Test of a United India

The fissures in the mahagathbandhan are gradually becoming visible and its ability to maintain a united front till after the election results will be the decider

Amitabh Shukla

As the Lok Sabha election gets tantalisingly close, the season of mahagathbandhan or a grand alliance has started in right earnest. So has flexing of political muscles by what can loosely be called as the anti-Bharatiya Janata Party (anti-BJP) — a conglomeration of diverse regional parties, united by a single agenda of removing the Modi-Shah duo from national politics in the Lok Sabha election. Of course, BJP rebel and now architect of the “Save Democracy” movement Yashwant Sinha adroitly reminded everybody that the Modi versus Rest  narrative would only strengthen the former’s image and the Opposition needed to counter the BJP on ideological counts.

Raised hands and clenched fists of all leaders present in the Kolkata rally, organised by the Trinamool Congress (TMC), not only gave a perfect photo opportunity to Opposition leaders but somewhere down the line increased the frown lines of the defender — the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA). Many considered the rally largely as an exercise to project TMC chief and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee as a possible prime ministerial candidate of the grand Opposition alliance for the Lok Sabha poll even though the stated objective was to bring all anti-BJP parties on the same platform. But that’s just one aspect of the burgeoning index of Opposition unity.

Of course, all the 20-plus parties that participated in the Kolkata rally on January 19 had different agenda on their minds. Most of them were looking for a better outing in the Assembly polls with their respective alliances, where the BJP has become a force to reckon with since 2014. But given that the TMC hosted the first successful Opposition rally and managed to get on board almost all leaders and parties opposed to the BJP, it can now safely claim to be the leader of this Third Front. Banerjee also pitched herself as a sort of an arbitrator for possible disputes, whenever and wherever they arise, among this Front. Her diplomatic handling of the stage and giving importance to all the leaders present amply suggested her ease of managing diverse interests, her acceptability and showed her national ambitions.

But the fissures in such a loose formation are still too wide and its ability to pose as a united front before the election is still a matter of speculation. Telugu Desam Party (TDP) chief Chandrababu Naidu, who was present in the Kolkata rally, has practically abandoned the Congress with which he had sewed an alliance for the Assembly polls of Telangana.  Congress president Rahul Gandhi and Naidu had become the poster boys of this mahagathbandhan then, beaming as they were with hands raised in solidarity.

As an afterthought, the TDP supremo perhaps realised that he cannot give much space to the Congress to grow in his home state of Andhra Pradesh. An alliance with the Congress in the State would limit his chances to have a go at the chair of Prime Minister. He might have perhaps looked at the prospects of him somehow becoming a possible compromise candidate in the event of this Opposition grand alliance getting close to government formation.

Besides, Mamata Banerjee and Chandrababu Naidu, who are possibly looking at a national role for themselves, this anti-BJP Opposition front also has Dalit leader and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati as the prime ministerial candidate. She has been endorsed strongly not only by her own party but also by her newly-found political partner and nephew Akhilesh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party (SP). The Bua-Bhatija alliance is the one which has set the tone and template for the general election and almost every political pundit now says that the road to New Delhi this time would go through the lanes and bylanes of Lucknow and Uttar Pradesh.

Days before the Kolkata rally of the Opposition, the SP-BSP alliance in Uttar Pradesh triggered a wave of anticipation among the anti-BJP front and threw open a wide range of political possibilities at the cost of the saffron party in the largest State of the country. The  TMC rally simply took the idea of unity ahead and sort of announced to the world that the neutral Third Front was alive and kicking  and both the BJP and the Congress should consider it as a possible contender for the throne in Delhi provided it gets the numbers leaders are hoping for. And if all parties do well individually, then the Congress can provide outside support if the situation so warrants.

Coming back to the SP-BSP alliance, even the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in Bihar, which has a vote base similar to the SP’s in Uttar Pradesh, is excited about  its prospects. This perhaps explains why Tejaswi Yadav, the de facto supremo of the party in the absence of the incarcerated Lalu Prasad Yadav, dashed to Lucknow to congratulate Mayawati on her birthday and tweeted pictures in which he touched her feet reverentially. It’s rare to see bonhomie between the parties representing the Dalits (BSP) and OBCs led by the Yadav community (SP and RJD), as they have not only been at political but also social loggerheads for decades.

Tejaswi knows for sure that keeping the BSP in good humour would only help consolidate and expand the vote base of the grand alliance in Bihar. Dalit leader and Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) chief Ram Vilas Paswan is firmly in the NDA fold, at least for the Lok Sabha election, and the RJD would be more than happy to get any incremental votes of Dalits in the State if Mayawati is on board even if the BSP does not contest a single seat as part of the grand alliance in Bihar. In fact, the RJD could go to the extent of offering a seat or two to the BSP even though the Mayawati-led party does not have any foothold in the neighbouring state.

In this season of anti-BJP posturing, photo ops and alliances ahead of the Lok Sabha poll, the only motive seems to be removal of Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister by working out sound electoral mathematics and ensuring a higher seat  turnout than the BJP did in the 2014 polls. The SP-BSP alliance is simply banking on the fact that if it gets a combined vote share, which is higher than the NDA’s in the state, it would be in the driver’s seat. Of course, chemistry and adjustment are equally important in alliances and it remains to be seen how firmly it is cemented at the grassroots  and booth levels.

Left out of the alliance in Uttar Pradesh — a move on expected lines — the Congress is neither happy nor unhappy at this moment, contemplating the different possibilities along with permutations and combinations ahead. Optimists in the party believe that at the end of the day, the SP-BSP alliance could be a part of the UPA if the numbers so demand and they are at a striking distance of forming the next government. Of course, Mayawati would throw her hat in the ring for a possible go at the chair of Prime Minister if the situation so warrants and the mahagathbandhan gets a respectable number of seats. This situation would be conditional on the Congress not doing well and remaining well below 100 seats, regional parties dominating the results and the BSP itself performing well and getting a reasonable number of the 38 seats it would be contesting out of the 80 in Uttar Pradesh.

But there is many a slip between the cup and the lip. Post-verdict electoral understandings, support and alliances could be quite different from the ones cemented pre-poll. In a possible scenario where the NDA is a little short of majority, the BSP could always spring a surprise. It has a history of aligning with both SP and BJP, and there has been no shift in BSP’s ideology even as it goes to polls this time around as a formidable force in alliance with the SP in Uttar Pradesh.

Similarly, the TDP, too, could go anywhere — from the NDA to the UPA, or to Third Front — in the post-poll political calculations. In the last six months, we have seen the party travelling all platforms. So there we are. It all depends on numbers after the polling and till then, all political parties would  be posturing and keeping their options open. Much water will flow till then. (January 22, 2019)

https://www.dailypioneer.com/2019/columnists/test-of-a-united-india.html

The Chameleon's game

Regional parties have become experts in sensing the political climate by switching sides at the slightest possibility of a better electoral outing and negotiating a relevance for themselves

Amitabh Shukla

 

The Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) may be the latest ally to desert the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) on the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016, introduced in the last session of the Lok Sabha recently, but by no stretch of the imagination can the party be termed as a “political weather scientist.” Similarly, the tag should also not be passed on to the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), which parted ways with the NDA last year. Compulsions of state politics and scouting for better opportunities at the national level forced these two regional parties to break away from the NDA rather than their potential to gauge trade winds.

In that sense, the bellwether status should go to Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan. For long, he has been described as the ‘mausam vagyanik’, who can assess which way the political wind is blowing or which party would reap the electoral harvest and form the next Government.

Many have even appreciated his ability of being “accurate and correct” with his political moves over a period spanning three decades. Both his admirers and critics believe that he has got so much of expertise in reading “people’s mood and pulse” that he always supports the winning cause — the coalition which rules the country.

Paswan has been a part of all national coalitions. He was first elected as an MLA in Bihar way back in 1969, though he has always preferred to be in Central politics after the Emergency when he first won the Hajipur Lok Sabha seat by a record margin in 1977. Be it the Right (NDA led by the BJP) or the one in which the Left had a major role (Third Front led by VP Singh) or the Centrist party (Congress-led United Progressive Alliance), one factor which has always been common is the 75-year-old Paswan. No ideology is anathema to him as long as it takes him to the treasury benches.

He was first inducted in Union Cabinet by VP Singh in 1989 and since then the Dalit leader has never looked back. Of course, he lost one election in 2009 to an old rival in Bihar —Ram Sundar Das — from his stronghold of Hajipur and had to remain out of power for five years. His followers, however, term that period as an “accident” and an “aberration.”

When he decided to stick to the NDA in Bihar for the 2019 polls, successfully bargaining a healthy six seats for his Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) and one Rajya Sabha seat for himself, many in his home state wondered if he had lost his ability to predict the political climate with the same perfection and astuteness.

Many in Paswan’s home state say that Upendra Kushwaha, the former junior HRD minister in Narendra Modi’s Government and the first one to jump ship in Bihar from NDA to UPA, has now developed the knack which Paswan possessed at one point of time. Kushwaha, as president of the Rashtriya Lok Samata Party (RLSP) and a Koeri himself, joined the grand alliance (mahagatbandhan) of the Congress and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in the Hindi heartland, hoping to have a role in the next Union Government.

Kushwaha knows for sure that his utility in NDA ended the moment Nitish Kumar and his Janata Dal United (JDU) joined hands with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to retain power in the State and oust the RJD with which JDU had fought the Assembly elections in the first place. Kushwaha and Kumar share a similar caste support base and he realised he would be more useful to the mahagathbandhan in Bihar than the NDA. So Kushwaha’s ouster was a foregone conclusion. In fact, it helped Paswan get a better deal with the NDA in seat-sharing as whatever incremental votes his party gets in Bihar helps the latter’s cause in its bid to do well in the State.

Bihar will be an important battlefield in the 2019 general election with 40 seats, a State where both the UPA and NDA are firmly entrenched. Hence, this is one State where the battle is largely between the two and not the constituent parties as such.

Besides RJD, the Congress and now the RLSP, the grand alliance in Bihar also has former Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi’s party, Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM) and Loktantrik Janata Dal (LJD) founded by Sharad Yadav, who broke away from the JDU. Then there is Mukesh Sahni, who had floated his political outfit Vikasshil Insaan Party (VIP) and joined the grand alliance, aiming to get votes from his Nishad community spread across the State. In addition, there is a possibility of even the Left parties becoming a part of the grand alliance, which could leave a couple of seats for them to show it is an umbrella alliance of all castes, groups and ideology.

On paper, the alliance looks really  ‘grand’ given the various caste combinations it carries with it, but on ground it is difficult to visualise how competing castes, parties and groups would jell, and whether one community would be able to transfer its vote to the other. Also, the sharing of seats is still a mystery and several conflicts, claims and counterclaims could emerge.

Ironically, it is in Bihar where the BJP had to concede to its allies in a big way, which many see as the end of the road for its expansion in the State. It won 22 seats in the 2014 Lok Sabha poll, and along with its allies LJP (6) and RLSP (3), the NDA won 32 seats even though the combined Opposition then on paper was quite strong — RJD and JDU. The BJP would be contesting only 17 seats, forcing it to part ways with five seats which it won last time, clearly a set-back for the party cadres who were hoping for expansion and some day form the State Government on the party’s own strength like it did in Maharashtra, breaking from the Shiv Sena and contesting Assembly polls alone.

As of now, Bihar is the only State where the battle lines have been drawn and demarcated firmly with alliances in place. Many see this as a microcosm of India — emergence of a two-alliance formation where the BJP would head one polarity and the Congress the other with regional parties siding with one or the other depending on their state politics, perceptions at a given point of time and crass opportunism, of course.

It is now gradually becoming clear that it will be the regional parties which would become the new weather scientist of the Indian politics —switching sides at the slightest possibility of better electoral outing and reviewing their decision every now and then according to their convenience and smell of opportunity. Bihar is a perfect example where you do not find any permanent political friend or enemy.

Every single regional party of the State has a history of deserting either the NDA or the UPA in the past several years ever since the days of Mandal and Mandir politics which peaked in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Both Paswan and Nitish Kumar are sailing in the same boat — changing sides seamlessly, that too repeatedly, without the baggage of ideology or any other factor. Paswan may be the expert on this but others are quickly playing catch-up. Kumar has almost caught up with Paswan, changing from one extreme to the other — first NDA to UPA and then back to NDA — without batting an eyelid. (January 15, 2019)

https://www.dailypioneer.com/2019/columnists/the-chameleon---s-game.html

Takeaways for the big two

  

Amitabh Shukla 

With the Congress regaining control and the BJP having a brush with trouble, there are lessons for all national parties. It’s time to focus more on policies and less on hollow sloganeering

The Assembly election results of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh have not only set the template for the Lok Sabha election, which is expected to be announced in the first week of March next year, but has also clearly drawn the battle lines for what is expected to be one of the fiercest elections ever. For the Congress, the biggest takeaway from the polls is, undoubtedly, the emergence of Rahul Gandhi as an unassuming leader who has shed his past baggage of indifference, political immaturity and dynasty to come on his own. For the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the biggest setback has been the demolition of the myth and hype built around the invincibility of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party chief Amit Shah. 

Till these elections took place, the BJP had become one big electoral juggernaut, very convincingly demolishing one political opponent after the other. The routine rout of the Opposition in the elections had built an aura of invincibility around the Modi-Shah duo — the mass connect of Modi and the Chanakya-like strategy of Shah had become a part of political punditry and was also instilled as an ideal combination in some of the BJP-RSS workers.

On the contrary, repeated defeats had affected even the body language of the Congress leaders, who went into a defeatist mode, occasionally without putting up any fight, like in Goa. Rahul Gandhi and pappu had almost become synonymous, popularised as it was by WhatsApp groups of the BJP’s IT cell. So much so that there was a time when even die-hard Congress workers started believing the falsehoods doing the rounds on how ineffective Rahul Gandhi was as a leader and how his stewardship was taking the party towards peril. 

December 11, 2018, changed this political narrative for all time to come. Its developments have come barely three months before the announcement of the general election, triggering a political tsunami and throwing open all sorts of possibilities. All of a sudden, there is a spring in the steps of the Congress workers while in the BJP, an element of doubt has crept in.

This brings forth the most plausible question:  Will the Modi magic work or not? Even though party spokespersons keep hammering the fact that the Prime Minister’s personal integrity is intact and that issues for Assembly and Lok Sabha polls are entirely different, this is hardly convincing for both sceptics and supporters. They know it well that victory in the Assembly elections in these very States five years ago, in 2013, had set the ball rolling for the saffron party and it built on the momentum of the wave in May 2014.

Five years down the line, that pace is now with the Congress and it will expectedly follow it till the 2019 Lok Sabha poll. In fact, the Grand Old Party was building a thrust ever since it made crucial headway in the Gujarat Assembly polls in December 2017, where for the first time, Modi had to campaign really hard and Shah had to use all his electoral arithmetic to romp home. A resurgent Congress had given the BJP a run for its money in a State which for long had been considered a laboratory for Hindutva politics.

There was more to follow. Karnataka was widely billed to go the BJP way. This is what the spin doctors of the party had projected — the sulking Yeddyurappa was back with the BJP, moneybags were with the party managers, the Congress Government was facing anti-incumbency and what not. Everything was supposedly going for the BJP and against the Congress. But that was not to be. The BJP failed to get a majority on its own. “Congress-mukt Bharat was too arrogant a slogan,” said a BJP leader on condition of anonymity, adding that this was a classic case of unrealistic politics, bereft of grassroots reality. He hoped that this slogan would never be raised now, and even if it did, it would instantly become a matter of ridicule.

Similarly, the systematic targeting of the likes of Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi were in bad taste and the appropriation of other Congress stalwarts by extolling the virtues of the likes of Sardar Patel and Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose did not quite have the intended effect. “Leave historical figures alone for history books and academic discussions, not for electoral rhetoric and as poll issue,” summed up the leader.

In the run-up to the Lok Sabha poll, obviously, the BJP will try to turn it into some sort of a presidential election, pitching Modi versus Rahul, and asking people if they would vote for an untested, unwilling and timid leader or go for the qualities of “a time-tested, strong face with muscular politics.”

The BJP’s second strategy would be to polarise the election with a strong pitch for building the Ram Mandir at Ayodhya. But given the fact that the issue has already been milked to the hilt by the party for over the last quarter of a century and which yielded rich electoral dividends up to a point, this plank has reached a saturation level. The BJP can no longer hope for the same result and the law of diminishing returns will automatically apply. This is what happened in the three States.

So what’s the way forward for the BJP? First, it has to abandon the  Congress-mukt Bharat pitch. Second, it must draw a list of achievements of its major decisions — demonetisation and GST — and keep hammering about their long-term benefits repeatedly and see how much traction it gets. Third, now that it has been cleared by the Supreme Court in the Rafale jet deal, it should keep the Opposition in the loop for future acquisitions rather than being defensive about them. Fourth, it would have to stop pitchforking the Modi-Shah axis and democratise its intra-party discourse. “At present, party MPs are treated more like booth-level workers to whom directions are hurled and there is no process of consultation or listening involved,” a BJP MP told this writer after the poll results.

Last but not the least, it would have to stop polarisation of votes through hawkish leaders like Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. He will hardly attract any new votes as the Assembly elections of Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, where he campaigned  extensively, have proved that there aren’t many takers for the religion card. At the same time, it would damage the body politic of India. Already, banners have come up in Lucknow extolling the hardliner Yogi as “Prime Minister material” and Modi has been painted as some sort of a liberal.

Similarly, what’s the way forward for the Congress? Right now it is the default Opposition party in several States and is expecting to get the anti-incumbency votes from those who expected too much from the first majority Government of the BJP in decades. This complacency has to end. First, it has to come out with an aggressive and workable solution to the problems it has been highlighting. It should spell out what it would do to solve farm distress beyond loan waivers. Second, if traders and small enterprises are distressed, what is the solution to the woes? Third, offending slogans like “chowkidar chor hai” should be banned; it is similar to “Congress-mukt Bharat” and even worse.

It should articulate what its policies would be at the Centre and how different they would be from the ones followed by the BJP Government?  It also has to spell out its plan for job creation and how it proposes to go about it.

The days of sloganeering are over. The youth had a lot of expectations in 2014 and will have similar expectations in 2019 as well. Hollow and emotive slogans will no longer yield electoral dividends. Both parties should come with policies, which are implementable with details of how they intend to proceed. That would be the key to gaining the trust of our electorate. (December 17, 2018)  

https://www.dailypioneer.com/2018/columnists/takeaways-for-the-big-two.html