Coalition dharma and karma

A book on the history of coalition governments at the Centre and in states, their contradictions, failures and successes, may seem incongruous, even anachronistic, when the Indian electorate has delivered a single-party majority for a second successive Lok Sabha election. The last time this happened was in 1980 and 1984.

Senior journalist Sunita Aron may have written the book on the assumption that Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would struggle to attain a majority in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and that India would return to the era of coalition politics.

Ironically, the author has dedicated the book “to the Indian voters, whose political acumen has failed the best poll pundits in the country”. That does not take away from the interesting insights, delightful anecdotes and political prophecies in the book. It is also a ready reckoner of the history of coalition politics in India. 

Chapter three, “The Bihari Fusion”, tracks how George Fernandes and Nitish Kumar, after parting ways with Lalu Prasad in the mid-1990s to launch the Samata Party, knocked at nearly every door, from the Communist parties to Mulayam Singh Yadav and Kanshi Ram, but were turned away.

Fernandes and Kumar, the author writes, eventually aligned with the BJP, with the blessings of socialist leader Chandra Shekhar, who had won the 1996 Lok Sabha polls from his stronghold in Uttar Pradesh’s Ballia with the BJP not fielding a candidate against him.

The Samata Party–BJP alliance did away with the political untouchability the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led government, which had fallen after 13 days, had faced in 1996. Fernandes’ presence in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) helped the BJP get the requisite number of allies in 1998.

Ms Aron writes that if the United Front government of 1996 to 1998 laid the first mechanisms on how to run a coalition government — a common minimum progra­mme and steering or a coordination committee — the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA coalition should be credited with introduction of “groups of ministers” and chief ministers’ conference as coordination devices.

With an all-powerful Prime Minister’s Office under Mr Modi, the spirit of coalition politics appears to belong to a different era.

Ms Aron obviously wrote the book before the Lok Sabha results, but her reading of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and likely developments in that state ahead of Assembly polls in 2020 is perspicacious.

The author writes that the BJP could wa­nt the chief minister’s post for itself in Bihar, while Mr Kumar “harbours the am­bi­tion of being the prime minister”. The author states that Mr Kumar “cultivated” Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi but “overstepped” during the presidential polls of 2017.

Mr Kumar had then wished the opposition declared him the head of their coordination committee, which would have meant the opposition accepting him as their leader to challenge Mr Modi in the 2019 polls. Those close to Mr Kumar argue the Congress first family was “arrogant” in not offering him the political space he justifiably deserved. A couple of months later Mr Kumar ditched his allies to align with the BJP. His Janata Dal (United) now has 16 Lok Sabha members and his archrival Rashtriya Janata Dal none. Interesting developments could be in the offing in Bihar politics over the next year.

Ms Aron remains one of the most authoritative political observers on India’s most populous state, and the three chapters on political developments of the last three decades in Uttar Pradesh make for an interesting read. The Samajwadi Party (SP)-Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP)-Rashtriya Lok Dal grand alliance in UP failed to stop the BJP’s juggernaut in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, but continues to be formidable with a cumulative vote share of 38.89 per cent.

The book tracks the events leading up to the first SP-BSP alliance in 1993, when industrialist Jayant Malhotra and a couple of politicians from south India brought SP’s Mulayam Singh Yadav and BSP’s Kanshi Ram together. The differences between the two leaders started even before the Uttar Pra­desh Assembly polls of 1993, Ms Aron writes.

She has argued the media and BSP has unjustifiably vilified Mr Yadav for causing the break-up of the alliance in 1995, when BSP’s Mayawati had taken to issuing provocative statements routinely during that time. On transfers and postings of bureaucrats during the SP-BSP alliance government, Ms Mayawati had taken to say that if “Mulayam (Singh Yadav) is CM, I am super CM.”

Mr Ram had approached leaders, including Mr Vajpayee, to help him unseat Mr Yadav, the author writes. In almost a re­peat of the current scenario, the BSP was routed in the mid-1995 zila parishad elections and Assembly by-polls and blamed the SP for not ensuring a transfer of its votes.

The Mulayam Singh government soon fell and Ms Mayawati, who by now had BJP’s support, was administered the oath of office on June 3, 1995. About the SP-BSP-RLD alliance of 2019, Ms Aron wrote how their politics “is dominated and driven by personal ambitions to grab power”. The people of UP appeared to have agreed.
 

Ballots and Breakups: The Games Politicians Play

Sunita Aron

Bloomsbury, 342 pages, Rs 499