A Coalition of convenience

KV Prasad in New Delhi

The outcome of the recent Assembly elections injected a fresh energy into a moribund Opposition, led by the Congress. As the country prepares to go to polls next year, the Indian National Congress sprang back after being pounded in successive electoral contests by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over the past four years. After the severe drubbing it received in the last Lok Sabha elections, many pundits wrote a requiem for the grand old party. The Congress did not seem to get the electoral calculations right unlike the BJP, which cracked the electoral code under the dual leadership of PM Narendra Modi and party chief Amit Shah. The only exceptions were Delhi and Bihar; in the latter, a coalition between two estranged political fellow travellers — Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar — upset the calculations.

With the BJP juggernaut becoming virtually unstoppable, political parties, opposed to the ideology professed by the saffron party and the functioning of the government, realised the only way to prevent being steamrolled further was by closing ranks and creating a united front. Signs of such a possibility arose when sworn adversaries and Uttar Pradesh majors Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Samajwadi Party (SP) joined hands ahead of a Lok Sabha byelection to wrest seats, earlier won by the BJP in 2014. A round of informal talks made little headway until Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister and Telugu Desam Party (TDP) chief Nara Chandrababu Naidu stirred the cauldron once again.

The question is: Can the parties with little in common arrive at an arrangement that works? Would the meeting of minds at the leadership level translate into perfect synchronisation between the karyakartas? It is indeed a difficult and onerous task for any leadership to convince its party workers to rise above partisanship and work towards the larger objective of preventing the principal opponent from marching ahead in the electoral battle. Every political party leadership that enters into an alliance or electoral understanding faces this dilemma. It is from a position of strength that parties enter into negotiations and a party that enjoys greater presence on the ground tends to get the better of the alliance partner (s).

The challenges

Starting with the presumption that political parties of different hues have decided to put up a united face against the BJP in the next general elections, what are the challenges that leaders are or would be confronting?

The Congress would be one of the major national parties around which other “like-minded parties” will gather. The agreement was settled on more than one occasion with Congress president Sonia Gandhi dexterously weaving the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition. All this to dethrone the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in 2004.

Interestingly, the NDA experiment came after the BJP-led Vajpayee government in 1996 found itself in splendid isolation when barring the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and the Shiv Sena no other party stood in support of the 13-day regime. The BJP under Lal Krishna Advani strategised to end the ‘untouchables’factor in Indian politics.

That Vajpayee ran a coalition government managing some 25-odd parties was a tribute, both to his skilful handling of leaders with varying temperament and the rock-solid support of Advani, stepping in at times with firmness to steer the ship. Even then, during the Assembly elections, at times, parties in the NDA camp competed against one another, including the BJP itself.

The recent electoral triumph notwithstanding, the Congress will remain in the forefront and the principal challenger to the BJP in states like Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat, besides Assam, Manipur and Meghalaya in the Northeast.

In Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, the Congress would either have a secondary or marginal role while jostling for a respectable space with the regional parties. These include the TDP and YSR Congress in Andhra Pradesh, Telengana Rashtra Samiti in Telengana, Janata Dal (Secular) in Karnataka, Trinamool Congress in West Bengal, National Conference or Peoples’ Democratic Party in J&K, and smaller outfits in the Northeast. In Kerala, the Congress-led United Democratic Front faces the Left Democratic Front. The larger issue that poll pundits talk about — index of opposition unity — though plausible, appears too steep a task what with many other regional and smaller parties like the AIMIM and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena adding spice to the political battle. Then there is the CPI (M)-led Left where internal disagreement does not permit any covert or overt understanding with the Congress at any cost.

Way forward

With the political landscape remaining peppered with parties of different ideologies and interests, a formal coming together of all parties, opposed to the BJP, under one umbrella requires tremendous understanding and accommodation. For instance, why would the SP/BSP grant concession to the Congress in UP or the LDF even remotely consider any bargain with its prime contender, the UDF, in Kerala. 

In such a scenario, the Congress, which is expected to lead the 2019 opposition battle, will have to allow the regional/and or dominant party(ies) in the states to take on the BJP while remaining content as a supporting party. This theory appears easy but is difficult to translate as local leadership in the states is always eager to retain whatever space the party occupies instead of being relegated to irrelevance.

Even after taking over as the Congress president, Rahul Gandhi did not earn spurs as a leader on the national stage. Even senior Congress leaders, who had become comfortable dealing with Sonia Gandhi have, only now, grudgingly accepted his stewardship.

After giving the BJP a close contest in Gujarat, deftly installing a coalition government in Karnataka and winning three Hindi heartland states, Rahul Gandhi has announced his arrival, making room to negotiate from a position of strength.