Thiruvananthapuram: The will of the electorate seems to be increasingly becoming insignificant in Indian polity, where coalition rule has become the order of the day in most states. Finer aspects of democracy like ideology, sanctity of pre-poll alliance, common minimum programme and public morality have lost meaning in the prevailing context, where people on the ground are turned into mere pawns manipulated by wily politicos.
This new normal is best manifested in blatant opportunism of regional parties and splinter formations that coalesce in key alliances in various states, without any guarantee to which side of the divide they will cross after elections. The decision of Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) to pull out of the NDA in Bihar, without snapping its ties with the big boss BJP at the Centre or in the state, is the latest episode in this dragging charade.
The grabber-takes-it-all play had its curtain-raiser in Goa after the 2017 assembly polls. The act was replayed more dramatically in Karnataka in 2018. Then it got enacted with all finesse in Maharashtra. Haryana, a state that gave the expression ‘Aya Ram Gaya Ram’, lived up to its reputation after 2019 state polls.
In Goa, the BJP had failed to secure a fresh mandate after being in power for five years. Not just that, the incumbent chief minister Laxmikant Parsekar could not even retain his seat in the legislature. A modicum of political morality would have made the BJP to accept the verdict, or waited till the adversaries tried and failed their attempts at ministry formation. But the saffron party, by virtue of greater resources at its command, outwitted the Congress, which emerged the largest single party in the fractured 40-member house.
The Congress emissaries rushed to the state to win over legislators of splinter groups took it easy under the illusion that things would naturally turn to the party’s favour. Shrewd BJP crisis managers, however, stole a march over the rival mustering enough numbers to stitch up an alliance overnight to cling to power in the coastal state. The legislators who joined the post-poll arrangement included those who had won on a strident anti-BJP plank.
In Karnataka, a year later, the Congress outsmarted the arch foe by racing to tie up with Janata Dal (Secular), well before all the results were out. The two parties had fought the election separately in a three-cornered contest. The Congress, which lost power after ruling the state for a full term, even surrendered the chief minister’s post to JD (S)’s H D Kumaraswamy, since keeping the BJP out of power in the key southern state suited the party better. The Congress had to play a heavy price for its opportunism soon as the BJP regained power with the support of rebels who subverted the Kumaraswamy ministry from within.
In Maharashtra, jettisoning the fundamentals of sane coalition system, Shiv Sena, NCP and Congress came together to form a front after weeks of nail biting suspense, twists and turns.
Now it is the turn of Bihar, where the permutations and combinations to emerge after the elections in November is anybody’s guess. A politically conscious and sensitive state, Bihar had already been through a dramatic switch-over with Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s JD (U) ditching its 2015 pre-poll partners RJD and Congress, and going back to his earlier ally BJP to retain power.
Regional parties arose in many Indian states in 1960s. They sprang essentially from the failure of the top-driven national parties, especially the Congress as leviathan of the day, to live up to the regional political and economic aspirations. States where regional cultures are strong like Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra proved to be fertile grounds for state-level parties to grow fast.
Initially, they were guided by leaders with unsullied reputation, many of whom had come up through the freedom movement. They could easily convince and rally masses under alternative programs and action plans, and gain power in the respective states, ending the monopoly of the Congress. It, however, did not take long for the slide to begin. With the passing away of self-less founding leaders like C N Annadurai of Tamil Nadu, regional movements fell into the hands of authoritarian and corrupt political operators. Initially, the national parties, first the Congress and then the BJP, were wary of striking open alliance with regional parties.
But with the advent of coalition politics in many states, they shed their inhibition to state-level parties. By the turn of the 21st century, regional parties came to have respectability and a sense of inevitability, regardless of their ideology or vision. The Congress, BJP and the Left, though the latter has become much emaciated over the decades, struck ties with regional outfits, giving little concern for the track record of the leaders at their helm.
What is happening in India now is not just symptomatic of a serious malady slowly creeping into its body politic. The virus— a deadly combination of personality cult, dynastic succession, greed and corruption— is fast eating into the fundamentals of the nation as a constitution-bound multi-party democracy.
What is more surprising is that mainstream media and political commentators, including those from academia, have shown little concern about the degeneration of politics brought about by regional formations. There has virtually been no serious debate on moralistic and structural measures required to reverse the trend.
