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Looking ahead

The year 2008 saw major political upheavals. The Left parties withdrew support to the United Progressive Alliance. Bitter foes Samajwadi Party and Congress became friends. Heavyweights Mayawati and J. Jayalalithaa veered left to try their luck with the third force. Yet these turns and twists might be nothing compared with the surprises the New Year is likely to bring. With just five months to go for the 15th general election, there is no way of guessing which way the die w ill roll when the three formations – the UPA, the National Democratic Alliance, and the third formation – face off. There is an extraordinary fluidity on the ground, which suggests there will be a major post-poll churning. Neither the UPA nor the NDA looks to be in a comfortable position. The logic of coalition-building dictates that whoever makes the smarter alliance will have the first advantage. In 1999, the NDA fulfilled this requirement. Five years later, the BJP forgot the fundamental rule and allowed itself to be snared into the ‘India Shining’ trap. As the NDA unspooled, the future UPA took shape under the quietly effective guidance of Sonia Gandhi.

Today’s UPA is a far cry from what it was in 2004. That year’s big hitters seem out of form. In 2004, the Congress alliance maximised its potential in seven States — Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Haryana, Delhi, and Himachal Pradesh — and took 129 of the 156 seats on offer. Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh alone contributed 64 seats to the alliance. Five years on, there seems little left of that winning chemistry. The Congress has suffered a succession of defeats in State Assembly elections. It partially redeemed its stock with victories in Rajasthan and Delhi, and a reasonable performance in Jammu and Kashmir. Yet significantly, the party lost Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, two States it was banking on to make up its likely losses elsewhere. But what of the BJP? It finds itself struggling to expand an alliance that at one time boasted 23 constituents but has been reduced to seven. For the unattached, the BJP no longer seems to be an attractive ally. Most parties are wary of its crude anti-Muslim plank; the National Conference’s stand that it would sit in the opposition rather than accept the BJP’s help testifies to this. In the South, Karnataka excepted, the party hardly exists as an electoral force. The third force is looking to Ms Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party, Ms Jayalalithaa’s All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party, and an energetic, if electorally weakened, Left to achieve a real take-off. The year 2009 starts with little clue to the shape of the 15th Lok Sabha.

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