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Journalism of Courage
When Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik dramatically pulled his party out of the alliance with the BJP last week,his new allies in the Left were waiting to welcome him into the secular fold. Last years anti-Christian violence in Kandhamal was uppermost on Patnaiks mind,suggested buoyant leaders of CPI and CPM. But the BJD itself has steadfastly resisted the temptation to unfurl the secular flag over this moment. In its public pronouncements,Patnaiks party has been emphatic: considerations of winnability led to the collapse of seat-sharing talks with the BJP.
Sharad Pawars party NCP may have only 11 MPs in the 14th Lok Sabha but that has not constrained his partys bid to promote Pawar for PM. According to sources,the most favoured scenario of the UPAs most openly disgruntled ally: to somehow bring down the current tally of the Congresswith whom it has participated in governments at the Centre and in Maharashtra and Goaby a critical number of seats,say about 25. That would leave the Congress with no option but to support a secular,non-Congress government,even one headed by Pawar who famously walked out of the Congress on the issue of Sonia Gandhis foreign origins.
FOR a clearer sense of Election 2009,look again at Naveen Patnaiks reluctance to give in to Left exhortations to invoke the secular-communal divide. Consider the vaulting ambitions in Sharad Pawars party. Look closer,also,at the frankly defensive strategising in the camp of the principal opposition party even as it lavishes resources on the in-your-face Advani for PM campaign.
To get back to the BJD,plain math appears to rule out any fervent avowals of secularism. The BJD has a vote share of over 27 per cent in Orissa,the BJP over 17 per cent and the Congress nearly 35 per cent. If he is to fill the gap caused by the breakup of the BJD-BJP alliance,Patnaik must pitch his tent wider,spread into BJP bastions. Only then can the two-term chief minister win his state for a third time without the BJP. Then,his bold gamble may work and he can aim for a larger role in post-poll politics at the Centre.
But the BJDs calculations also hint at a larger reality. The secular-communal cleavage is not the primary,or even the significant,divide at the Centre in this election. The BJP has been out of power at the Centre for the last five years. Mercifully,there have been no major incidents of communal violence. The last round of state elections that took place immediately after 26/11 seemed to underline that terrorism cannot be worked up into a partisan or communal issue.
It was different in 2004. Then,after six years of NDA rule,the Left could come together with the Congress at the Centre after the polls under the rallying cry of BJP hatao,desh bachao. This was in spite of the fact that it directly fought the Congress in states that are its strongholds. They may or may not have counted in the ousting of the BJP-led regime,but memories of Gujarat 2002 were still raw in 2004.
If anti-BJPism has lost potency as a slogan for bringing together unlikely partners at the Centre,anti-Congressism had dwindled much earlier. It last raised its head at the Centre in 1989 when the Left and BJP agreed to support the VP Singh-led National Front government in 1989. After that,Mandal and Mandir drew up new polarisations. While Mandir was more successful in creating a countrywide-cleavage and Mandal was confined within state boundaries,none of them had Congress as a significant pole.
Today,both the main national parties have lost ground and the mobilisations of the 1990s have fragmented or run out of steam. Space seems to have opened up at the Centre,therefore,for regional players,driven by region-specific arithmetic. The born-again Third Front best represents the structure and content of this politics as it loosely gathers players from across states,demanding of them neither consistency nor coherence.
At the new Third Fronts centre is the Left,now pledged to work for a non-Congress,non-BJP alternative,still energised from its best-ever parliamentary tally of 61 MPs in the 14th Lok Sabha. Inching towards the Third Fronts centre is the BSP,hoping to extend its spectacular gains in Uttar Pradesh 2008 to other states. As players position themselves for maximum post-poll flexibility,what is likely to matter most: bare-knuckled alliance calculations that must roam from state to state before aggregating at the Centre.
THE efficacy of electoral alliances first registered fully at the Centre in 2004. An editorial in CPIM mouthpiece Peoples Democracy last week draws attention to some telling figures. In the 2004 LS polls,both the Congress and BJP lost exactly 1.6 per cent of their vote share. Yet,the BJPs seat tally dropped from 182 in 1999 to 138 in 2004,while the Congresss tally increased from 114 to 145. The secret leading to such a disproportion,the editorial explains,lies in the logic of alliances. In 1999,BJPs allies in the NDA brought 118 seats while they brought only 51 seats in 2004 Congress allies in the UPA brought 74 seats apart from the outside support of 61 Left MPs.
The distinctive feature of the 2004 election was that the Congress,which had both resisted coalitions and was widely deemed less coalitionable than the BJP till then,became a coalition-builder.
Earlier,regional parties found it more difficult to ally with the Congress than with the BJP. This was because in most states of the south and east,the main contest was between the Congress and a regional or Left party,with the BJP being a third or minor party. In states of north India,Gujarat and Maharashtra,there were direct contests between the BJP or BJP-led coalition and the Congress in the 1990s. Therefore,while regional parties of the south and east would see the BJP as a valuable ally against their main rival,the Congress had to go it alone.
The Congress,as political scientist E. Sridharan explains,could be an attractive coalition partner only under specific conditions: first and second ranking parties could ally with it in states where it had been reduced to third and fourth party statusin Bihar,Tamil Nadu and UP. It could be coalitionable where it faced a direct contest with the BJP/NDA and there was a third or fourth minor party.
In 2004,says Sridharan,conditions of coalitionability emerged for the Congress in seven significant states: Maharashtra,Andhra Pradesh,Jharkhand,Jamp;K,Himachal Pradesh,Bihar and Tamil Nadu. The BJP was not constrained by the same problem. In fact,it used its status as a non-threatening third party to form state-level coalitions on progressively improved terms with first and second ranking parties in several states. It used its relative coalitionability as much as,if not more than its Hindutva,to expand across states from 1989 to 2004.
If the 2004 election signalled the initiation of all major players into the coalition age,the 2009 election promises,or threatens,to take that process forward in unforeseeable ways.
SO are there any certainties left in this election of rampant uncertainties?
One,the Third Front still lacks a holding party at its centre,like the Congress in the UPA or BJP in the NDA. Even though its influence has always been disproportionate to its numbers,the CPM is best seen as a facilitator. For all the hype,the BSP is also not ready to become the centrepiece of the Third Front. This deficit is unlikely to be made up in this election.
Two,some alliances are not possible at the Centre because of state-level political compulsions,visceral dislikes of individual players,or the remnants of ideology. Of course,Congress versus BJP and Left versus BJP are the enduring oppositions of our politicsthough the latter two came together on an anti-Congress platform in 1989 and in 1977 before that,it is unlikely they will do so again in the foreseeable future.
Its possible to draw a few more lines.
n Parties that will find it difficult to come together with the Congress at the Centre: These are parties that still fight the Congress as their principal opponent in the state. They include the BJD in Orissa,SAD in Punjab,AGP in Assam. This list could also include the TDP in Andhra Pradesh. For these parties,a Third Front-led government or a BJP-led government would be far more palatable. This list doesnt include other parties also born of anti-Congressism,like Nitish Kumars JDU or Mulayam Singhs SP because the Congress has been reduced to third or fourth position in their states.
amp;149; Parties that will find it tough to partner the BJP at the Centre: These include the IUML,SP and RJD. To a lesser extent,the TDP and LJPboth parties have substantial minority votes in their respective states; both have loudly regretted their previous dalliance with the BJP.
amp;149; Pairs of parties that can never sup together: Mayawatis BSP with Mulayam Singh Yadavs SP; Mamata Banerjees Trinamool Congress with the Left; AIADMK and DMK; Lalu Prasad Yadavs RJD with Nitish Kumars JDU.
amp;149; Lastly,some parties have shown they can swing any way to participate in the government at the Centre. Going by past experience,participation in power is an overriding necessity for the DMK,AIADMK,PMK and LJP. Given its candid political promiscuity,this line-up can be extended to include the BSP.
