SHARAD PAWAR AS MEDIATOR
It appears that even the Congress, like other opposition to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP, is keen to stress that its president Rahul Gandhi is not necessarily the party’s pick for prime minister. Former finance minister P. Chidambaram said last week that the party would decide with its alliance partners once the election was won. Sharad Pawar, president of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), agreed, talking up the prospect of a mystery candidate, a regional satrap with sufficient support. “Who had imagined,” he asks rhetorically, “that Manmohan Singh would become PM in 2004?”
Rather than a national opposition coalition, Pawar argues for strategic local alliances, with strong state parties dominating partnerships. For instance, he said, the Trinamool Congress should be the senior partner in a West Bengal alliance; Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party must take the lead in Andhra Pradesh. But the Congress, Pawar believes, could turn the tables in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Haryana, while in Uttar Pradesh, a Samajwadi Party-Bahujan Samaj Party combine has already shown winning potential.
The Congress and other opposition parties, Pawar said, must avoid an American-style personality clash between Modi and Rahul in 2019. “Modi won’t become PM again,” he said. “The people want to defeat the BJP. There is a huge gap between the promises they made and the work they’ve done on the ground.” Pawar admits he is willing to help forge alliances, exploit his good relationships with regional leaders. The mahagathbandhan, or grand alliance, has not really taken off beyond a photo-op at the swearing-in of H.D. Kumaraswamy in Karnataka. Modi and BJP president Amit Shah attacked the putative alliance as an opportunistic power grab.
And Pawar is careful to disavow any firm commitment to an alliance, insisting that while he is against the BJP, he’ll also maintain distance from the Congress. He believes, instead, in the potential of the likes of Mamata Banerjee and Naidu to make a national impact. Modi, he says, is not a towering figure like Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who also lost despite his charisma. Pawar claims not to have any prime ministerial ambitions, even in a situation in which, as he predicts, no party has enough votes to form the government, and an alliance is forged. The sort of situation that led to H.D. Deve Gowda becoming prime minister in 1996. “I was
involved in that process,” he cautions, “and we know it doesn’t work. Gowda was an accident and I don’t want to be part of another one.”
He hopes, though, that the opposition will put aside self-interest to come together. Shiv Sena, he said, was certain to join the BJP in the Lok Sabha poll. So he acknowledged the possibility of a Maharashtra-specific alliance
between the NCP, the Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana, the Congress and the BSP. Of course, the BSP and Congress failed to agree on a pre-poll alliance in MP. But this is what Pawar means when he says alliances will succeed based on particular circumstances in particular states rather than parties being forced together.