INDIA Is Not A Rehash Of Coalitions Earlier, But Does It Pack The Punch?

Democracy is a dynamic process, forever evolving with responses to new challenges. The responses include experiments with ideas, ideologies and political positioning and formations.

INDIA, the coalition of 26 opposition parties to take on the NDA, may appear to be a rehashed version of such coalitions earlier, thus unoriginal, but viewed from the broader context of the ongoing ideological battle in Indian polity, it is a defining experiment. Never earlier the contest between political formations in the country was so sharply delineated on the basis of ideology; never earlier so many parties looked prepared to sacrifice self-interest to fight a common adversary (read the BJP). Whichever way it goes, the consequence of the contest of 2024 will be far-reaching, unlike that of any election earlier.

Now the big question: Is INDIA a viable electoral project? Optimists on the secular side of the political divide would believe so. After all, the combined strength of all anti-BJP and non-NDA parties across the country is, at least on paper, humongous. If the respective vote share of each such party – say Lalu Prasad’s RJD, Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) and the Congress in Bihar or Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress, the Left parties and the Congress in West Bengal or the AAP and Congress in Punjab – is counted together the new coalition could trounce the BJP in a majority of states without difficulty.

Such optimism is fine, but the reality on the ground could be different. The smooth progress of INDIA would hinge on three critical issues: seat-sharing, leadership and transferability of votes. With each party trying to maximise its share of seats irrespective of actual strength on the ground, the bargaining for seats to contest is always tricky. No party likes to cede space to others and damage its existing vote base. Such negotiations are usually marked by mutual trust deficit and often result in bad blood between coalition partners and rebel candidates from party ranks.

How, for example, a seat-sharing agreement between the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party would work out in Delhi? The latter had a repeat emphatic victory in the assembly polls of 2020 but came a poor third in the parliamentary polls. It insists on contesting all seven seats in the 2024 general elections. The Congress is not expected to yield to the demand. A bad bargain may see it losing Delhi altogether. The scenario is likely to play out in all states with different players in the lead at the bargaining table.

Now, who leads the coalition and gets to choose its prime minister candidate? This is another tricky matter all INDIA parties have to grapple with. The Congress with its wider presence in the country is likely to emerge with the largest number of winners among allies. That should make it the natural leader of the coalition and the prime claimant to leadership. It may not be acceptable to ambitious smaller parties. Nitish Kumar or Arvind Kejriwal or someone else may bargain hard for the prime minister’s office. The coalition needs a leader to match Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s stature and must have one well before the election. The Congress is likely to project Rahul Gandhi as the prime ministerial candidate, but he may not be acceptable to other ambitious leaders in the coalition. Any decision on the leadership front is sure to create fissures in the grouping.

The biggest challenge, though, would be transfer of votes from one party to another. Meeting of minds at the top leadership level does not necessarily mean all votes of one party would get transferred to the candidate of another political outfit automatically. In Uttar Pradesh, for example, the mutual transfer of votes didn’t work out up to expectation for the BSP-SP alliance in the parliamentary polls of 2019. Would it be easy for a hardcore Congress supporter to vote for an AAP candidate? The INDIA parties should have no illusion about their collective votes. The election would be a disaster if they didn’t work hard among their respective support bases to ensure smooth transfer of votes to the agreed candidate.

However, all these don’t make the prospect of a victory for INDIA a pipe dream. Like this article mentioned earlier, this is an experiment with new possibilities. All parties involved would be well-aware of the challenges before them and prepared with solutions. We could see some surprise give and take from all concerned to make the experiment work. Let’s wait and watch. Politics just got more interesting.