Strange bedfellows

As politicians prepare to return to the people once again, any prediction about the composition of the 13th Lok Sabha is virtually impossible. Will there be early polls or will the Election Commission wait for the revised electoral rolls? Will the sweltering summer hamper electioneering and impact voter turnout? What about the rains? The World Cup? On such imponderables, it seems, hinges the shape of India’s next government. Yet, it’s not as if the political class is completely at the mercy of the Election Commission’s whims and climatic vagaries; electoral alliances and understandings sewn up in the run-up to the polls will play a critical role in this exercise. And if the nation is to be spared the spectre of the inner-contradictions that the Congress accused the BJP-led alliance of as well as the bargaining and the bedlam that followed in the opposition ranks after the fall of the Vajpayee government, political parties will do themselves — as too a bewildered electorate weighing its options — a greatservice if they give these pre-poll alliances an edge over post-poll shopping sprees.

It is no one’s case that if a group of parties have indulged in seat adjustment, they are obliged to stick together after the results pour in — democracy accords them the right to do as they see fit. But given the fact that stability is bound to be a key concern in this “mother of all elections”, a measure of respect for pre-poll alliances and caution while forging post-poll ties will not be misplaced. For, the last three years provide umpteen examples of the instability implicit in formations fighting each other at the hustings and then merrily doing business to conjure the requisite numbers. What inevitably ensues is a zero-sum game and any action that gives an advantage to a constituent of such a coalition is bound to invite a jittery response from the others. Why else, after 13 months of talk of rallying the “secular” forces, did the Congress and the Samajwadi Party find it impossible to suppress theirdifferences?

Admittedly, given the frenetic round of musical chairs just witnessed, it will take a while for the picture to clear as national parties bid adieu to old allies and woo new ones. In the process, the Congress and the BJP — one of which is certain to lead the next dispensation at the Centre — would do well to address contradictions that could queer the post-poll pitch. The Congress will have to choose between the AIADMK and the Tamil Maanila Congress. Laloo Prasad Yadav will have to be alive to the incongruity of striking an alliance with the Congress and of making common cause with Mulayam. The BJP surely can no longer carry along both Bansi Lal and Om Prakash Chautala. For his part, Chandrababu Naidu will finally have to eschew ambiguity on his ties with the BJP. The Left too will have to address the differences between the CPI and the CPI(M) on the one hand and the Forward Bloc and the RSP on the other over equidistance from the Congress and the BJP. The coming weeks promise an interestingshakeout. A responsible electorate must demand that in the process stable agendas are given preference over marriages of convenience.