Marriages of convenience are not unusual in politics and even ‘one-night stands’ are considered legitimate in pursuit of power.
We in India are used to encountering the not-so-dignified sighting of strange bedfellows but what is worth more than a casual glance is unravelling of alliances based on strong ideological affinity.
The break-up between the BJP and Shiv Sena this time is not a tiff that is likely to end sooner or later in reconciliation of sorts.
The game of ‘who blinks first’ was stretched beyond endurance of players and spectators. The Ayodhya judgment helped reduce the nail-biting tension a bit but the respite was short-lived.
The rubber band snapped and there was nothing to keep the well-shuffled pack of cards full of Jokers from scattering. Shiv Sainiks experienced Agony and Ecstasy on the same day, euphoria yielding to despair.
In anticipation of forming the government, Shiva Sena split with the BJP and its solitary minister at the Centre resigned.
The new-found friend Sharad Pawar, it seems, had issued a postdated cheque that the joint signatory refused to sign. It bounced better than a tennis ball on the polished floor of the Maharashtra Raj Bhawan.
But the outcome has hardly been satisfactory for other players who all had equally high stakes in the game that beat the classic Game Theory’s Prisoner’s Dilemma.
The Maratha strongman ended up with his credibility more than a little impaired. He couldn’t convince —or chose not to be persuasive enough—Sonia G to support from outside the Shiv Sena-led government partnered by the NCP. Many young Congress leaders were inclined to keep the BJP ‘out of power’ in one of India’s largest and important states.
It’s not that the lady at the helm of the High Command had any ideological reservations. She had good reasons to be apprehensive about the initiative slipping out of her hands into Pawar’s. Though the Sena and NCP are influential primarily in Maharashtra, the signal that would go out to voters all over the land would be unmissable—it’s the dawn of the era when tails will wag the top dog!
One can keep shouting hoarse about protecting secularism while indulging in horse trading. The trouble is the Congress has no noble steeds to offer. The pack of mules that blindly follow their leader and self-proclaimed foot soldiers who act more like a flock of sheep most of the time command no price or exchange value.
The BJP too is busy licking its wounds. First, it was Haryana where an overconfident and arrogant National Leadership of the party banking on NaMo’s unmatched charisma snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, now the fiasco in Maharashtra that has exposed the chinks in its armour.
The reputation of invincibility acquired by Amit Shah the Contemporary Chanakya has lost at least some of its sheen.
The numbers game has changed from arithmetic to algebra. Even geometry chips in to ensure that parallel lines don’t ever coincide.
In Haryana, the scion of the controversial Chautala clan torn asunder by family feuds came to Khattar’s rescue but the delay in cabinet formation has further eroded the myth of the BJP juggernaut. The momentum generated during the Lok Sabha polls hasn’t been sustained.
As we write, preparations are on for more poll battles—in Jharkhand and Delhi.
It’s quite likely that these election campaigns will put unbearable stress on many other alliances on both sides of the fuzzy battle line and the unravelling of alliances will accelerate.
It’s true that the BJP-NDA combine cannot be unsettled at the Centre till the next Lok Sabha elections but federal governance is going to be increasingly challenging in days to come.
The state of the economy is worrisome to say the least and diplomacy has lost some of its dazzle. Forget China’s bullying tone, even Nepal has resumed pricking pins. India has ‘opted-out’ of the regional trade partnership—with good reason—leaving China to implement its blueprint for Resurgent Asia.
How are we going to cope with this development? Unless our economy recovers fast to exercise other options in Europe and parts of the Arab world where the US can’t blackball our entry into the club, we shall lose what we have managed to retrieve in adverse circumstances since 2014.
National interest can only suffer if politics is only defined and practised in bipartisan electoral context and the alliances, grand or petty, follow its logic. Modi-led BJP held the promise of vanquishing identity politics.
The unravelling of alliances seem to suggest that the war hasn’t yet been won.