Already, the bonhomie between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Nationalist Congress Party leader Sharad Pawar at an event in Pune on August 1 has punctured the hopes of Opposition leaders who are working on a united front against the BJP for the 2024 elections.
They are deeply upset that Pawar ignored their appeals and chose to be on the stage when Modi was conferred with the Lokmanya Tilak national award by the Tilak Smarak Trust. Of course, both Modi and Pawar avoided making any direct political statements on the current situation in the country or Maharashtra, where a splintered NCP joined the BJP-Sena ministry under the leadership of Pawar’s nephew Ajit Pawar.
Yet, the broad message from the Pune event was that the eagerness that the opposition leaders showed by coming together in the hope of displacing the BJP, or preventing its return to power, was not cast in stone. In fact, if past coalitions are any indicator, it can often be inversely proportional to the ability to stay together in the longer run or even for a short period.
Pawar’s refusal to listen to appeals from his fellow comrades in the newly-named I.N.D.I.A., may have a lot to do with his record of extending political courtesies to colleagues and opponents alike. However, at this juncture, one cannot but assume that the contradictions and lack of coherence and cohesiveness in the Opposition are far more serious than they appear to be.
Of course, those who are politically opposed to the BJP assure themselves that these are just “teething troubles” which will be overcome.
As of today, nothing unites opposition leaders as much as their common exasperation with the BJP under Modi’s leadership. That is because of the failure of their politics since 2014 – when the Prime Minister secured an overwhelming majority after three decades for any political party and repeated his feat with an even greater mandate in 2019. It has driven them to come together under the banner “United We stand” (with the unsaid part being “Divided We Fall”).
The second term of the UPA earned notoriety for an outbreak of scams involving the Congress as well as its alliance partners like the DMK
When you consider how the NDA functions, as Modi put it recently, it is not a grouping of parties on a negative agenda of preventing somebody from coming to power. It was formed after the 1998 Lok Sabha elections for the sake of bringing stability and development. Under Vajpayee, it saw expansion as well as support across a wide political spectrum for ushering in major reforms. Under Modi, the NDA has been strengthened by a strong leadership that increased support not just for the BJP but for all its alliance partners. The NDA is not striving for a mandate that the BJP has always managed to win from the people– but for inclusion of different sections of the society.
LACKLUSTRE ALLIANCES
Why are our votes not enthused by the Opposition parties? Is it because there is no anchor party, a unanimously chosen leader and show of some ideological congruence (or even a common minimum programme)?
Rather, it may be because of memories of the coalitions in the name of “Third Front” that we saw in 1979-80, 1989-1991 and 1996-98 where the opposition’s desire to keep one major party out of power did not always guarantee stability or enable better governance. Within 12 to 24 months or even for a lesser period, the partners were at loggerheads, resulting in fresh elections.
Take the case of the first non-Congress experiment after the defeat of Indira Gandhi-led Congress in the 1977 elections. Several parties came together then to form the government, on a call given by Jaya Prakash Narayan. Morarji Desai became the Prime Minister in what was then called “the Janata experiment”. The coalition fell apart in less than two years.
By 1979, Indira Gandhi easily lured away an ambitious Charan Singh to break ranks and become PM for just 24 weeks.
In the 1980 Lok Sabha polls, Indira Gandhi had no difficulty in winning a good mandate, citing the Opposition’s failure to provide an alternative to the Congress.
After the 1989 Lok Sabha elections, which saw the Bofors scandal pushing the Congress out of power, V.P. Singh became the PM with the support of splinter groups calling themselves Janata Dal, backed by the Left and the BJP. Plagued by the situation caused by the Mandal Commission, V.P. Singh faced internal dissent too. The arrest of L.K. Advani in November 1990, during the Ram Rath Yatra, led to Singh’s exit. This time the Congress tempted Chandra Shekhar to become PM with its support. Congress withdrew support from this government also in seven months.
In the 1991 elections, during the conduct of which Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated, the Congress managed to form a minority government led by P.V. Narasimha Rao. Though he completed his full tenure in 1991, Rao faced several problems due to lack of numbers. Nevertheless, Rao succeeded in heralding economic liberalisation despite stiff opposition. The dismantling of the licence permit raj was a big achievement.
In the 1996 polls, though the BJP emerged as the single largest party and Vajpayee was invited to form the government, he could not muster the needed support from other parties who were obsessed by notions of secularism that meant “keep the BJP out of power”.
But this political untouchability of the BJP meant that the country had to bear with the shenanigans of coalition politics between 1996 and 1998.
When the United Front (a conglomeration of non-Congress and non-BJP regional parties) decided to form the government with the support of the Congress, to keep the BJP out of power, H.D. Deve Gowda was unexpectedly chosen as the 11th PM on June 1, 1996. However, by April 21, 1997, Gowda’s relationship with the Congress under Sitaram Kesri touched the lowest point. Fearing that Gowda was out to fix him in the mysterious disappearance and murder of a doctor, Kesri withdrew the Congress’ support. The United Front was then forced to dump Gowda as PM and pick Inder Kumar Gujral as his successor.
A soft-spoken Gujral tried to improve workings with the Congress, but the latter was looking for an opportunity to pull the rug. The opportunity came in the form of the Jain Commission, which investigated Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination. The commission’s report blamed, among other things, the DMK – for tacit support to Tamil militants accused in the killing. The DMK was part of the ruling coalition. The Congress insisted for the report to be tabled in Parliament, which was done on November 20, 1997. In the ensuing standoff, the Congress demanded DMK’s removal from the Cabinet and when Gujral refused, it withdrew support from his government on November 28, 1997.
It is another matter that, today, the DMK backs the Congress to the hilt. Tamil Nadu CM M.K. Stalin had even pledged to ensure Rahul Gandhi became PM.
In the 1998 elections, Vajpayee-led BJP succeeded in forming the second non-Congress government under the banner of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) with the support of several parties. The NDA lost a no-trust motion 13 months later, in April 1999, when the AIADMK withdrew support. But even the Opposition led by Sonia Gandhi failed to muster the numbers. Vajpayee remained “caretaker” PM until elections were held only in October because of the Kargil War. The BJP-led NDA won 303 seats out of the 543 seats in the Lok Sabha, thereby securing a comfortable majority. On October 13, 1999, Vajpayee took oath as PM for the third time.
In the 2004 elections, the BJP failed to secure enough numbers on its own. With her foreign origin again becoming an issue, Sonia Gandhi led the Congress to form the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) with Dr Manmohan Singh as her personal nominee as the PM.
Ultimately, differences led to the Left withdrawing support over the Indo-US nuclear deal in July 2008. Singh opted for a floor test. The trust vote was one of those rare moments when the Left and the BJP were on the same side, forcing UPA managers to fall back on Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party to win the test.
The second term of the UPA under Manmohan Singh followed the 2004 Lok Sabha elections but it also earned notoriety for an outbreak of scams involving the Congress as well as its alliance partners like the DMK. That also marked the slide in the popularity of the Congress, which led to its all-time low performance in the 2014 elections and the emergence of Modi as the popular PM.
Will the voters in 2024 forget the past memories so easily of an era when the government was at the mercy of smaller and regional parties and governance was best known for policy paralysis?
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