Commentary/Saisuresh Sivaswamy

Why V P Singh's formula for fighting the BJP won't work

V P Singh is a sick man these days, physically sick that is. He has been suffering from renal failure, and it is extremely unlikely that he will be able to indulge in the hurly-burly of electoral politics anymore. Of course, when there have been instances of legislators winning elections even while locked up in jail, it is possible for the raja of Manda too to get elected from his hospital bed. But getting elected and being able to fulfill the accompanying responsibilities are two different things, and thankfully Singh is aware of his limitations here. Which is why he has chosen to play consultant to his directionless flock.

Realising that early elections cannot be avoided, and that the present Lok Sabha will be luckily to complete two years, he has addressed himself to the future of coalition politics. There cannot be much that he is being allowed to do by the band of specialists around him, but the medical fraternity is yet to find means of preventing mental cognition which could be as strenuous as physical labour.

So Singh has been spending his time and worrying about the future of the United Front, but like most worriers he has not stopped with that; he has come up with a suggestion as to how to crystallise the present loose arrangement into, well, a loose arrangement that could fight the next elections.

As I said, he is physically sick. And judging by his formula, without looking at reasons why it will fail, his mind has refused to be dimmed by the body's limitations. As a recap, what he has suggested is this: In states in which the BJP is strong, like in the Hindi heartland and in the West, the constituents of the UF and the Congress should make adjustments so that they are not splitting their votes, while in states where the BJP is not so strong, like in the east and the south, the UF and the Congress could fight against each other; the former should not be allowed to cloud the latter, he says. At the central level apparently, whoever wins more seats will lead the ruling combination.

As ideas go, this one seeks to address the central contradiction in the relations between the UF and the Congress. Which is that the Congress is supporting a combination despite the knowledge that its constituents are its foes at the local level. In Tamil Nadu, the DMK-TMC fought the Congress; in Andhra Pradesh the Telugu Desam fought the Congress; likewise in Karnataka, Bengal, Kerala... you name the state. Obviously the present tie-up at the Centre is a tactical one, for both parties. The UF is trying to provide an able administration in the limited time that it knows the Congress will allow it, while the latter is looking for an opportune moment to pull the rug from under the UF's feet.

So intense is the war of nerves between the Congress and the UF that neither has had the time to reckon the future. Given that he is out of the world of realpolitik, Singh has sought to address this lacuna.

Singh's basic premise is correct. The two forces have come together to keep the Bharatiya Janata Party out of power. And this exercise will lose its meaning it two years down the line the arrangement comes apart and the BJP stages a victorious, albeit belated, march to South Block. But history is against Singh and his formula.

For India's dalliance with coalition politics as the Centre has not led to a stable relationship. True, the experience has been different at the state-level, which proves that balancing the tensions of a multi-ethnic nation is beyond coalitions that we have had. In 1977, various satraps and their outfits submerged there identities into the Janata Party, but it only took the death of its patron for the differences to come to the fore and wreck Opposition unity.

Learning from this experience, in 1989, V P Singh let the parties keep their identities but forged a support- based agreement with both the Left and the Right, against the Congress. That the contradictions between the two would soon consume this set-up was known to all, so there were few tears shed when it collapsed. But Singh's progress on the learning curve has not stopped. He has realised that all along the focus has been on the ruling space, -- that is, who will occupy the ruling space.

Today, he says, it is also important to decide the Opposition space. He has seen that the BJP has first become the main Opposition party, and from that position has gone on to bid for the ruling party's place.

What has also happened since the UF and the Congress have come together is that the two have effectively checkmated each other. There has been no significant accretion in their ranks, since that could only be at the cost of the other. The BJP, on the other hand, does not suffer from any such limitation, and is felt to have a fighting chance of making it to South Block whenever an election is held.

The V P Singh formula, thus, addresses the dilemma faced by the so-called secular lobby over the next election. But that is its main plus point. What it does not take into account, because of which it is bound to fail, is the personal dogmas and ambitions that dog any political party, formation, arrangement. What he has suggested calls for one, a tremendous amount of political sagacity -- which even a novitiate in politics would known is lacking among our blessed ones -- and two, a willingness to make personal sacrifices for the perceived common good.

It would fail the minute you start telling the political parties to curtail the number of tickets each will be issuing for the next election so that the BJP could be contained. An immediate offshoot will be the number of independent candidates in the fray! And thus, ironically, the formula has more potential to help the BJP in its inexorable march to power.

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