Commentary/Saisuresh Sivaswamy

M&A is the body politic's new mantra

The fact of life in India in 1997 is that political coalitions are going to be around for a long, long time.

The corollary to this is that the body polity is going to be subject to frequent shocks, engendered by the dependence of one political entity on another for the right to govern.

This is not an abstract proposition that needs to be proved. On the contrary, in the year of the Lord 1997 itself, this has been proved many times over, making this the annus horribilis where Indians are concerned.

Just consider. In March-April this year, with the United Front government barely into its first year, the Congress, on which it was leaning rather heavily, decided to go in for a change of leader, only because the incumbent's visage was found annoying.

At around the same time, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party, which had fought the Uttar Pradesh election against each other and which had earlier entered into an abortive power-sharing arrangement decided to tie the knot. As marriages of convenience go, this did not last long beyond the honeymoon, and worse, the split almost brought the Union government down.

In Gujarat, where too the Shankersinh Vaghela faction of the BJP which was supported by the Congress to set up a government, was harried with threats of being pulled down, before it went in for a change of face at the top.

If one considers the nation's political history, mergers and acquisitions are not restricted to the corporate world, nor is sadism and masochism peculiar to the world of sexual fantasies. There is such an intermingling of trends, that often it becomes difficult to tell one from the other.

The fact of the matter is that barring a few instances, notably in Bengal and Maharashtra, what we have been witnessing in India, both at the central and state levels, do not qualify to be called coalitions; they are nothing but an opportunistic alliance, a temporary coming together of forces with a limited aim. Come another round of elections, and the hastily wrought relationship will revert to its previous antagonistic self.

What this results in is large scale scepticism among the voting public, for whom terms like coalition are interchangeable with an arrangement, and this shows up in the dwindling percentage of voters who trudge to the polling booths come election day. The damage that self-seeking politicians have caused their own trade is beyond calculation, and to the political system, beyond redemption.

To qualify to be described a coalition, there are a few criterion, and the word cannot and should not be applied to each and every political experiment undertaken by political parties. One, the agreement has to be entered into before the polls and not after. If the latter, then it is nothing but a coming together to achieve power, and is a brazen attempt at hoodwinking the voting public.

Consider what happened in UP. It is well known that the BJP and the BSP are sworn enemies, and both represent different ends of the political and social spectrum. The BSP's ire is chiefly aimed at the BJP, represented by the upper castes who are held responsible for some of the worst caste violence against the lower castes. The BJP vote is not going to vote for the BSP in a hurry, or vice versa. The two coming together may amount to realpolitik, but it also amounts to cheating the voter. And given the equations between the two entities, it was obvious from day one that for the experiment to succeed would call for nothing short of a miracle.

Likewise at the Centre. Till the other day, the Congress was public enemy number one for the constituents of the UF, which today accept its support to remain in power. And, despite this strange arrangement, the Janata Dal has not stopped berating the Congress in Karnataka, the Telugu Desam Party doing the same in Andhra Pradesh or the Commies in Bengal. In the general election, for most constituents of the UF, it was the Congress that was the foe.

What I am trying to say is that the difference between the Shiv Sena-BJP coalition in Maharashtra or the Left Front in Bengal, and the kind of arrangements like UF or the BJP-BSP tie-up, is that the former are more firm, longer lasting, than the latter which is what a one-night stand would appear before a diamond jubilee.

But the trouble, as they say, lies elsewhere. How can you blame the political parties when all they did was to propose, the matter being disposed elsewhere?

Given the nature of political realignments that are being worked out following the Mandal report, which was to Indian politics what Fat Man was to Nagasaki, it is the person who is going to decide whether or not to call on a particular political formation to form the government that is going to become important. Yes, the President or his agent, the governor in the states.

True, after Uttar Pradesh, the score is even on this front, the President barely managing to undo the extensive damage caused to the constitutional office by his man in Lucknow. This once again, proves my point, which is that it has got to be this constitutional authority that alone can prevent the country from descending into chaos, a state of being from which it is not very far off.

Perhaps since our statute-framers did not envisage political tie-ups on a scale it is being resorted to now, there are no guidelines for post-poll arrangements. However, the President of the governor, when they accept a party's offer of support to another, should insist on iron-clad guarantees of a minimum timeframe for which the support has to be extended, it cannot be like the practice of talaq that Indian Muslim males revel in even as the Islamic world frowns upon it.

Minimum guarantees are a way of life in the commercial sphere, there can be no reason why they cannot be extended to the world of politics, in the manner I have outlined about. After all, the ostensible aim behind one party supporting another is to ensure stability, the maintenance of which is also the responsibility of the constitutional authority. So there can be nothing wrong if the President or the governor insisted on Kesri or Mayawati supporting another party for, say, one or two years at the minimum. There are extraordinary times the nation is passing through, and it calls for extraordinary measures to keeps the faith.

Tell us what you think of this column