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ART OF ALLIANCE

FEW WOULD DISPUTE Atal Bihari Vajpayee's adroit navigation of the multi-party coalition spearheaded by the Bharatiya Janata Party over six years in office. It is fitting therefore that he should have added a chapter on the "politics of coalition" to a volume containing a selection of his speeches in Parliament. Nor is it surprising that he used the occasion of the book's release for some self-congratulatory words on the success of the National Democratic Alliance. Calling for an enlarged debate on coalitional governance, the former Prime Minister contended that conviction rather than convenience ought to dictate the formation of a coalition. The sentiment will be shared by a wide cross-section of people. Why? Besides being more representative of India's pluralist and federal traditions, coalitions are also better able to reflect the concerns of the poor and the marginalised. Single-party governments tend to concentrate power, leading inevitably to its abuse. The Congress learnt this lesson only in proximity with the 14th general election, eight years after losing office. India's Grand Old Party was ousted because the social coalition it represented was no longer willing to accept the undemocratic arrangement and policies foisted on it. Masses of Dalits and Muslims drifted towards parties that gave respectability to their aspirations. In this situation, the prudent thing for the Congress would have been to try and replicate the original coalition through the instrumentality of plausible electoral alliances. But the party imperiously stuck to its `no alliance' line, which was to find formal expression in the backward-looking Pachmarhi Declaration.

Mr. Vajpayee can claim a cleverer record on this score, although the BJP cannot pretend it was moved by conviction into making alliances. The party of `Hindutva' and `cultural nationalism' embraced cohabitation politics more out of desperation than because it was an article of faith with it. Indeed, such was the friendless state of the post-Ayodhya BJP that party ideologues coined the phrase `splendid isolation' to give this sorry condition a philosophical gloss. It was the ignominy of Mr. Vajpayee's 1996 defeat in Parliament that nudged the party leadership towards strategic alliances formed on the basis of a non-contentious Common Minimum Programme.

Historically, in its Jan Sangh avatar the BJP did dally with the coalition idea. One such endeavour was the `grand alliance' the Opposition forged against Indira Gandhi in her authoritarian phase. That came a cropper but the Jan Sangh found success in 1977 after it dissolved its identity and merged into the Janata Party. The experiment collapsed within three years on the issue of `dual membership', the Jan Sangh faction's continuing bond with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. The Janata debacle underlined the contradictions that must arise when a party with a strongly articulated ideology chooses to subsume its identity in a larger, umbrella organisation. The NDA came about because by that time the BJP was canny enough not to be upfront about its highly divisive, disintegrative agenda. However, since the alliance was heavily dependent on the BJP, the party got the leeway it required. It is a measure of Mr. Vajpayee's alliance management skills that the NDA survived the horrors of Gujarat and the periodic revival of militant Hindutva by one constituent or another of the Sangh Parivar. Besides, power is strong glue. Today, thanks to a devastating electoral defeat and the departure of several key constituents led by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the NDA is a vastly depleted force. With the RSS conspicuously asserting its hegemony over the party and the BJP's rank and file joining the chorus for a return to Hindutva, Mr. Vajpayee will need all his persuasive charm — plus lots of energy — to keep his coalition experiment going.

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