Alliance beyond optics

Rajesh Ramachandran

The last year of a government is the most interesting. That is when the will of the incumbent and the strength of the challenger get tested. Prime Minister Narendra Modi seems to be confident of a re-election, but the countdown to 2019 has begun with a strong message of Opposition unity and grand alliances. 

In that context, the Congress party’s diffidence in supporting Arvind Kejriwal’s sit-in at the Lieutenant Governor’s residence may seem strange. Traditional rivals like Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Bannerjee and CPI(M)’s Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan grabbed the photo-op with Mrs. Kejriwal along with Telugu Desam’s Chandrababu Naidu and Janata Dal’s HD Kumaraswamy. The grand gathering of four Chief Ministers to commiserate with Kejriwal’s wife did make an impact. Despite AAP MLAs allegedly roughing up the Chief Secretary in the dead of the night, Kejriwal could emerge unscathed from the LG’s residence because of the support he received from across the political spectrum. To a great extent the Opposition unity is working and making an impact on the way the BJP and the Centre respond to events. After all, the serial victories in the by-polls in Uttar Pradesh have started proving Modi and the BJP much less invincible than they were before Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav got together.

So, was it a mistake for the Congress to have spurned Kejriwal? Not at all. The politics of alliance is not about committing electoral suicide. Mamata, Naidu, Vijayan and Kumaraswamy have absolutely nothing to lose by supporting Kejriwal. The AAP does not exist in West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka or Kerala, nor does Kejriwal’s theatrics have any national resonance any longer. Whereas, the BJP is the prime opponent for Mamata and all the four want to be seen as the chosen, credible choice for minority voters. Any attack on the BJP is an act of self-endorsement for a party seeking minority votes. In Naidu’s case, beyond the minority votes this is another opportunity to be a match-maker and a king-maker in Delhi, getting into the thick of grand coalitions as he did during the United Front governments and the first NDA government led by AB Vajpayee. Naidu might even need the support of the Congress to take on Jagan Mohan Reddy’s YSR Congress in his home turf. So, the four Chief Ministers trooping in to support Kejriwal had more to do with their own electoral calculations than any great altruistic motive to ensure better governance for Delhiites.

But the Congress and the AAP getting together is not like a Samajwadi Party-Bahujan Samaj Party alliance. The AAP is the ruling party in Delhi that had grown primarily at the cost of the Congress, which is in a pitiable situation without a single MLA in the Assembly. In such a scenario the Congress doesn’t gain anything by supporting Kejriwal, whose political credibility is at its nadir. Whereas the Congress stands to lose further its appeal as an alternative to the BJP, if it plays second fiddle to the AAP. Contrast this with the Uttar Pradesh situation where both SP and BSP were decimated by the Modi-Yogi juggernaut. The BSP doesn’t have a single seat in the Lok Sabha and cannot even send its chief Mayawati to Rajya Sabha. It can only waste its 20 per cent vote share in election after election without any gains if it doesn’t align with the SP. Unlike the Congress, which has lost its vote share to the AAP and will not regain it if it accepts the supremacy of the AAP, the BSP’s vote share is intact and will not get shifted to the SP. The same is the case with the SP, which also has a similar vote share despite the brutal majority of the BJP.

Herein lies the reason for the bonhomie between the old, bitter rivals who have become new friends. In the last Assembly election, the BSP had gained marginally from its 2014 performance to win 22 per cent votes, yet it had just 19 seats. The SP in fact retained its 22 per cent vote share in the assembly polls but could win only 47 seats. The combined vote share of the SP and the BSP, even when the Modi-Yogi wave lashed UP gaining 312 seats, was a whopping 44 per cent, about 5 per cent more than that of the BJP. So, it made sense for these two to make a winning combination in Gorakhpur, Phulpur and Kairana. But that is not true for the Congress. The alliance with the SP in 2017 only further eroded Congress’s base. 

This essentially is the difference between umbrella parties and those which subscribe to the politics of identity. Umbrella parties are coalitions within themselves, where various interests and social groups negotiate and share power. Sure, at times they fail to represent traditionally disadvantaged groups. But every time an umbrella party aligns with a caste or community-based party, it is actually losing the opportunity to represent that particular community. Unless, it has the innate ability to subsume the group interests in a platform like that of the United Democratic Front of Kerala (where the Congress is in alliance with Muslim and Christian parties), it is a zero-sum game for an umbrella party to lose ground in its own turf. The BJP/Jan Sangh which began its journey as a marginal player, preaching the identity politics of Hindutva, gained substantially from it alliances from 1967 onwards, gobbling partners up in state after state to finally become the largest political entity in the country.

The best that the shaky Congress can hope for is to strengthen its organisation wherever its old favour-dispensing mechanisms still exist. After ruling Delhi for three continuous terms, this is one place where the party has an ability to win some of the seven seats. Beyond Delhi, the AAP has a presence only in Punjab, where it is Congress’ main rival and is hobnobbing with radical, secessionist elements for narrow electoral gains. The AAP is a strange party which changes its colours according to the context and the contest. The seed or the original avatar of the AAP was a gathering of Sangh Parivar leaders, Anna Hazare and Arvind Kejriwal on February 27, 2011, at Ramlila Maidan in Delhi to take on the Manmohan Singh government. The so-called “civil society” movement lent credibility to the Opposition’s attack on the UPA, which culminated in the Modi wave of 2014. But in 2019 the AAP is in no shape to add any ammunition to the Opposition fire.