Congress party seeks to forge broad alliance to oust Modi
new delhi — India’s main opposition Congress party sees only one viable path to take down Prime Minister Narendra Modi in elections due by May: Make as many friends as possible.
Congress is working with local politicians in some of India’s biggest states to form a broad antiModi coalition, according to P. Chidambaram, a senior party leader and former finance minister. Congress is the only nationwide political organisation in India apart from Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
“If we have strong state-specific coalitions, it is possible to win a majority in parliament,” Chidambaram said on September 6 as a monsoon shower thundered down outside his residence in a leafy, upscale neighborrhood in New Delhi. “That is the clearest way to have a fair chance of dislodging the BJP.”
Right now, it’s an uphill battle: Congress still has no formal agreements with the parties it needs to have a realistic shot at ousting Modi, who remains India’s most popular politician and would easily defeat a fractured opposition. But it is starting to make progress, linking up with regional parties to defeat the BJP in recent local elections and building a more concerted attack on Modi’s handling of the economy.
Despite boasting the world’s fastest economic growth for a major economy, India’s stocks and currency have been battered in the recent emerging markets rout. The Congress party joined with other opposition groups earlier this month in backing a nationwide strike over rising fuel prices as the rupee reached a record low of 72.5 to the US dollar.
“While the probability of a ‘grand coalition’ government remains low, it is a risk that investors are monitoring,” said Priyanka Kishore, head of India and South East Asia, Macro and Investor Services at Oxford Economics. “There is a general consensus that reforms will suffer in the absence of a BJP-led government at the center. This wouldn’t bode well for the economy, which is already grappling with several challenges.”
Polls show that Congress could pull off a surprise win if it links with
If we have strong state-specific coalitions, it is possible to win a majority in parliament Chidambaram, Congress leader
other parties. An India Today survey in August showed the BJP easily winning a majority if it fights the same Congress-led alliance that run in 2014. But, it said, the race would be neck and neck if Congress links up with the two major regional parties in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, and another one in West Bengal, a state with more people than Germany.
Congress has shown signs it could build such an alliance. In May, Congress and a regional party linked up to stop the BJP from forming a government in the southern state of Karnataka. After the victory, opposition leaders from across India showed up to fete their new chief minister at his swearingin ceremony in Bengaluru, formerly known as Bangalore.
Widely-published photos showed the disparate group on stage hugging and holding hands aloft with Congress leaders in a show of strength. They included the powerful chief ministers of Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal (who have both separately sparred with Modi), and two former chief ministers from the state of Uttar Pradesh who suspended a fierce rivalry to defeat the BJP in two closelywatched by-elections.
“People want to see that the team or the coalition they’re supporting has a chance to be the winner — and that message is emanating from Uttar Pradesh,” said Ghanshyam Tiwari, a former McKinsey consultant who is now a national spokesman for the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh. —