Contradictions abound

Political compulsions are driving compromises

As Tuesday’s competing demonstrations of strength in Bengaluru and New Delhi showed, politics is the art of the possible. However, the two conglomerations — the 26-member INDIA, or Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance, and brought back from the dead National Democratic Alliance, or NDA, with 38 members — are rife with contradictions. But the compulsions of beating 10-year anti-incumbency in 2024 have the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) perform ideological contortions to return to its big-tent politics of 1998 to 2004, which it practically abandoned once it won a Lok Sabha majority of its own in 2014 and repeated the feat five years later. Meanwhile, the necessity of political survival is the glue for the parties comprising INDIA to stick with one another. They know they must hang together to shape an index of Opposition unity to prevent Prime Minister Narendra Modi from leading the BJP to a third successive victory.

So, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) leaders have struggled to explain to their cadres, who risked their lives to fight the violent panchayat elections in West Bengal, how they shared the stage with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in Bengaluru. The CPI(M) says its fight in West Bengal is equally against the BJP and Ms Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress. The Congress and the Left have lived, at least since 2004, with the dichotomy of being friends in the rest of the country, including in neighbouring Tamil Nadu, but rivals in Kerala. But the Congress leaders in Delhi and Punjab are seething that the party’s top leaders are supping with Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal. The inherent ironies of the BJP expanding its circle of friends are no less riveting. The BJP invited its Haryana ally, the Jannayak Janata Party, a partner in the coalition government, to Tuesday’s meeting, despite its state unit being unwilling to have an electoral truck with the party in the Lok Sabha and subsequent Assembly polls. Neither is the BJP’s leadership in Uttar Pradesh pleased at the prospect of the party embracing Om Prakash Rajbhar’s Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party. Mr Rajbhar returns to the NDA fold with six legislators in UP, including the party’s Mau legislator Abbas Ansari, the son of convicted gangster Mukhtar Ansari. Mr Rajbhar has now blamed the Samajwadi Party for foisting Ansari junior on him.

The curious case of the Ajit Pawar-led faction of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) joining the NDA within weeks of the Prime Minister’s broadside against the alleged corruption of the leadership of the Maharashtra-based party has left the BJP and Chief Minister Eknath Shinde-led faction of the Shiv Sena nonplussed. The NCP and Sena aren’t the only parties to witness splits to weaken the Maha Vikas Aghadi and help the BJP. In Bihar, the BJP played its part in fanning the differences within the Lok Janshakti Party after its founder, Ram Vilas Paswan, passed away. It inducted Paswan’s brother Pashupati Kumar Paras into the Union Cabinet, leaving the latter’s nephew Chirag Paswan out in the cold. This week has marked Chirag Paswan’s return to the NDA fold, but uncle-nephew rapprochement could be problematic. From now to 2024, the road is set to be ideologically tortuous, and will demand political pragmatism to negotiate various twists and turns, including after the results of the December Assembly polls in five states.