The Hindu Business Line : Coalitions vs the two-party system

The President, Mr A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, added piquancy to the observance by Parliament of the 150th Anniversary of the first war of Independence (1857), which might otherwise have passed off as a ceremonial occasion with set-piece talks by the assembled dignitaries, by his call for "rapidly" evolving "a stable, two party system", without assuming that multi-party coalitions "as a regular form of government" have become the norm.

Mr Kalam is not alone in his scepticism about coalitions: He is in the good company of many eminent Western political scientists who had no hesitation in dismissing coalitions as a sound basis for stable government. A former Prime Minister of Britain, James Callaghan, condemned coalitions picturesquely thus: "A coalition is like a mule; it has no pride of ancestry, and no hope of posterity"!

For all that, Mr Kalam's is a cry in the wilderness. Contrary to the mystique surrounding the two-party system, it is more an exception than the rule. There had so far been only two democracies — the UK and the US — where it could be taken for granted. Elsewhere and especially in Europe, multiparty governments are a common phenomenon.

Wherever social and economic pressures are pronounced and ethnic, religious and regional diversities exist within the connotation of a pluralist society, parties proliferate reflecting the polychromatic nature of the society and contend for their share of the political cake. In such a situation, coalitions have been found to be the only means of sharing power and giving a sense of belonging and identity to different interest groups.

Cooperative dynamic

From this perspective, the polyglot polity that India is, with its complexities and diversities, should properly have had only coalitions after Independence. The contingency was put off, however, by the Congress Party forming governments on it own steam on the strength of majorities secured by it in the first three elections thanks to the dominating presence of heroes of freedom struggle, with Jawaharlal Nehru towering over them till 1964.

Once Nehru departed from the scene, and the prestige and lustre he lent to the Congress Party were gone, the country's electoral politics was forced to reckon with the demand for a say in governance of diverse conglomerates with their own aspirations and ambitions. This is what made the country inevitably slide into coalitions, which help in keeping competitive, and often combative, demands in a cooperative dynamic.

It could even be said that after an initial shake-down period, the country has come to live with coalitions based on pre-and post-poll alliances, and is making a success of them. True, some ugly manifestations of obstructionism, parochialism and populism surface consequent on marriages of convenience, but these have usually been kept within bounds not causing irreparable damage to the polity.

Further, the tidal wave of globalisation and the overriding importance given to deregulation have nearly eliminated the ideological divide over economic prescriptions. All over the world, the sharp edges of Left and Right have been blunted and parties find advantage in adopting a centrist position.

There is tacit agreement among them in India also on the core components — agriculture, rural development, employment, economic reforms, external relations, security, competition, best practices, accountability, transparency — of the strategy for governance. They have so far found it possible to sort out any differences on the content, timing and the pace by means of a National Common Minimum Programme and mechanisms for coordination and mid-course correction.

One need not, therefore, despair of coalitions being capable of delivering the goods. However, there is a danger of coalitions collapsing under their own weight because of the uncontrolled growth in the number of parties in the Indian context. The sooner a remedy is found for this, the better.

B. S. RAGHAVAN