Opinion Motion sickness

The Maharashtra alliances have collapsed after protracted public wrangling, it might seem, because the leaderships of parties had had enough of each other after being yoked together for long. After all, it has been a quarter century of togetherness for the BJP and the Shiv Sena and 15 years for the Congress and the NCP. The stage is now set for post-poll realignments after a four-way contest — with the MNS the fifth player in a few urban centres — that could produce unpredictable results. The BJP evidently gambles on a divided opposition and Narendra Modi’s charisma compensating for its lack of strong state leaders. The Congress hopes that a multi-cornered contest would help the party tide over the enormous anti-incumbency faced by its government. Undoubtedly, the bargaining will resume in earnest after the results, if the voters fail to give a clear verdict.

While listlessness and dissatisfaction may indeed have steadily set in, the immediate provocation for the twin break-ups in Maharashtra can be traced to the BJP winning 23 of the 24 Lok Sabha seats it contested in the state and the NCP winning two seats more than the Congress in May. Both parties have been junior partners in their respective alliances for the assembly elections. Both parties now sense that the moment has come to break free of partners who have visibly slowed down, and aim for office independently. On the other side, the Congress and the Shiv Sena, as alliance leaders, could not have let the vaulting ambitions of their partners further cripple their own declining prospects in the state. A resurgent BJP arguably has the potential to make the Sena, which projects itself as the voice of the Marathi manoos but which hasn’t recovered from the death of Bal Thackeray and the split thereafter, an also-ran in Maharashtra. A BJP under Modi, the Sena fears, aims to do just that. And with ambitious leaders like Ajit Pawar arguing that the NCP’s growth has been stifled because of the alliance with the Congress, the NCP also sees this as the right moment to discard its longtime ally.

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So far, the pre-poll conversation in Maharashtra has been only about the breaking of alliances. But the state faces problems and challenges larger than those posed by the renewed volatility of its party politics. From water issues and farmer suicides to its precarious finances, Maharashtra’s new government will have its work cut out. Hopefully, some of this will be debated when the campaign picks up in a few days from now.