Column

The end of a marathon election season brings little hope for India. Even if the Congress or the BJP were to win 180 seats, there will be no end to political uncertainty, since that depends on their partners.
With each front requiring the equivalent of another 90 seats to reach the magic figure of 272, it means roping in at least five unstable partners with 10-25 seats each at the minimum.

There are currently only seven or eight regional parties or combos with the potential to end up with seats in the 10-25 range (or more).In many cases, it’s an either/or situation — if one is in, the other is out. The parties are DMK or AIADMK (not both), the Left Front, the TDP, the Shiv Sena, the NCP, the Biju Janata Dal, Mayawati’s BSP, Mulayam Singh’s Samajwadi Party, and Janata Dal (U) or Lalu Prasad’s RJD (not both).

Then there are the single-digit parties — the TRS, the Trinamool Congress, the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), the Akali Dal, the Rashtriya Lok Dal, the PMK and MDMK, the two Muslim parties (IUML and MIM), Deve Gowda’s Janata Dal (Secular) and Ram Vilas Paswan’s LJP — apart from the single-MP parties and independents.
No matter who wins, it will not be a matter of numbers alone, for each party comes with baggage. To see which group can ally with which party, it is best to classify them into three categories. The ‘believers’ are parties that will ally only with one combo. The ‘agnostics’ may have a preferred first choice, but will accept a second option if needed. The ‘amoral’ constitute the rest:anyone will do, if the price is right.

Classifying the true believers is easy: the only ones are the Left parties, who will stick together. But we can, with some ifs and buts, also classify the Shiv Sena, the Akali Dal, and the AGP as likely to stay with the BJP’s National Democratic Alliance; the JD (U) is on the NDA’s side as long as it looks like a winner. If it is not the largest party, all bets are off. Even the Sena could support Sharad Pawar’s candidature for prime ministership if the NDA is a non-starter. On the Congress side, one can only visualise the National Conference as a certainty on its side.

Which brings us to the agnostics: almost all parties are essentially standalones. Some are partial believers, but only about who they won’t go along with. One can’t see Lalu Prasad’s RJD aligning with the BJP, or even the Samajwadi Party. The Trinamool Congress would prefer a Congress alliance, but may not be averse to supporting the NDA from the outside to keep the Left out of the centre.

The Muslim parties will go with the Congress, and the Third Front. Only the Left thinks they are secular, but in our convoluted political lexicon, communal means only BJP. The BJD may prefer a Third front, but might well support a Congress-led government. It might — at an outside chance — also support the NDA and let bygones be bygones.

The truly amoral will go with any party as long as they get what they want. They include Ajit Singh’s RLD, and Mayawati. The latter has a clear condition attached: she will have to be made prime minister. The AIADMK will go with any party that will ultimately help it dethrone the DMK in Tamil Nadu. The DMK will go with the rival.

The Telengana Rashtriya Samiti (TRS) will go with whichever party promises a Telengana state, while the PMK and the MDMK of Vaiko will join any government at the centre for their own purposes.
Now it should be clear why all parties are keeping their fingers crossed when it comes to deciding friends and foes. Almost no one is a friend of any combo, and the foes are largely regional in nature. This means 80 per cent of the allies of the Congress and the BJP will be mercenaries with little or no commitment to making the coalition work. And each one of them will have to be paid a huge joining bonus — either in cash or kind.

Given the state the economy is in, we are unlikely to get good governance from the next government, and the opposition space looks inviting for all parties. One suspects that if neither the Congress nor the BJP reach the 180 mark, we will have an unstable coalition at the Centre, and possibly another one replacing it after a year or two.

There are only two parties which can square the circle — the Congress and the BJP.The message the electorate is likely to send is that the two need to find a way of combining by leaving the contentious issues out. Since that is not how politics works, they need to grow bigger themselves by cutting out unwholesome allies. This will allow at least one of them to come to power on its own or with stable ideological allies in 2014.