The Hindu Business Line : Coalition dharma and economic progress

THE exit polls after the third and the fourth rounds caused great consternation. They predicted a precariously balanced 14th Lok Sabha. The stock market reacted with sharp fall and the propaganda machinery of both the NDA and Congress-led alliance went into top gear to tilt various small parties their way.

On the last day of the campaign before the final round of polls, it looked as if the NDA would manage to breast the tape albeit with a very small lead. The composition of the 14th Lok Sabha would be such that no party would by itself be able to command the majority necessary for forming and sustaining a government on its own. Further, none of the three pre-election alliances would command a majority comfortable enough to permit it to rest on its laurels.

During the campaign, the speakers for all the alliances claimed that they would win an absolute, if not two-third, majority in the new House. The electorate was, probably, hypnotised into believing that the election would produce an absolute majority, if not for a party, at least for an alliance. That is why the exit polls came as a severe jolt.

In fact, that the 14th Lok Sabha would be hung one was written clearly on the wall. On the dissolution of the 12th Lok Sabha and ordering a fresh election by the President, this writer had predicted — it turned out right — a hung 13th Lok Sabha.

India was distinguished in the comity of developing nations by the political stability and the single-party rule it enjoyed for four long decades after Independence. India owed this distinction to three factors.

One: The freedom movement under Mahatma Gandhi had left a legacy of stalwart leaders whose sacrifices and calibre claimed unquestioned respect throughout the country.

Two: The electoral system of `first-past-the-post' under which candidate obtaining the highest number of votes was declared elected, no matter the actual percentage of votes polled, introduced a bias in the electoral system that could give the largest single party number of seats well out of proportion with the percentage of votes polled by it. India could not have gone for the French electoral system since it involved two successive rounds of polling. India could have certainly gone for the system of proportional representation — quite common in Europe — that was advocated by the Swatantra Party under C. Rajgopalachari. We did not because of the British influence of the framers of the Constitution and deliberate design on the part of the then political leadership to introduce a bias that would help single party rules.

Three: The Congress, as its name indicates, was never a party. It was more a congregation of diverse political streams that were united in their desire for political independence.

It was, thus, that it could accommodate Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Dr. Hedgewar and Comrade Namboodiripad. The first Cabinet under Nehru similarly brought together Shanmukham Chetti, John Mathai, Shyama Prasad Mukerji and Dr. B. R. Ambedkar. In most parts it ruled, Congress was more an alliance than a monolithic party that it has tended to become under leaders of diminishing calibre.

The declaration of Emergency broke that idyllic scenario. The Congress was trounced but no single party came on the scene to continue the tradition of single party rules. The Janata Party rule under Morarji Desai was an alliance as was the Janata Dal under Mr V. P. Singh and the United Front regimes of Messrs Deve Gowda and I. K. Gujral.

Till the formation of the 13th Lok Sabha, nobody realised that the post-Emergency political developments, the fall of socialism and the emergence of the Mandal factor had produced a multitude of political parties with a wide range of socio-economic views in different regions. It is only after the formation of the 13th Lok Sabha that the NDA under the leadership of Atal Bihari Vajpayee realised that the era of coalition was not a short-term aberration but a long-term phenomenon. The plethora of the outfits had made any political party an institution irrelevant. It was important, therefore, to shape a working alliance of even divergent schools of thought.

The NDA proceeded systematically to develop what it has termed in its `Agenda 2004' as `Coalition Dharma'. This new code of conduct involved jettisoning of some of the favourite cargo such as Ram Mandir, Article 370 and the Common Civil Code and in general adopting consensus as an instrument to achieving progress.

On the eve of formation of the 14th Lok Sabha, it is pointless to debate if the Lok Sabha will be hung. It is quite clear that nobody would have a comfortable majority. It is important to work out the long-term consequences and the nature of the `coalition dharma'.

The first consequence of the `coalition dharma' would be unfavourable to the process of economic reforms and globalisation. Offering free lunches and stoking fires of parochial and nationalistic xenophobia are favourite past-times of politicians. They aspire to win elections in the hope that they can use the state coffers for the benefit of their favourite constituencies.

The liberal agenda that promises market-based rewards to those who can weather the market is a politically impossible agenda. Glib promises of employment, education and health facilities lend itself more easily to political harangues. Any government hoping to survive will have to pay formal homage to socialistic and welfare programmes even while inexorably continuing the reforms.

Further a coalition government at the Centre would be increasingly pre-occupied with essentially local problems like roads, water and electricity. The alliances can survive only by double-talk on national issues and down-gradation of its agenda to issues at local level. This `coalition dharma' might actually come out to be more conducive to national progress and India's rise as a world power than all that done in the name of holistic planning in the days of single-party rules.

(The author is Founder, Shetkari Sanghatana, and can be contacted at sharad@mah.nic.in)

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