The Audacity of Hope
Can a Congress-led UPA Grand Alliance break the BJP-led NDA’s stranglehold in 2019? Gujarat and the return of hope
ARE THE RESULTS of the next Lok Sabha elections a foregone conclusion? Will the BJPled NDA, with its aura of invincibility, do a repeat of its 2014 victory in 2019? until ecently, the common refrain was on the lines of what National Conference leader Omar Abdullah tweeted after the BJP swept the Uttar Pradesh polls: “At this rate, we might as well forget 2019 & start planning/ hoping for 2024.”
Can a Congressled UPA mahagathbandhan (grand alliance), if it does come together, challenge the political hegemony of the BJPled NDA in 2019? The answer has flitted between soaring hope and total despair for the opposition parties from 2015 onwards. The idea was born right after the BJP’s consecutive defeats in the Delhi and Bihar assembly polls. Grand national alliances have had a long history in India since 1977 but the idea of a state level mahagathbandhan against a dominant national party was new. With the coming together of two rival OBC Bihari babus, JD(U) leader Nitish Kumar and RJD chief Lalu Prasad, and with the Congress party in tow, a ray of hope emerged for the Opposition. Mamata Banerjee’s sweeping victory in West Bengal in May 2016 boosted hopes further. In an interview, a beaming Lalu had boasted: “If the UPA can unite West Bengal, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Punjab—from east to west—we can stop the BJPled NDA from winning a majority in 2019.”
The reasoning: the four states account for 175 of the 543 Lok
Sabha seats in the country. In 2014, the BJPled NDA had picked up 112 Lok Sabha seats, one third of their total tally, from these four states. However, for this formula to work, the crucial assumption is a mahagathbandhan at two levels: first, an alliance of all nonNDA parties in all these key states; second, another alliance in the rest of the country. If the mahagathbandhan at the state level collapses, the grand alliance at the national level will come a cropper.
By March 2017, however, hope in the opposition camp had turned to despair when the BJP swept the UP assembly polls. A mahagathbandhan did not materialise in UP. In a threecornered contest, so humiliating was the defeat that the nonNDA parties, including the CongressSP alliance as well as the Mayawatiled BSP appeared to have been wiped off the electoral map. During the presidential polls in July 2017, the Congressled opposition parties, despite all efforts to regroup, appeared scattered. The final blow: the brazen aboutturn by Bihar’s Nitish Kumar from the UPA to the NDA.
The Congress may have lost to the BJP in Gujarat but the partially positive poll results for the party (best result in the last 35 years) have restored a modicum of hope in the Opposition camp once again. A more confident and tilakdhari Congress president Rahul Gandhi, with his three young greenhorn allies—Hardik Patel, Jignesh Mevani and Alpesh Thakore—seemed to have given birth to a minimahagathbandhan in Gujarat with visible signs of reviving Mandal politics as well as at least partly coopting the Hindutva agenda.
Were parliamentary polls held today, the India TodayKarvy Insights Mood of the Nation (MOTN) poll—which tracks the political contours across the country every six months—builds two possible scenarios, predicting a difference of 100 seats for the UPA between the two scenarios. In scenario 1, the UPA without the top three allies—SP, BSP and Trinamool—is predicted to get only 102 seats. In scenario 2, UPA+ is likely to get 202 seats provided there is a preelection alliance with the three allies. In Scenario 1, the NDA is likely to get 309, in scenario 2, its predicted seat tally could fall below the 272 mark required for a majority—down to 258. With the Congress today in power in Punjab, and Bihar out of the equation given Nitish Kumar’s switch, it is UP and West Bengal which will be the key states for the UPA, in an acrosstheboard grand alliance scenario.
How realistic is this possibility? Will Mamata and Mayawati be able to ignore their egos and work with Rahul Gandhi, whom they consider a greenhorn? In
November 2017, the SP, BSP and Congress hammered out an arrangement of 30, 30 and 20 seats for UP in the next Lok Sabha elections. “Akhilesh is not Mulayam, he calls Mayawati ‘Buaji’. They respect each other even if they do not share a great chemistry. The SP and BSP have realised that unless they join hands, they could be wiped out in the competitive world of UP politics,” a senior SP leader confessed. “Akhilesh and Rahul already share a great friendship which matured during the UP polls,” says Congress leader from Mathura, Pradeep Mathur.
Being close to Sonia Gandhi, Mamata is the nucleus of this new coalition. She worked with Rahul during the demonetisation protests in Parliament and thinks Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal too must be included in the alliance. The MOTN poll also found Mamata to be the popular chice as best chief minister for the second time running.
A caveat is in order here. The MOTN prediction for the UPA-led grand alliance in scenario 2 should not be misconstrued as an outright win in 2019.
The three partner UPA+ grand alliance may not be enough to gain a victory. The MOTN suggests that the NDA is still the winning player, and Prime Minister Modi, despite being in power for almost four years, is still the most popular candidate at 53 percentage points as opposed to 22 for Rahul. Yet the MOTN reveals that were the UPA to regroup with allies, it could prevent the NDA from forming a government on its own. Throw in Naveen Patnaik’s support and some southern satraps aside from the DMK and the numbers could swell.
The leadership bogey
The leadership of the grand alliance will remain the main point of contention. Senior leaders like Mamata and Mayawati will find it difficult to accept an Akhilesh or Rahul. For the time being, MOTN settles that with the question: who do you think is best suited to lead the non-BJP mahagathbandhan? Rahul scores the highest with 23 per cent, Mamata is No. 2 with a distant 10 per cent while even Akhilesh (7) outscores Mayawati (5). Rahul also scores the highest as the best alternative to PM Modi. The ultimate battle for leadership may depend on which party gets the highest number of seats. But despite settling on a common leader, each of these state satraps enjoys a tremendous de facto veto power. Any one of them can pull out of the alliance and lead to its collapse.
But as bleak as the current circumstances appear for the UPA grand alliance, the political landscape ahead may be even more challenging. To start with, the Congress must confront what looks like a punishing campaign map in 2018. The party must retain Karnataka by bucking anti-incumbency. Additionally, it must win at least two of the three states— Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh—BJP-ruled states going to polls in December. If Congress loses all four, the game of thrones for 2019 will end in 2018.
A central challenge facing the alliance is whether it can hold together the diverse coalition of minority, Dalit and rebellious dominant caste voters while making inroads with the mainstream Hindu voters that Rahul is attempting to attract. The answer may depend on how, and how much, the alliance is able to stoutly oppose the NDA’s Hindutva agenda without alienating the majority Hindu voters, and if the alliance can deliver a compelling and cohesive message about what it stands for. Beyond the opportunistic game of maximising numbers and other than simply opposing the NDA at each and every step, the UPA Grand Alliance also needs a cause. Secularism versus communalism is an outdated formula simply polarising the voters in favour of the BJP. What the grand alliance must openly declare is an alternative economic vision for the nation and a winning electoral strategy and script.
No doubt, the Modi-led NDA is on top today, and with individual egos clashing and a collision more than a coalition of interests, the 2019 picture might appear clouded for the Opposition. If only the Rahul-led Congress could revamp its organisation, reinvent a new strategy of stitching a federal front, the hope to dislodge the NDA might become a possibility rather than mere hypothesis.