Jharkhand, willing to do anything, even play second fiddle, to destabilise the government of a political opponent.

The space occupied by this Independent is grey indeed. Ever since the 52nd constitutional amendment made individual defections illegal, and the 91st amendment made it difficult even to defect wholesale, the zone of the footloose Independents has emerged as the one where none of the rules reach nor apply. In this unbounded space anything goes. With the Congress-RJD as unscrupulous midwife, the new government in Ranchi has been conceived in this perverse space. It should be a matter of worry for the nation.