Maya maths

The much-awaited, twice-postponed expansion has happened in Lucknow and those in the BJP camp who didn’t make it into the now-jumbo Mayawati ministry have immediately gone into dissatisfied huddles. There are malevolent whispers from these quarters about a ‘protest response’ in the offing; at least one MLA has already resigned on account of his exclusion from the expansion list. So what’s new? Isn’t it like this always? The story of all ministerial expansions, and especially so in coalition governments. Why should we expect the five-month-old BJP-BSP alliance in Uttar Pradesh to be better behaved? Aren’t the disgruntled rumbles emanating from the BJP headquarters in Lucknow against Behenji’s style of functioning, simply the inevitable rites of passage to a mature power-sharing arrangement?

Frankly, it is becoming increasingly difficult to view the BJP-BSP skirmishes in Lucknow as part of a bolder, larger experiment that will make political history in the end. As time goes by, it is becoming growingly apparent, on the other hand, that aggregative politics is not something to be conjured into existence from above. To be successful, such a politics must also strike roots in the ground and there is no alternative to the hard labour of politics to make that happen. In other words, the BJP-BSP experiment will not work, it cannot work, till it remains confined to a pact sewed up by strategists on high. The understanding reached between BJP worthies and the Kanshi Ram-Mayawati duo in New Delhi must be spread and sold to the rank and file, be it in Lucknow, Hardoi or other towns and cities in UP. It cannot succeed, also, until it is extended beyond the bald imperative to share power into a shared agenda of governance. On paper, the upper caste-Dalit tie-up may read like unbeatable political arithmetic, a masterful stroke of political engineering. But there is work to be done if it is to be successful on the ground. It must be translated and shaped into a political programme that can be owned by the worker as well as the leaders of both parties.

The BJP and BSP have been down this road before. This is the third union, in fact, between the two parties that (in)famously tried out the rotating six-monthly chief ministership during an earlier partnership. From all accounts, neither party seems to have learnt its coalition lessons still. There is just no way a sustainable coalition can be formed between two parties until the party worker is persuaded of its efficacy.