Lonely at Top

by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group

Lonely at Top

The common thing between elections in India and a card game is that both are more or less decided prior to the event. Just as the player who holds the best hand is the unquestioned winner at the card table, the more complex, and many times costlier, joust of elections is fought on the strength of ready alliances.

In reality, an alliance is a synergistic cooperation where the total effect is greater than the sum of the two. A good example is the Congress-NCP alliance in Maharashtra. It has brought UPA more seats in the state than what the two parties could garner if they'd fought the elections individually. This is because, in their joint exercise, either of the parties can transfer, in the constituencies where it is not contesting, its committed votes to the other party's candidates.

In the frenzy of electoral campaign, too much importance is generally attached to policy issues or individual leaders and their acceptability but the crucial matter of how broad and strong the alliances are is generally overlooked. For example, in 2004, when the BJP-led NDA, with Atal Bihari Vajpayee as prime minister, floundered, it was held as gospel truth that the ruling group's bad luck had followed a bad slogan—"India Shining". The truth is that India had indeed begun to shine in the final years of NDA rule, with the economy growing at 7.97 per cent in 2003-04. It is this inertia of motion that lobbed the growth rate higher and higher through the first decade of the 21st century, until UPA's fiscal profligacy made it stumble below 5 per cent from 2012-13, a knockdown from which it has not recovered.

In the chorus of curses on the Vajpayee government's economic policy that followed (on the mistaken belief that the benefits of its economic liberalism had excluded the poor), what was overlooked was the irretrievable fragmentation of NDA after, but not entirely due to, the 2002 Gujarat riots. TDP in Andhra Pradesh, DMK in Tamil Nadu, TMC in Bengal—with all major allies bidding farewell to BJP, electoral defeat was a foregone conclusion. Ram Vilas Paswan of LJP was the first to quit the NDA government on the Gujrat riots issue. Andhra Pradesh is a test case. In 1999, when BJP and TDP fought the poll together, the former wrested 7 out of the 8 seats it contested while TDP won 29 of the 34 seats in which it fielded its own candidates. Their combined vote share in 1999 reached 50 per cent against Congress' 43 per cent. In 2004, with the alliance left behind, BJP won only two seats and TDP fell to five. In 2009 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP was a 'Big Zero.' 

It is not that the table has turned with BJP having snatched many of Congress' allies. In fact there is no major Congress ally except Ramvilas Paswan and his LJP that has formally switched partnership yet. All that BJP has gained are well-known faces bee-lining to join it—like columnist M. J. Akbar, former home secretary R. K. Singh, former RAW chief Sanjeev Pandey or pop musician Bappi Lahiri and a few Congress deserters. If anything, it shows the growing acceptability of BJP which may be a precursor to large-scale alliance building either on the eve of the elections or immediately after it. But Congress is facing an unusual and grave predicament. Most of its ex-partners seem to think it is below the salt. They are turning their face away.

The rejection of Congress by state or regional parties now seems to follow a pattern which is quite unique. Parties regarded as traditional adversaries in the states are almost united in their hostility to Congress. In Tamil Nadu, traditional rivals DMK and AIADMK may cross swords on every matter but neither of them is willing to keep channels open with Congress before the election. It is the same story in Bengal where TMC and CPM, the top adversaries, who are expected to carve out at least three-quarters of the polled votes between themselves, are nevertheless united in their opposition to Congress.

Even Congress' existing allies, like NCP in Maharashtra, has misapprehension about its partner's future prospects. No wonder, therefore, that NCP leader Sharad Pawar recently held a meeting with Narendra Modi despite attracting the opprobrium of his 'secular' friends. In the entire span of UPA-2, the Manmohan Singh administration used the carrot-and-stick strategy to obtain numerical support in the parliament from yet another duelling duo, Mayawati's BSP and Mualayam Singh Yadav's SP, in the mega-state of Uttar Pradesh. But there is little indication till now that either of them will enter into a pre-poll alliance with Congress. On the other hand, there are early signs that BSP may actually bend over backwards to please Modi if he manages to get any respectable number. Modi's choice of a tough constituency like Varanasi, where BSP has a redoubtable presence, would not have been talked about otherwise. She has fielded a light-weight candidate there. 

Congress is clearly like a faltering business with banks shunning and executives leaving. Two of its prominent spokespersons, Jayanthi Natarajan and Manish Tiwari, are not contesting from their traditional seats in Tamil Nadu and Punjab respectively. In Tamil Nadu, stalwarts G. K. Vasan and P. Chidambaram are not contesting. Senior leaders Satpal Maharaj and Jagadambika Pal crossed over to BJP rather than face the election with the ‘hand’ symbol of the Congress. There are many instances of senior Congress leaders unwilling to contest the poll being cajoled by Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi to join the fray. BJP hasn’t become a magnet yet to draw in allies but Congress has forsaken the confidence of both insiders and outsiders. It is experiencing the same loneliness that BJP did ten years ago.

Those who

Shunned NDA due to

Modi in 2002

are riding his

bandwagon

(The author is

National Editor of

Lokmat group and based  

at Delhi)