Going by the tone and tenor of reporting in the media and verbal brawls on news channels, it appears that this election is solely about Bharatiya Janata Party’s prime ministerial nominee, Narendra Modi, and a few props necessary to retain theatrical interest in what’s essentially a one-sided contest. However, closer scrutiny of the election scenario reflects that besides smaller parties that are part of the pre-poll alliances of either the BJP or the Congress, there are significant players who are not aligned with the two largest parties. But they have not been given the space they deserve.
Take, for instance, the Chief Ministers of West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Orissa. Between them they account for 102 seats in Lok Sabha which is exactly 18.78 per cent of the Lower House. A foreign journalist covering South Asia for British and American publications, discussing with me the prospects of Mr Modi, heard this bunch of numbers and promptly did a conversion for his American readers. “These states are roughly equivalent in importance to Ohio, California and Florida in the US presidential race”, he wrote in an article. When it is presented in this manner then it dawns on the traditional Indian mind that the three Chief Ministers may have a potential Prime Minister in their ranks if the results do not go the Modi way.
If one looks at the numbers in Indian elections over successive polls since 1996, the interesting feature is that the two largest parties — the Congress and the BJP — have collectively won either close to or slightly more than 300 seats. In the just dissolved House, this number was 322, while in 2004 it was at the lowest mark of 283. The election in 1989 marked the transition to a multi-party political system in India. It is also called the beginning of the coalition era. The year Rajiv Gandhi lost majority, the Congress party led by him won the highest number of seats — 197 — while the Janata Dal, which formed the government with support from outside, won just 143 seats. The BJP won 85 seats. But, for all purposes, the JD should not be considered as a single party because it had been cobbled together barely a year before the polls in a manner reminiscent of the Janata Party’s formation. Collectively, the Congress and the BJP added up to 364 in 1991, but this figure dropped to 301 by 1996.
The purpose of citing these figures is simple: there exists in Indian politics a club of 230, give or take a few members. This club consists of disparate parties and its members are elected from diverse states. Because their presence in the national media is minimal, they are seldom talked about before the polls and don’t figure much in prominent news reports and editorials. Only the verdict is declared. But their significance cannot be hidden any longer.
In the present Lok Sabha, besides the three Chief Ministers mentioned previously, the present and former Chief Ministers of Uttar Pradesh also cannot be ignored. In fact, if either the Bahujan Samaj Party or the Samajwadi Party is able to withstand the Modi onslaught, then they will become more significant than any other regional player. This is where Mr Modi comes in with his personal ties with the three leaders. At the moment, the differences between BJP, the BSP and the SP are fairly well known and there are few chances of them aligning with each other.
This is where the personal relations of Mr Modi with each of the three leaders will come into play. Despite his apparent disdain for Mr Modi, Naveen Patnaik has generated a perception that he would not be averse to working with — if not in — a Narendra Modi-led government.
Similar sentiments have been also evident from Mamata Banerjee and J. Jayalalithaa. In 2012, Mr Modi appeared fairly confident of being able to rope in the three though he probably assessed that of the three, Ms Banerjee would be the one who would be the most difficult to cajole to get on board.
As late as December 2012, Ms Jayalalithaa attended Mr Modi’s swearing-in as CM for the fourth time. It was a reciprocal gesture for Mr Modi had turned up when Ms Jayalalithaa took oath as chief minister after being out of power for five years. So what happened in a span of less than a year that Ms Jayalalithaa foreclosed the option of a pre-poll tie-up though it had appeared very much on the anvil?
It is very difficult to say with finality at this stage if Ms Jayalalithaa ruled out any pre-poll tie up with Mr Modi because she sensed a gentle Modi breeze blowing in significant parts of Tamil Nadu and that worried her, or did she decide to rule out alliance after assessing that such a tie-up could become a liability? Till very recently, chances of the BJP in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Orissa were not considered seriously and the states were clubbed even by party strategists as no-show states — meaning regions where the party had very little expectations.
Mr Modi’s chances of becoming PM will be sharply dented if he secures an incomplete mandate yet manages to make some inroads in these three states. In that event, all the three leaders will look at the BJP as a potential rival, as a party with the capacity to replace the Congress and their principal opponent and eventual challenger to their political hegemony.
The added problem that Mr Modi faces is his suspect commitment to federalism. Despite paying lip service to the need to involve states in policy-making, Mr Modi’s style of governance eschews a consultative process and is instead more delegative. In such a situation, the only way Mr Modi would be able to completely surmount the challenge from regional forces is by electorally making them marginal. This at the moment can happen only if there is a wave.
Mr Modi has not given the idea that he has a Plan B in place in the event of not securing sufficient seats to steamroll his way to South Block.
This is where regional players, or the Club of 230, have the chance of dictating terms to other parties. For this, it would be crucial for the regional block to hope that the top three parties (AAP because of its character will have to looked as a non-regional player) do not go way beyond the 300 mark. Indian voters have since 1996 given a chance for India’s political plurality to register its presence in poll after poll. It remains to be seen how they will cast their lot this time and if India will continue to witness an aggregate of polls or will it see the return of a single issue or party dominating the terms.
