The Indian voter has nowhere to go !

Apart from the inherent fallacies in India’s democratic system (see below - 'First past the post - about time we got past it ?' & the addendum), there is another major reason why the viewpoints of the minorities would get increasingly marginalized. The choice available to the ordinary voter in terms of the ideologies to support is fast narrowing in Indian politics.

With the increasing realization that India is due for a sustained spell of coalition politics, much like in Italy & Japan, most parties are worried about their survival and are aligning themselves with one of the two major blocks getting formed. These two blocks are led by the Indian National Congress (INC, often called Congress), India’s grand old party that helped India gain independence & the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the rightwing Hindu nationalist party.

Before I get to the problem that the Indian voter has in terms of choice, it will be useful to look at how the two major blocks come into being. The Indian National Congress, which has ruled India for much of close to sixty years of Indian independence, for the first time came out of its arrogant stance to form a broad-based alliance for the 2004 General Elections. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a much younger party in comparison, learnt its lessons early. After the 13 day rule in 1996, it was forced to shed its normally accepted communal image to be able to enter mainstream politics & provide a reasonable alternative to Congress, which had long occupied the center-stage in Indian politics. It was quite a fantastic transformation for the politically ‘untouchable’ BJP to transform itself from a party for Hindus till 1996 to a party for Hindustan by 1999. Moderately conservative leaders like Atal Behari Vajpayee & Jaswant Singh came to the fore, pushing hawks such as L K Advani & Murli Manohar Joshi out of the limelight. The transformation was complete in 1999 when after two aborted attempts at providing stable governance in 1996 & 1998, BJP & its 23 other allies came to power and completed a full term, the first non-Congress government to do so in 58 years since independence.

In India coalitions at both national & state-level have so far been mostly a loose confederation of parties, coming together either just before or immediately after elections & mostly for opportunistic, tactical reasons to assume power. Coalitions so far have normally not been based on ideology, and parties not tied to a common ideology are less likely to stick together through thick & thin. Examples of this abound, like in 1977-80, 1989-91, and 1996-98 at the national level. Opportunistic alliances have been the norm rather than an exception in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous & politically most significant state and also in several other states from time to time.

This is the reason that coalitions in India break down often midway through the term or sometimes immediately after elections if the coalition does not do well enough to get a chance to govern. Notable exceptions to the rule, however, have been seen in West Bengal & Kerala where the coalitions have done well over the years and have stood the test of time. West Bengal has been ruled by a coalition government led by CPI(M) unchanged for close to the last 30 years. A good case in point is also Kerala, where LDF led by CPI(M) & UDF led by Congress are the two major political forces, both stable coalitions based on ideology.

National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was formed by the BJP in an attempt to come over its political untouchability. BJP was able to get strong regional parties to join the coalition once it distanced itself from its core demands of -

• Building of Ram temple at the disputed site in Ayodhya
• Scrapping of Article 370 conferring special status to the disputed state of Jammu & Kashmir
• Uniform Civil Code to be applied for people of all religions across India. This was to prevent Muslims from having their own separate personal law

BJP recognized these points as extremely controversial & dispensable in the short to medium-term with a view to gain acceptability with the larger electorate & also with other political parties. The 3 core demands of the BJP, and its major election planks, while eminently debatable in terms of their legality and use to the common man, were without doubt chosen with a particular community’s feelings in mind. Shedding these issues made BJP more acceptable to the people, and associating with the BJP was then seen as a lesser evil by other political parties. See ‘tactical voting’ in my previous posts.

Another important reason why BJP found it easy to get allies once it shed its communal tag was that most of its allies, strong regional parties, fought directly against Congress in their respective states. Congress-baiting was where they had common views & it was politically convenient to be aligned at the national-level with a group fighting against Congress, their main opponent in the state. This was especially true in the four southern states, where BJP was virtually non-existent as a political force, whereas Congress was fighting strong regional parties in almost all the states. Congress, on account of being a broad-based national party, lost out in that sense to BJP in the early days of coalition politics as it was still fashionable to be anti-Congress.

Only when BJP was close to completing its term in office that it had started becoming fashionable to be anti-BJP & also by that time Congress had weakened considerably in many states, so it was ok for Congress to agree to be a junior partner to strong regional parties in several states (especially in northern India) and a broad-based Congress-led alliance came into being.

The two major broad-based coalitions, the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) led by the Congress & the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by BJP have matured with time & have come to stay. Regional parties now realize that their options are limited outside either of these blocks. This is evident in the fact that there have been minimal desertions from the NDA even after it lost the national elections. Talks of a third-front have not really gained momentum, and its highly unlikely they ever will, as the parties left out of the two major blocks will be forced to join one of the two or gradually become politically insignificant.

This ‘stabilizing’ of Indian coalition politics, however, is not without its pitfalls. As the two coalitions arrange themselves with broadly distinguishable social & economic goals & policies, and annihilate all other viewpoints slowly but surely in the Indian polity, the ordinary Indian voter would be forced to make a choice between just the two options. This is predicted by the Duverger’s theorem (see the post on FPTP).

The reason why I am really bothered about the gradual consolidation of political viewpoints is not just that I like to have more options. I am also not happy with the two major options that are provided to me.

NDA is a coalition largely made up of Congress-baiters & reformist parties such as BJP, BJD, TDP (outside support), Janata Dal (United) etc. and right-wing parties such as BJP, Shiv Sena, Akali Dal etc. The broad ideology of NDA can be categorized as Rightist Reformist, on the lines of its major social & economic policies. NDA government at the centre was mostly reformist & globalizing & most serious voices against aggressive reforms came mainly from the RSS-loyal leaders of BJP. Though the bias was only moderately right-wing thanks to leaders such as Vajpayee in power, communial bias in case of Gujarat riots is now being investigated.

In contrast, the UPA is largely made up of Congress & non-competing allies (mostly regional socialist parties such as RJD, Lok Janshakti, JMM, NCP & TRS. SP & BSP provide outside support.) apart from a big dependence on the left. The dependence on the left is likely to continue across multiple elections as they are well-entrenched in their political constituency & any political arithmetic for UPA would not work without their support even in the long term. Indeed, the influence of the Left parties on UPA is obvious in the name itself ('Progressive' a word with strong leftist connotations is their middle name). The composition of UPA points to a strong Leftist Secular bias for UPA. Leftist parties are largely atheist, & socialist parties such as BSP denounce India's major religion, opting for Buddhism as their philosophical leader B R Ambedkar did several decades ago. Their social policies are largely anti-reform (euphemistically referred to as pro-poor) and thus anti FDI & anti globalization in general.

As the options available to the Indian voter largely converge to either Leftist Secular or Rightist Reformist, voters with an ideology different from either of the above have nowhere to go. For example, I would have loved to have a government that was Reformist Secular, which was aggressive on reforms, had a foreign policy based on national interest but was secular & faith-sensitive, if not faith-neutral. Somebody else might want to support Rightist Anti-reform, but (s)he too has no choice but to choose one of the two options available. Convergence of political views will provide stability, but is bound to marginalize minority viewpoints. It is important that we provide a democratic vent to these viewpoints & the emotions attaced with them, or else India might be on its way to some more trouble in the years to come.