Little has been heard of the general secretary of the CPI(M), Prakash Karat, since the Left withdrew support to the UPA government a few months ago. His disappearance from the airwaves does not mean that he has been inactive. Indeed, he has been beavering away at cobbling together a Third Front comprising the principal regional parties. And he has scored some signal successes, with both the Telugu Desam and the AIADMK deserting the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance in order to plump for the Third Front. Mr Karat’s only failure so far has been with Ms Mayawati of the Bahujan Samaj party, who typically has preferred to keep her options open. Still, some interesting possibilities have opened up. The Third Front as so far constituted will be able to contest 144 seats in the five states of West Bengal, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Tripura. It has a reasonable chance of winning more than half that number; with luck, the tally could mount to 80 and more. With that kind of strength, it will become a pivotal player in the next Lok Sabha.
The relative decline of the NDA is important in this context. The four northern states that recently had assembly elections (excluding Jammu & Kashmir) account for about 40 per cent of the BJP’s current strength in the House. If the shift in voting pattern that was evident in the assembly elections is manifested in the Lok Sabha elections as well, the BJP could lose 15 or more of the seats it currently holds. To make a bid for power, it will have to recoup that loss from elsewhere and then gain some more seats to be in a position to form the government. Even if it holds on to its alliance partners in Bihar, Orissa, Punjab, Maharashtra, Assam and elsewhere, the NDA will find that the loss of two key allies to the Third Front makes the prospect of a majority quite dim.
The Congress is in no better shape. If Ms Mayawati wins half the seats in UP (as she did in the state assembly elections), and if the Third Front controls another 80 seats, government formation will be possible only in alliance with one or both these parties/groups. It is easy to see how nightmarish a task it will be to negotiate the basis for running such a government. In other words, neither the Congress nor the BJP may be in a position (or would even want to) lead the government in the next Lok Sabha. Past experience shows that any patchwork alternative that is cobbled together, with “outside” support from one of the two main parties, has a shortlived existence. With the elections still four months away, it is futile to speculate beyond these broad possibilities. The short point just now is that governmental instability stares the country in the face.