Undoubtedly, the AAP’s elevation to national party status marks a watershed in the rise and spread of a party over 10 years. But it is also an occasion to look again at the list of India’s national parties. With the NCP, TMC and CPI losing the tag, there are now six — BJP, Congress, CPI(M), AAP, BSP, and National People’s Party. It doesn’t need a long pause to see the big picture: Except the Congress and BJP, the other parties don’t exactly have a national footprint, they are regional players even though they may have fulfilled the formal requirements to be called national parties. This has important implications for the national contest in times of BJP dominance. With the Congress in decline (and until it summons the political nerve and labour to pull itself up by the bootstraps), the BJP will continue to gain from the fact that it faces much smaller adversaries.
It is not just that, other than the Congress, the BJP’s competitors are strong or present in limited regional geographies. It is also that, consequently, they have narrower platforms and agendas. Even its staunch rivals and critics will concede that the BJP pitches its tent wide and wider — it is a party of big ideas. Be it Hindutva, nationalism or labharthi politics — it speaks of, and lays claim to, larger wholes. Of course, these wholes exclude too, they have built-in silences. The BJP’s wooing of Pasmanda Muslims recently only underlines that the party has no Muslim MP. And yet, it can point to the relative narrow-ness of other national parties and use the comparison to promote the impression of its own winnability. The ongoing effort by non-BJP parties to stitch “Opposition unity” is a recognition of that BJP advantage and an admission that they cannot take it on singly. A mere mechanical totting up of tallies and strengths, without a big idea that becomes an animating and binding force, however, may not be enough. It could even end up playing into the BJP’s hands by becoming the sum of small things.
India’s newest national party is evidently eyeing a bigger playground. The AAP has shown determination and a capacity to work hard. It is likely to use its successes to propel itself upward and forward. But for a party with zero Lok Sabha MPs, two prominent leaders in jail on corruption charges and an ideological fuzziness that at times seems more calibration than conviction, taking centrestage is still a long haul. The Opposition’s challenge in 2024 will be to present an alternative to the BJP that is national — and not just because EC rules allow it to call itself so.
