An emerging collective of regional parties after the triumph of the Mahagatbandhan in Bihar signals the building of a barricade to keep out ambitious encroachers. The principal target is the Bharatiya Janata Party, which has been aggressive in its declared intensions in every election campaign during and after May 2014 that it intends to monopolise the political space and project Gujarat as the model for India’s development. Keeping the Congress humbled and as a junior partner is also quite evident.
The invitations to the swearing-in of Janata Dal (United) leader Nitish Kumar on November 20, the flurry of phone calls and visits of emissaries bearing messages gives substance to the inclusive alignment that is in the making, with Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee assured of VVIP status and sufficient star billing to satisfy even the touchiest amongst them. It will be a delicate balancing act, as the Congress, represented by Sonia Gandhi, will be a part of the ceremony and celebrations.
As a party to the Mahagatbandhan, Mrs Gandhi’s attendance would be an ordinary event; however, her capacity to outshine the rest, having led the United Progressive Alliance during its 10 years in power since the 2004 elections, makes it special. The deliberate exclusion of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who fought to establish himself as a national icon that eclipsed the appeal of a mere Bihari, adds to the significance of the line-up of luminaries on November 20.
There are two kinds of adhesives binding the diversity of political parties that will be present in Patna. The broad spectrum glue that binds Mr Thackeray to Nitish Kumar-Lalu Prasad Yadav and Mrs Gandhi is opposition to the aggressive politics of the BJP. Reaction to its encroaching ways and efforts at marginalising all other political parties with a mix of appeals to caste, community and sob stories is presenting a challenge that requires building alliances that can help converge the network of fault lines of an increasingly fragmenting polity into a semblance of coherence.
The second kind of bond that holds the regional party leaders is experience as contemporaries or virtual alumni of the same institution, strengthened in some instances by incubation in the same Ram Manohar Lohia-Jai Prakash Narayan petri dish. The conglomerate is emphatically not based on an ideological alignment that was the core of the past Third Front-Fourth Front initiatives. It is not based on a previously agreed common minimum programme. It is based on shared experiences, including sharing the Central Hall in Parliament as contemporaries in the Lok Sabha or Rajya Sabha. It is striking that apart from Mr Thackeray and Mr Kejriwal, all the VVIPs who will converge on Patna — Sonia Gandhi, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Lalu Prasad Yadav, Mamata Baner-jee, Sitaram Yechury — have been fellow MPs. Some of them served as ministers in Congress-led governments at the Centre, while some served in both, Congress and BJP-led governments at the Centre, like Mamata Banerjee.
A combination of pique and apprehension at being elbowed out by the BJP in monopolisation mode, especially at the Centre where the earlier formalities of consultation and deference have been dropped along with the closure of the Planning Commi-ssion is evident in the growing list of grievances of regional leaders against the Modi government. Since most of them have been important ministers at the Centre, the experience of being brushed aside has not gone down well.
The BJP’s centralising fetish has intensified the inequality in Centre-state relation. The cuts in Central funding for popular welfare schemes that are politically handy for ruling parties has upset regional leaders; and, BJP has not discovered the art of quid pro quo. Approached to support the BJP’s cherished changes including the Land Bill, the Goods & Services Tax Bill and the devolution of funds that shift the burden of paying for welfare programmes from the Centre to the states, the regional parties found they were being manoeuvred into subsidiary roles for implementing the BJP’s pet projects — Swachh Bharat, Skill India and Digital India. West Bengal hoping to get a special package like Bihar out of the Modi government found that it was at the receiving end of “political interference” instead. Assailed by the Opposition from three sides, that is the Congress, the BJP and the Communists, Ms Banerjee’s sense of being cornered has grown as has her antagonism to the BJP’s appointee of governor Kesari Nath Tripathi. The clashes between Mr Kejriwal and Delhi’s lieutenant-governor Najeeb Jung have verged on a constitutional crisis.
A conclave of regional parties is in the offing after the Patna event. It will be yet another exercise, among over a dozen held in the past to set up an alliance of regional parties against an overbearing government at the Centre. The difference with the past is that the Congress, even though it is a national party is being made to hover on the fringes, while the Left is making a belated arrival also on the margins. The invitation to Sitaram Yechury and Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar from Nitish Kumar is clearly a lifeline that has been thrown to the Left, which had excluded itself from the Maha-gatbandhan’s fight against the BJP in Bihar.
Having shrunk in terms of national relevance after losing West Bengal and continuing to haemorrhage there, being out of power in Kerala and somewhat lost for lack of a sat-nav app to steer it out of its present morass, the CPM-led Left Front has effectively written itself out of the story by branding the Mahagatbandhan parties simply not progressive enough. It will be a memorable occasion as the Marxists, the Congress and the Trinamul Congress make common cause, in supporting Mr Kumar and opposing the BJP.
There are several possibilities of how the regional and national parties resolve issues of coalition leadership as well as dangers of disagreement over sharing the limelight to begin with and perhaps power eventually. The conclave will have one principal goal — strengthen the wall of Opposition to the BJP.
This new alliance, if realised, will reinterpret federalism, social justice, economic policy and priorities as well as secularism. The resistance and push back of the regional parties that will gather momentum with a conclave will be a challenge to the BJP’s declared agenda of monopolising the political space.
The writer is a senior journalist in Kolkata
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