The Hindu : ELUSIVE ALLIANCE

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Mar 29, 2004

Opinion

Opinion - Editorials

ELUSIVE ALLIANCE

FACING WHAT PRE-POLL surveys predict will be a rout in a swath of Hindi-speaking India, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, the party that has ruled the country for most of its independent career desperately needs a decent performance in the two most populous Hindi-speaking States, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, if it is to stay in the race. If in Bihar the Congress has had to accept a junior partner's pittance of four seats from a domineering Laloo Prasad Yadav, the problem in U.P. is landing even a junior partner's role. During the run-up to the 2004 general election, the Congress faced the classic paradox of medieval logic postulated by the French philosopher, Jean Buridan: if a rational animal is placed equidistantly from two piles of food of equal size and quality, it has a cruel problem of choice and, unable to reach a decision, remains stationary and starves. The Congress first preferred Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party, which turned its back on the supplicant, and then turned hopefully in the direction of Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party. A mixture of veiled threats (to the effect that it could withdraw support to his Government if the S.P. deviated from the "secular course") and appeals has failed to make any difference.

The election outcome in U.P., where a total of 80 seats are at stake, can be crucial to the formation of the next government at the Centre. Opinion polls suggest that in a four-cornered contest, the S.P. and the Bharatiya Janata Party will be competing for top spot (with one poll predicting 32 seats for each), with the BSP holding its own and the Congress coming last (with fewer than half a dozen seats). The calculation is that the outcome can change dramatically if the Congress allies with either the S.P. or the BSP; in that event the arithmetic, that is, the sum of the presumed vote shares, suggests a sweep (say, 50-plus out of 80 seats) for the combination. The veiled threat to withdraw support came a few days after the S.P. announced candidates for 63 constituencies in the State and set aside 10 seats for its ally, the Rashtriya Lok Dal led by Ajit Singh. Now, with threats apparently failing, the Congress has fallen back on friendly persuasion.

The problem for the Congress is that it has good reason to fear a covert S.P.-BJP understanding post-election. The immediate and perhaps leading reason for Mr. Yadav's coolness appears to be that the stability of his Government depends not merely on the support of allies such as the Congress and the RLD, but also on the tolerance of the BJP, which wanted to avoid an election after the resignation of Ms. Mayawati as Chief Minister. Subsequently, after the S.P. formed a coalition regime, Mr. Yadav was widely perceived to have gone soft on the BJP. Of course, a formal S.P.-BJP alliance seems ruled out because the two parties are rival contenders for power in Uttar Pradesh and the S.P. prides itself on an uninhibited secularism that has won it, over the years, a solid support base among backward classes and minorities. Mr. Yadav will be careful not to fritter away this strength, which places him in a vantage position in his State and gives him national leverage. However, the Congress will be apprehensive that in the event of a hung Parliament, the S.P. might reciprocate the BJP's example of studied (although not unconditional) neutrality at critical junctures. While it is clear that the current situation is not congenial for either the Congress or the S.P., the former can be expected to do its best to escape the fate of Buridan's animal.

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