#dnaEdit: Victory blues

Compared to the uncomplicated and historic victory of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — when it was able to form the government at the Centre  without much ado — the party is forced to look over its shoulder even as it prepares to stake its claim to form the government in Mumbai. The BJP needs 145 and it has 123 in the assembly of 288. It has now got the support of 15 more MLAs — independents and those from smaller parties, bringing the tally to 138. So, it has to reach out to its former ally Shiv Sena which has 63 seats, or to the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) which has 41 MLAs. There is little elbow room for the BJP to make its own decisions. While Modi’s no-holds barred aggressive campaigning nearly trebled the party’s strength from 46 in the last assembly, he would need to fall back on the business-as-usual manoeuvring to deal with the Sena and humour the NCP. Even if Sena comes on board without too many strings attached, BJP strategists may want to continue to humour the NCP rather than spurn it. The campaign vitriol is well and truly buried. Political parties do not linger in the past and they are quite right and sensible in moving on.

Forming alliances and making them work requires skills of a different kind than those exhibited by Modi and BJP president Amit Shah. BJP-sceptics are likely to argue that the party in the post-May 2014 mood has lost the ability to negotiate ever since Modi positioned the party as the most successful one on the national scene. The BJP at the moment is in a self-assertive mood and it may find it difficult to deal with contentious allies. But it will have to retrieve its old ways sharpened by Atal Bihari Vajpayee when he had to hold together a 23-party National Democratic Alliance (NDA) from 1998 to 2004.

The Shiv Sena, in government or outside, is not going to be a passive and subordinate ally. It has to assert its identity and interests without rocking the alliance boat. As a consequence, the BJP cannot hope to have its way. It will have to take the Sena into confidence on all issues concerning the state. There is an argument that the BJP will not have to depend on Sena’s whims, and that the offer of unconditional support from NCP provides the party the much-needed political buffer. But it is not going to be a cakewalk. This could be a blessing in disguise for the BJP because it would keep the party on an even keel as it were. A party without challengers always falls into the trap of complacency and arrogance. The BJP should be happy that in Maharashtra it will be forced to be on the alert.

The Sena, on its part, will have to play by the rules. It has to reconcile itself to the fact that it has lost its forte as the guardian of Maharashtra identity and interests, and that its base has been challenged and eroded. It will have to either reinvent itself or work assiduously at the grass roots to retrieve lost ground. It will have to prove itself to be a responsible ally which would help in the smooth governance of the state. The teasing question would be: Where does a successful BJP-Sena government leave the NCP? It has forfeited its space in the opposition and it stands to become redundant in the equation of the ruling nexus.