#dnaEdit: Steering the coalition

The BJP legislature party in Jharkhand has elected Raghubar Das, a five-time legislator, to be the state’s Chief Minister. He is the first non-tribal to lead Jharkhand. That — though — is not the important issue here. It is true that Jharkhand, like Chhattisgarh, has been formed to meet the just demands of the tribal segment, which forms 32 per cent of the state’s population. In its existence as a state in the last 14 years, the state’s CM has always been a tribal leader. The senior tribal leaders of the BJP, Babulal Marandi and Arjun Munda, have lost the election. It has therefore become possible for the party to choose a non-tribal leader. In ideal terms, it should not matter much whether the CM in Jharkhand is a tribal or not. The important issue is whether he enjoys credibility across all regions of the state. There is a serious need to go beyond tokenism. Jharkhand with its enormous natural resources is crying out for development, and the political parties, including the BJP and the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), have so far failed to deliver to the people.   

The promise of the new alliance is that it will provide a stable government. This requires the BJP and the All Jharkhand Students Union (AJSU)  to accept coalition norms, or what has come to be popularly known as coalition dharma. That is, the BJP should not ride roughshod over its junior ally, and the AJSU should not resort to threats if it does not get the ministerial berths it wants. It has to be remembered that AJSU had been in alliance with the JMM, in the last government. The AJSU leader, Sudesh Mahto, who has lost the election, was a deputy CM in the governments of Arjun Munda and Shibu Soren in 2005 and in 2006. Though the BJP-AJSU has formed a pre-poll alliance, the two parties will have to stick together for the next five years in order to fulfil their promise of providing a stable government in Jharkhand.

In three of the four states — Maharashtra, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand — that faced elections in the last six months, no single party emerged as the victor. Haryana was an exception where the BJP won a decisive mandate. The BJP patriarch LK Advani was perceptive in his comment that coalitions are not a thing of the past. In Maharashtra and in Jharkhand, the BJP fell short of a simple majority, if only by five seats. It might appear a narrow deficit but it does have the potential of destabilising the government. Even a single seat shortfall could be politically fatal as the BJP-led NDA government had discovered in 1999. 

It is impossible to read the collective mind of the electorate, but the inference to be drawn from a verdict where no single party has managed a simple majority is that people do not trust any single party. This is the takeaway lesson for the single largest party and its allies in Maharashtra, Jammu and Kashmir and Jharkhand. Whatever their differences, conflicts of interest, clash of ideologies, parties have to learn to work together in the state assemblies in order to legislate and govern. The BJP and AJSU have to find ways to stick together. On the new Chief Minister rests the onus of steering the coalition deftly.