Opportunistic alliance

Electoral arithmetic may be in their favour. But, long-term governance needs a common ideology and approach. Opportunistic alliances have been a blot on the Indian party system and election. We are witnessing one more drama in these series

Six factions of the Janata Parivar have merged into a single political party and have accepted the leadership of Mulayam Singh Yadav. This development – by itself momentous in the politics of alliances – is doubly significant for its timing before the Assembly elections due in Bihar this year and in Uttar Pradesh in 2017.

The merger is the outcome of intense efforts going on for quite some time to revive and reconstruct a “Third Front” as an alternative to both the Congress and the BJP-led alliances. However, it is a down-sized Third Front excluding some strong regional satraps, but including some prominent leaders having ambitions to Prime Ministership. Hence, expectations from this merger of parties are different from what was anticipated from the still-born Third Front before the last General election.

The new formation indeed constitutes a “parivar” (family) comprising of parties that emerged out of the Janata Dal that surprised the nation in 1989 by coming to power at the Centre under the leadership of VP Singh. The Janata Dal has the unique distinction as a political party that provided a Prime Minister to the nation without having any organizational strength of its own to stand up against even some regional parties.

The parivar parties profess socialist ideals in this age of liberalization. These include the Samajwadi Party, Janata Dal (United), Rashtriya Janata Dal, Janata Dal (Secular), Samajwadi Janata Party, and Indian National Lok Dal which were earlier part of different national alliances.This family presently has 15 members and holds the 8th place in the Lok Sabha, and has 30 members holding the third place in the Rajya Sabha behind the Congress and the BJP. The first test on the impact of this new party is expected to be felt during the united opposition against the land ordinance.

Three groups of extended parivar are in existence in the country. These are the newly-formed Janata Parivar which is truncated Third Front, the well established Sangh Parivar as referred to by outsiders and not by insiders, and the Left Unity that is struggling to come to life and take shape. The original Janata Parivar of the 1970s which fought the Internal Emergency and came to power as a grand alliance under a single name and leadership was much bigger and had many more constituent units.

It broke down and dispersed, some going with the Congress and later the UPA, some with the BJP and then the NDA, and some experimenting with non-Congress, non-BJP Third Front idea. Those with the UPA included RJD, Socialist Janata (Democratic) Party, and RLD. Those allied with the NDA were Janata Party, Samata Party, JD (United), and Lok Jana Shakti. Protagonists of the Third Front comprised SP, JD (Secular), INLD, and the SJP. However, there was no stability in the partnership.

The present Janata Parivar has technically the numerical advantage to fight both the UPA, and the NDA in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. But, it has the biggest disadvantage of having State-level popular leaders nursing national ambitions. This Parivar has a common enemy in the Sangh Parivar which refers to the family of Hindu nationalist organizations which have been started by members of the RSS or are inspired by its ideas. Electoral arithmetic may be in their favour. But, long-term governance needs a common ideology and approach. Opportunistic alliances have been a blot on the Indian party system and election. We are witnessing one more drama in these series.

By Dr S Saraswathi