In tune with the times
Belu Jain Maheshwari

A Time of Coalitions: Divided We Stand
by Paranjoy Guha and Shankar Raghuraman. Sage Publications, New Delhi. Pages 411. Rs 350.

THE process of the 14^th Lok Sabha elections has already begun. By the middle of May, we will have a new government in power. India’s democracy has not only survived, but also remained vibrant and thriving. Except for a brief aberration, in 1975 when Indira Gandhi derailed the democratic process by imposing Emergency, the country is fully functional largest democracy of the world.

The book details the political processes after Independence. The supremacy of the Congress and its control at the Centre was because of an emotional attachment of the electorate to the party, synonymous with freedom struggle, and also because there was no strong opposition. Though in the states, the opposition was stronger and the domination of Congress not so absolute, this aspect found an echo in the 1967 general election.

A new scenario emerged, with regional satraps becoming powerful. Punjab saw the emergence of Prakash Singh Badal as head of the Shiromani Akali Dal, Uttar Pradesh witnessed kisan leader Charan Singh gaining prominence, Bengal and Kerala came under the spell of the Communist Party, and in Tamil Nadu, Tamil pride backed the DMK.

The seeds of coalition politics in the Lok Sabha were sown in the elections of 1977. The experiment of disparate groups coming together was not lasting, but to say it failed would be negating the continuum of political processes. The coalition politics got more entrenched, whether it was Haryana, Punjab, Bengal, or Kerala.

The book takes off from the states experiments in coalition rule. The contention of two seasoned journalists, Guha and Raghuraman, is that Indian polity has matured and it is not bipolar. Because the country is too vast; every region has its own aspirations. Caste plays an important role, Dalit assertions have ensured the necessity of coalition governments and the experiments of 1977, 1989, and 1999 have matured and taken root.

To keep India united, we do not need bipolar or tri-polar polity. Parties can come together and draw out common minimum programmes, like it is happening in many mature Western democracies. These parties can keep the national parties with their hidden agendas in check—the BJP had to dilute Hindutva, after all.

The book highlights the continuing fragmentation of the Indian polity and the rise of regional parties, which are not necessarily narrow and partisan, but capable of looking at issues from a wider perspective. The two main parties, the Congress and the BJP, have been thoroughly analysed.

The decline in the fortunes of the Congress is not due to any one leader, but has a more lasting structural basis. The space vacated by the Congress has not been taken up by a pan-Indian party. The BJP is usurping the Congress agenda and even wooing its vote bank, but not gaining the lost ground of the Congress, which is going to the regional parties in states with a huge chunk of Lok Sabha seats—UP, Bihar, AP, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu etc.

The marginalisation of the Left is due to a change in the economic policy perception of the people and also because ideological moorings do not let them form alliances. The analysis seems plausible. However, one thing that jars is that many of the essays (such as the ones on the Ayodhya dispute, the caste issue and the economic reforms) have directly been sourced from their newspaper articles and lack depth. The election results have been poorly shown.

They have overlooked while writing on coalition politics that unlike Japan and Italy, where the nitty-gritty of economic decision-making may not change that much with each new coalition government, in a developing country like India, politics has dominated and will continue to exert influence even minor economic decisions. This is an area where regional parties might pull in different directions.

The book is timely and a coalition government looks likely. Coalition politics, if viewed from the historical perspective, is not a new development. The Unionist Party that ruled the undivided Punjab from 1923-1946 was a triumph of coalition politics. The Hindus, the Muslims and the Sikhs were part of this coalition, co-optional politics. If it could work in the early stages of Constitutional reforms, it can certainly work in the 21^st century, now that democracy has matured.

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