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A three-horse race in the next election

These are testing times for those in the business of political forecasting. The see-saw swing of political fortunes this past month has turned election prediction, risky at the best of times, into a perilous minefield.

Who would have thought that Amar Singh would become Sonia Gandhi’s vocal champion? Or that Mayawati would hasten to the side of the United National Progressive Alliance, going on to be anointed Prime Minister-apparent by a pantheon of leaders till now aligned with her sworn enemy, Mulayam Singh? Who would have thought that the Bharatiya Janata Party, riding high on a bunch of State election victories, and feted for its razor-sharp mind and management skills, would botch up its act so badly? That it would slide from its hard fought position as ruling party-in-waiting to a possible also ran?

Today in the aftermath of a trust vote that saw friends turn foes and foes turn friends, no alliance, however preposterous from present-day perspective, would appear ruled out. Yet this churning is not as illogical as it might seem from the outside. The rush to find newer and cleverer political friends notwithstanding, principal rivals anywhere are unlikely to join hands – and certainly not before the general election. The Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party must be on opposite sides, as must the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the Left Front and the Trinamool Congress, and the Congress and its State rivals.

This order of things in turn dictates who forms an alliance with whom at the Centre. Thus if the SP and the Congress team up, the BSP, under compulsion to protect its fortress in Uttar Pradesh, must go some place else. It is not a coincidence that the BSP withdrew support to the Manmohan Singh government amidst signals of a rapprochement between the SP and the Congress.

The most spectacular illustration of Indian political rivalry is that between the Congress and the BJP. The fight between the Congress and the Jan Sangh was largely ideological. With the rise of the BJP, they became competitors, forming the two poles of India’s national politics. From 1977 onwards, Indian politics has alternated between anti-Congressism and anti-BJPism. This meant that while all other political players were free to align with either party, the BJP and the Congress would remain implacably opposed. The two have never aligned, directly or indirectly, at the Centre or in the States. Today, in coalitional times, with the Congress and the BJP in supposed historic decline, they are in a direct fight in as many as 10 States; in another five, they face each other with their allies.

In the States, the rivals are not as pre-determined as they are at the Centre. The SP and the BSP forged an alliance in 1993, when the BJP reigned supreme in Uttar Pradesh. Fifteen years later, the BSP has zoomed to the top with the SP a few laps behind. So what prevents a BSP-SP alliance today is not so much the personal antagonism between Mayawati and Mulayam Singh as each party’s compelling need to be the number one party in Uttar Pradesh — and use that leverage for furthering its national ambitions. The SP has reached out to its former enemy, the Congress, because its present enemy is a far greater threat.

In Tamil Nadu, the Congress and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam were the principal rivals up until 1967. With the rise of the Dravida forces, the Congress lost its pre-eminence and the DMK and the breakaway AIADMK became rivals. Transformed from foe to friend, the Congress now rides piggyback on one or the other Kazhagam. Similarly in Bihar. Here the Janata Dal’s toughest opponent was the Congress. Post-Mandal, the Congress went into recession and ceased to be a threat to the Janata Dal and its variants. Today Nitish Kumar is Lalu Prasad’s adversary while his friend in need is the same Congress he fought and defeated in the 1990 Assembly election.

The rivalry principle applies minimally to the smaller State players — such as the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the Pattali Makkal Katchi in Tamil Nadu, the Rashtriya Lok Dal in Uttar Pradesh, the Lok Jan Shakti Party in Bihar and the parties of the North East. These are parties looking always to be on the winning side, and succeeding too, because while they bring valuable votes, they are not large enough to threaten the dominant parties in their respective States.

To be sure, there are examples to disprove the principle that rivals cannot coexist. In 1996, the Telugu Desam Party, as a constituent of the United Front, accepted outside support from the Congress, its principal rival in Andhra Pradesh. The Left parties, which fight the Congress in West Bengal and Kerala, were also part of this larger understanding. More recently, in 2004, the Left parties agreed to lend outside support to the United Progressive Alliance led by the Congress.

Yet significantly, these arrangements have proved stressful and tenuous. The TDP broke with the Congress in 1998 and the Left Front just recently.

Given this sketch of what is possible and what is not, what might be the shape of the alliances heading out to the 15th General election? There are three distinct formations ahead of 2009. The UPA, the National Democratic Alliance and the UNPA. The UPA is intact. With only four allies, the BJP leads a badly truncated version of the original 24-party NDA. The UNPA, which has more than made good the loss of Mulayam Singh with the far more astute and driven Ms Mayawati, is the obvious dark horse here.

For the whole of the last decade, only two destinations have been available to the State parties. The Congress and the BJP. The party that made the smarter alliance won the race. The BJP in 1998 and 1999 and the Congress in 2004. Parties such as the SP and BSP formed the third category of hopefuls: their strategy hinged on filling any shortfall in numbers in the winning alliance.

As Election 2009 approached, the Congress and the BJP once again seemed poised for a face-off, with the latter presumed to have the advantage mainly because of its succession of State election victories. That assumption has taken a knock with Ms Mayawati suddenly and dramatically showing up for photo-ops with the leaders of the UNPA-Left Front.

In the past, the BSP chief has spurned pre-poll pacts on the contention that Dalit votes are transferable but not the votes of the backward and forward castes. As against this, the BSP’s three post-poll alliances with the BJP brought her tangible benefits: They made her Chief Minister. That Ms Mayawati has since gravitated towards the UNPA indicates two things. She calculates that while she will definitely add to the brand equity of the UNPA, her endorsement by half a dozen powerful State leaders will in turn enhance her stature, helping consolidate Dalits across the country. At the same time, the BSP leader’s pointed rejection of the BJP shows how much the principal Opposition party has been devalued in the eyes of its former partners.

Indeed, post the trust vote, there is near unanimity that the BJP has come off the worst. The party has lost face following its inability to hold its parliamentary flock. Secondly, the BSP chief’s emergence as a potential Prime Minister strikes at the root of the BJP’s presumptuous claim on the post. Ms Mayawati is a threat in other ways too. The BSP’s rise in Uttar Pradesh parallels the BJP’s fall in a State that once rang with shouts of “Jai Sri Ram.” As it goes to the Lok Sabha polls, the BJP must confront not only Ms Mayawati’s new aggression but also a possible tie-up between the SP and the Congress in Uttar Pradesh. Ms Mayawati has also emerged as a counter magnet to the BJP in terms of being able to lure its potential allies.

The cash for vote scandal is under the scanner of a parliamentary committee. The abstentions and cross-voting do raise moral questions. But the UPA has scored an implausible tactical victory courtesy of which it has pulled ahead of the NDA. Whether the momentum will carry into an election many months away and at a time of high inflation is difficult to say. Many of the Congress’ allies delivered their best in 2004, a feat unlikely to be repeated in 2009. The other imponderable for the UPA is the Maya effect on the Congress.

The BJP’s problem is too few allies. The AIADMK and the Asom Gana Parishad seem in no hurry to board the BJP bandwagon. The TDP has found a powerful new friend in Ms Mayawati. Ditto for the Indian National Lok Dal which gains more from the BSP than from the BJP.

Today the UNPA, written off after the SP’s exit, looks set to have more constituents than the NDA. Whatever the outcome of the next general election, Ms Mayawati has converted a two-way contest into an unpredictable three-way gamble.

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