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Perils of anti-BJP unity

The grand show of opposition unity to mark HD Kumaraswamy’s swearing-in as the Chief Minister of Karnataka leaves me cold.

Perils of anti-BJP unity

Bad move: A Congress tie-up with Mayawatis and Lalus will not inspire voter confidence.



Yogendra Yadav

The grand show of opposition unity to mark  HD Kumaraswamy’s swearing-in as the Chief Minister of Karnataka leaves me cold. For the past four years, I have held that Narendra Modi’s regime represents the most insidious attack so far on the foundational values of the Republic of India. Yet, the prospect of all his opponents coming together on one stage fails to enthuse me. The single-minded project to somehow dislodge Modi is not merely unprincipled, it may well be counterproductive.

Karnataka election and its aftermath have resulted in a tested, tried and tired template for the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections. The elections outcome again confirmed what every political observer could sense for the past year: the Modi-Shah duo may be formidable, but is not invincible. At the same time, the verdict has busted the Congress-on-the-comeback story and shown that even in favourable conditions Rahul Gandhi’s Congress cannot take on the electoral juggernaut of the BJP on its own. If the election results appeared to point to the need for opposition unity, the post-poll machinations and the swift and effective Congress-JD (S) resistance to the Yeddyurappa coup seems to affirm the possibility and feasibility of such unity. 

Thus the 2019 Lok Sabha elections are likely to be played out on a familiar template of 1971, 1977 and 1989: a grand unity of all oppositional parties to take on a seemingly invincible ruling party. The only difference is that now it is anti-BJP, unlike all the previous anti-Congress opposition alliances. This is not a surprise. For the past four years, the Opposition waited for the Modi bubble to burst on its own. It did not. They tried all forms of anti-Modism. They backfired. And they failed to offer any serious and sustained opposition to the BJP on the ground. So they were drifting towards a grand anti-Modi alliance as a last resort. Developments in Karnataka have altered the terms of this alliance. Now the terms will not be dictated by the Congress, but by the regional parties. 

The logic of opposition unity is self-evident and not without merit. On the face of it, there is an arithmetic advantage to a pre-election coalition in a first-past-the-post system. Aggregation of non-BJP votes can help the Opposition edge past the BJP even if it retains its peak vote share of the 2014 parliamentary elections. This has already been proved in the Gorakhpur and Phulpur byelections in Uttar Pradesh and would work wherever the non-BJP parties enjoy a distinct and complementary vote base, provided it is transferable. Besides actual aggregation, an opposition unity can also help create a ‘hawa’ or perception of winnability and the possibility of an alternative to the BJP at the national level. 

But these advantages are often overstated. First of all, opposition unity is irrelevant in a large number of states. States like Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Himachal, Uttarakhand and Gujarat witness a direct BJP-Congress contest, with virtually no other party for the Congress to align with. Or look at states like Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, where the BJP is not among the top two parties and the idea of everyone else coming together to defeat the BJP is pointless. Given Mamata Banerjee’s continuing hold over Bengal, it is unlikely that she would need anyone’s support to contain the BJP. That adds up to nearly half of India.

Secondly, the mechanical advantages of aggregation of votes may be overstated in many cases where votes of non-BJP parties are non-complimentary, as that of the Congress and the JD (S) in Karnataka. In parts of the state, these are the two main parties and therefore cannot bring anything new to the opposition’s fold. In some other cases, their votes may be non-transferable, such as those of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. So, what looks like a good alliance on paper does not deliver much in reality. 

Thirdly, the benefits of opposition unity may be uncertain in the case of many possible allies such as the TRS, TDP, DMK, JKNC, BJD, INLD and, indeed, the BSP. These parties may join the anti-BJP alliance, but given their track record, no one can say that they will not shift their loyalty to the BJP in a post-poll scenario.

Besides, the whole argument about a grand anti-BJP alliance fails to consider its short and long-term political costs. First of all, everyone aligning against the BJP could actually expand the support base of the BJP in the long run. The unity of all major parties (e.g RJD and JDU in Bihar, regional party and Congress in Odisha, Telangana and Andhra) tends to create a void as many voters of either party feel “orphaned”. This space vacated by the Opposition would result in a long-term consolidation of votes in favour of the BJP. 

Two, the perception of everyone “ganging up” against Modi would create sympathy for him. It is unlikely that the coming together of Rahul Gandhi with Mamata Banerjee, Lalu Yadav’s scions, Mayawati, Akhilesh Yadav, Sharad Pawar, Chandrababu Naidu, Deve Gowda, Karunanidhi, Chandrasekhar Rao and Naveen Patnaik will inspire hopes of a new kind of India for an ordinary voter. Any talk of democracy will remind people of what Mamata Banerjee has done in West Bengal, “secularism” would seem to be a way of keeping minority voters a hostage and any claim to anti-corruption would be laughable in such august company. Let us not forget that many of these leaders are the reason why the Indian voter turned towards Modi. He could well improvise upon the famous retort used to deadly effect by Indira Gandhi vis-à-vis the Grand Alliance against her in 1971: “Ye kahte hain Indira hatao, main kahati hoon garibi hatao.” 

The decisive reason why I remain unimpressed by the current moves for opposition unity is not just this calculus of gains and losses. My real problem is that the anti-Modi unity tends to forget, and make everyone else forget, why this regime must be opposed. None of these parties is alive to, and willing to take on the challenge to the foundations of our republic.

A real alternative to this regime would require four things. One, a vision of India that can recover the heritage of positive nationalism, connect with our multiple cultural traditions and build a bridge with future aspirations of the younger generations. Two, a political organisation, from national down to the booth and below, that can take on this most formidable electoral machine in post-Independence India. Three, it requires a strategic roadmap for politics for this new vision. Four, it requires a credible face or faces, who can offer the country a new hope. 

Unfortunately, the anti-BJP alliance of the kind that we can look forward to does not address any of these. Far from meeting the challenge to our republic, the proposed alliance actually distracts from this challenge. No doubt, a carefully crafted unity of major oppositional forces may yield some dividends for opposition to the Modi regime in 2019, but a rag-tag coalition of all non-BJP parties cannot be the alternative to the phenomenon that Modi represents. It may not achieve short-term success in dislodging this regime. Even if it does, it might be at the cost of a long-term setback to the task of saving our republic. 

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