INDIA is set for another round of battle via the ballot. Even before all the state assembly election results were declared on the 8th of December, the Chief Election Commissioner clarified that the 14th general elections would be held on time in April-May. By mid-May, India will have a new government in place.

The summer of 2009 will mark the end of the first ever Congress-led coalition in New Delhi. The end of the year found all major political formations reassessing their strategies and tactics on election eve. The economic meltdown, far more than inflation, is the single greatest threat to the ruling coalition. It still hopes to retrieve ground by stressing that it is the safest pair of hands at a time of crisis. Whether its stimulus packages for the economy will work is a different matter; what is crucial is that the opposition had little better to suggest.

A similar subliminal message was evident in the low-key and measured response to the 26/11 terror in Mumbai. The coalition eschewed the drum beats of war and preferred to mobilize public and governmental opinion among the big powers to exert pressure on Pakistan. This restrained stance set it aside from its premier rival, the Bharatiya Janata Party. It was essential to keep one’s head without losing touch with the anger and anguish in the aftermath of the attacks.¹ This, the Alliance government seems to have done at the time of writing.

A secure team which balances the economic acumen of the prime minister and the vast diplomatic skills of his team with the crowd pulling power of the Gandhis, Sonia and Rahul: this is the sub-text of the Congress campaign. It will be bolstered by a critical accomplishment: barring the left, there is virtually no change in the line-up of supporting parties since the summer of 2004. V. Gopalasamy alone opted out, more due to regional compulsions. In fact, compared to the Vajpayee-led alliance the Congress has kept the larger set of allies together. Whether this will translate into an effective election strategy is still to be seen, but it is not such a bad starting point.

 

Congress undoubtedly took a step for a critical realignment of forces when its government survived in a cliffhanger of a no confidence vote. In effect, this was a political landmark both in terms of domestic politics and external policy. For, the Manmohan Singh-led government placed its entire political capital in line to ensure the passage of the final step in the Indo-U.S. nuclear accord with all its larger implications. While the divisions between opponents and proponents were wide and deep, the political manoeuvres saw a major chasm open up in the opposition space with the Mulayam Singh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party not only backing the government and endorsing the accord, but following up with seat-sharing talks for the general elections.

This marked the end of the tenuous and often tense Congress-left entente, the foundation stone of the entire United Progressive Alliance experiment. As it turned out, the Alliance had outgrown its initial impulse and as it matured, turned onto a road that led away from the left parties. This intertwining of domestic and foreign policy has probably never been as stark in Congress-left ties since 1969, when Indira Gandhi’s leftward turn at home and reinforcement of ties with the Soviet Union had such strong support from the Communist Party of India. The reverse was the case nearly four decades later as closer cooperation in security and energy with the United States was a bridge too far for the Marxist-led left bloc.

The relationship with the left as with Mulayam is, of course, centrally related to the maxim of an adversary’s adversary being a friend. The left’s thaw with Sonia Gandhi came in the wake of the ascendancy of the Bharatiya Janata Party to the status of the single largest party in two successive general elections in 1996 and 1998. With Mulayam, it was perhaps logical that the victory of the Mayawati-led rainbow coalition under the banner of the Bahujan Samaj Party in the summer of 2007 would lead both her centrist rivals to reassess if they could work together. The upshot was that the Samajwadi Party broke with its strong criticism of US foreign policy in the Bush years and endorsed not only an engagement with America but an alliance on the floor of the House with Sonia Gandhi.

 

This fits with the larger game-plan of the Congress. Tactically, the key would be to hold together its allies and bring in a crucial partner in U.P. The price to be paid will only be known once the terms of seat-sharing in Uttar Pradesh are finalized. With the chief minister of U.P. having toured a dozen state capitals and cities to broaden her party’s base, the Congress felt threatened across much of North, West and South India. In turn, Mulayam Singh Yadav is only treading a path taken by other regional parties that represent the managers of cultivation who want positive discrimination in public employment. He is willing to do business with the Congress.

What this does for the Congress is very significant. There is little doubt on one score: as in neighbouring Bihar where the alliance with a Mandal-based party is now a decade old, Congress will have to play second fiddle. It also means there will be one further ally to deal with within an already crowded coalition. Most critically, no regional ally (and his is effectively a regional party from U.P.) will be content to play deputy. In political terms, it does imply that all the talk of a Rahul Gandhi-led revival of fortunes will remain on the drawing board. Having not won a majority since 1985 (when Rahul was a mere 15 years old), the Congress looks willing to cede ground in the state in return for a chance to rule the country.

Ironically, this trend was pioneered by the late Indira Gandhi in Tamil Nadu when she forged an alliance with M. Karunanidhi to contain Kamaraj. But U.P. has almost twice as many seats in the Lok Sabha. As the Mandal classes of North India have come of age and become patrons via the state apparatus, they have enabled Congress to return. In turn, they have hobbled it and lowered its sights, first away from the halfway mark and now to just about 125 to 150 seats. The dynamics of coalition politics dictate that the larger political formations share space as well as office with their allies. What no one has yet worked out is how this will work if the most populous state is dominated by a smaller ally.

 

The new-found association of the Congress with the Samajwadi Party pits both against a major force in Indian politics: Mayawati. The provincial polls in four states in North India in the winter of 2008 were widely seen as a setback for the latter. But not only did Mayawati’s party improve its vote share, it set her up for future alliances outside her bastion in Uttar Pradesh. Even if they only yield a handful of seats, she starts with a formidable base. In 2007, she won a clear majority in the 405 member House. Had it been a Lok Sabha poll, this would have translated into 54 seats, taking her party to the status of the third largest formation in the Lok Sabha.

There is little doubt this will be a litmus test for her, with her questionable track record in governance as much as her ability to hold together a social coalition of diverse, often antagonistic, groups. But she still retains the initiative. Congress’ move may yet boomerang as its ally’s dismal record in law and order is still fresh in public memory. More seriously, by securing its few seats in the most populous state (including family bailiwicks of Amethi and Rae Bareli), it will face the charge of denying a potential Dalit prime minister of a chance.

 

This will give Mayawati a talking point across the country. This in itself will not guarantee votes: in Delhi for instance, where the BSP vote share went up from six to 14 per cent, it failed to spell out an agenda of urban renewal for the poor and lower middle class. Similarly, just as Mulayam has come close to aligning with Congress, she will have to explore very seriously the prospect of aligning with regional parties in states where she has small, but critical, bases of support (as for instance in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh).

The string of electoral setbacks the Congress has suffered in state assembly elections indicates it is still vulnerable on the ground. Victory in Rajasthan was impressive but the state has only returned an incumbent to power twice in the last 25 years – in 1985 and 1993. Its rout in Madhya Pradesh, where it is now down to just a third of the popular vote, masks its decline in the northern tier of the state. In fact, in the Gwalior region, the BSP’s hefty 18 per cent has eaten into the Congress’ social base. A similar picture obtains in parts of Chhattisgarh, a close election where the margin between victor and vanquished was just one per cent.² These point to a secular long-term attrition of the Congress due to a host of lower class parties of which the BSP is the most well-known. Given that it has now been out of power for a decade in two central Indian states, the attraction and pull of such forces may well grow over time.

 

The Dalit-led party is a long-term threat to the Congress not so much due to specific electoral impacts but due to the tone and tenor of its message. It is creating for the first time a platform across states where Dalits can lead and other communities and classes can also find a place. Where the larger parties take up specific issues, they can still undercut Mayawati’s appeal. Congress did so in Delhi where it regularized 1500 unauthorized colonies in the run up to the poll, and the BJP governments did the same in MP and Chhattisgarh with women’s upliftment and cheap rice schemes respectively.

But ruling parties, and certainly the Congress, are not always so nimble. What the BSP is doing, though more slowly than its enthusiasts might like, is to string together new social coalitions on the ground. Where it scores over the Congress is in its attention to micro-level detail and cadre-based mobilization.

It might be premature and misleading to see Mayawati as the spearhead of a Third Front before the poll results are out. In the past, any such grouping has only taken shape after the results. The interesting picture is in peninsular India where the left parties have now secured alliances in all the four southern states. In addition to the ruling front in Kerala, there are other allies: Deve Gowda in Karnataka, the Telugu Desam and the Telangana Rashtra Samiti in Andhra Pradesh and of course, Jayalalithaa in Tamil Nadu.

But there is little doubt that the future hopes of the BSP will rest on post-poll and possibly pre-poll pacts with such groups. Here it can take a leaf out of the book of another cadre-based and ideologically coherent force, the BJP. It is only via alliances that the latter grew and expanded beyond its original bastions in North India.

 

The difference is that the Jana Sangh, the ancestor of today’s BJP, immersed itself in alliance politics from the mid-sixties. It was subject to polemics and heartburn, tactical manoeuvre and strategic setback before it fructified into power sharing and eventual leader-ship of a coalition. Congress has got to the same spot by default and deft leadership. The BSP’s dilemma is that it perhaps needs a spell in power in New Delhi at the head of a coalition to actually expand its base via governmental programmes into much of India. Here again, there is a parallel with the Jana Sangh which used the Janata interregnums to great effect in 1977-79 and again in 1989-90.

One reason the BSP is so much in focus is also due to the disarray in other conventional third force groups. The left parties are still very much on the scene, but in the post-Singur and Nadigram tragedies, will find it difficult to assert a sense of moral authority. How Mayawati handles the agitation against land acquisition for the east-west expressway across U.P. will be a litmus test. All the more so because it is led by a god-man with a huge following for yoga classes, who also happens to be a Yadav (Baba Ramdev).

The regional parties are still very much in the race but the inability of the Vokkaligas or the Kammas to play a dominant and decisive role in the Telugu and Kannada speaking regions is a reflection of more than factional feuds and of party machines in transition. The opening up of new opportunities for rural labour has loosened the grip of landed elites. The scissors crisis symbolized by the gap between prices of factory as opposed to farm goods has not helped them check the erosion of their power.³ At the same time education has opened up opportunities for the very labour force they once tightly controlled. Such fluidity in the countryside as much as the city makes the task of creating strong regional satrapies led by landed elites much more difficult, though not impossible.

Conversely, the current slow-down in manufacturing may push people back to their villages due to job losses. This could make them a potential support base for voter-led upheaval. These groups would need something more substantial than rural-led growth to bring them round. Whether the BSP gets into this game with a clear job centred programme in manufacturing is an open question.

 

A third force grouping will come into play only if the combined tally of the Congress and the BJP dips below the 250 mark. In fact, it could easily be swelled by present day members of the alliances led by the two larger parties who might just jump ship if it suits them.

But there is no doubt that the BJP remains a formidable player. A few weeks ago it still seemed on a roll. In the industrial powerhouse of Gujarat, it had found a new bastion and its chief minister there even won encomiums from no less than Ratan Tata.⁴ On election eve, the party took its cue from the public anger at the Mumbai attacks and asked the voter to ‘defeat terror’. They did but it was not by voting all-out for the lotus symbol. Even prior to the results it was evident that two critical southern regional parties in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, each a poll partner in the not so distant past, had shut doors to the party.

 

Apart from such electoral minutiae, the party seems to suffer from disconnect at three levels. In the late eighties it sensed a wider mood of anger at what it called ‘minority appeasement’ and at the rise of the backward classes. Today, it is unable to grasp that terror is part of the landscape and does not yield dividends to a particular party quite so easily. Having been in office for six years and with an attack on Parliament as well as ‘terrorists for hostages’ deal on its record, it is unable to take the high ground. Nor have sectarian divisions surfaced the way they had in campaigns in Maharashtra in 1995 or Gujarat in 2002 (or for that matter to Congress’ advantage in much of India in 1984). Every such case saw substantial official complicity, if not on party lines then certainly on sectarian ones. Bereft of such oxygen it is difficult to play on such divisions.

There is a second related dimension, closely allied to the initial point made in this essay about Congress emphasis on competence and clarity, calm and composure. When it came to diplomacy, the BJP of the late nineties had a Vajpayee, not just ‘the man India awaits’ (as their posters famously said), but the architect of good relations with Pakistan as external affairs minister. Similarly, prior to its stint in office (1998-2004), the party was seen as tough on terror. Those six years took the shine off, for as with all democracies there was (and is) no simple magic solution to terrorism.

The same scenario has to encompass not just physical security but also the vital realm of economic security. Unlike some of its regional leaders who have learnt to dovetail wealth creation with welfare (Gujarat is one such case), its national-level leadership has been unable to define a clear stance on the economy, even in the midst of a major slowdown. This is ironical for towards the end of its six year spell in office, the Vajpayee-led alliance oversaw Indian’s emergence from a recession to a boom economy. Yet, despite the presence of heavyweights in its camp, the party was unable to pin down the government on its handling of the economy.

It is true that such issues do not directly count with the electorate at large. But in times of turmoil a vote for change is a gamble and for a party with an extensive spread of support and several levels of cadre-based leadership, the BJP seems to lack a larger sense of vision. There is a drive for power, but surely that is not enough.

 

Of course, if the past is any guide at all, the election will throw up surprises. No alliance is as yet sure of its ground. However, the two premier groups are clear not only about who will be prime minister, but also about what they stand for. Yet neither is confident of the 150 seat mark for its major party. The third front space remains, though the formation itself remains nebulous.

In 1989, a hung House marked the end of one party government. Ten years later there was the shift to stable coalitions led by a premier national party. Will this be another crossroads and where will it take us? Time alone will tell.

 

Footnotes:

1. See Srinath Raghavan, ‘Terror, Force and Diplomacy’, Economic and Political Weekly, 6 December 2008, pp. 10-12.

2. Jai Mrug, ‘A Vote for Leadership’, DNA, Mumbai, 9 December 2008.

3. Harish Damodaran, ‘The Agriculture-rural Paradox’, Business Line, 12 November 2008.

4. This issue is dealt with in Mahesh Rangarajan, ‘Key Political Formations and the Road Ahead’, in Business Standard India 2009, Business Standard Books Limited, New Delhi, 2009, pp. 221-232.