HVK Archives: Way out in UP - Coalition through time-sharing
Way out in UP - Coalition through time-sharing - The Observer
Posted By Ashok V Chowgule (ashokvc@giasbm01.vsnl.net.in)
October 30, 1996
The failure to cobble together a ruling combination in
Uttar Pradesh has resulted in the extraordinary situation
of President's rule being imposed without even convening
the newly-elected assembly. A difficult situation like
this calls for bold initiatives and new political alter-
natives. Not only will new mechanisms of sharing power
among prospective partners of a coalition have to be
found but more transparent modes of holding and, if
necessary, alternating in power will have to be evolved
to ensure a stable coalitional government.
Conditions for forming such a coalition are still avail-
able to the United Front and the Bahujan Samaj Congress
alliance, provided they are willing to resolve the lead-
ership issue on the principle of power-sharing, rather
than each 'partner' trying to maximise its power vis-a-
vis the other and thus turning coalition~ making into a
zero-sum game.
Sharply Divided
The crisis in U.P. shows by the failure of a winning
social coalition of the OBCs, Dalits and Muslims to
articulate itself into a ruling political majority.
While the social coalition is fairly crystallised it
remains sharply divided politically on caste and communal
lines. It is unable to throw up a leadership that can
negotiate the economic and political interests they share
among themselves.
For a representative democracy this is not an unique
situation. What is unique is the inability to recognise
that the politics of blackmail and brinkmanship does not
make for coalitional politics. If Mr Kanshi Ram goes for
blackmail, Mr Mulayam Singh resorts to brinkmanship.
Neither of them exhibits the kind of pragmatism required
for coalition politics. Coalition culture is the knack
of creating majorities through politically credible
combinations of factions and parties. To achieve this it
is not always necessary to arrive at an ideological
consensus. Willingness to share power within a common
political space is the minimum condition for its success.
The parties representing different social segments like
the OBCS, the Muslims and the Dalits share a common
political space created through the anti-Congress,
'appositional' politics in which they have been drawn
since the mid-1960's. In the process, the social coali-
tion they represent has been using political means for
upward social mobility, symbolised in the politics of
social justice. But there has not yet emerged within
this framework a political leadership which can credibly
represent the social coalition as a whole.
Every party is seeking new voter alignments around the
OBC-Dalit-Muslim social coalition, but has ended up
mobilising electoral support predominantly of one or two
of the three sections and partial support of the third
with another party in the same political space. What the
social coalition has produced are political parties and
leaders who remain tied to their predominant social base,
unable to knit a political coalition among themselves.
For a long time, i.e., until the mid-1970's, the politics
of social coalition of the lower classes could not make a
dent on the Congress-dominated politics of social consen-
sus presided over by the hegemony of a small upper-caste,
English-educated elite. The Congress had evolved a verti-
cally managed structure of caste-regional factions, but
not a power-sharing coalitional arrangement within it-
self. With the lower strata of social groups moving out
of the Congress and constituting themselves under shift-
ing alliances into separate political parties, vertical
arrangement of caste-region factions perfected by the
Congress collapsed.
Dalits Desert
The Jats and some of the upper strata of the OBCs moved
out of the Congress in the late 1960's. Much before the
Ram Mandir campaign and the demolition of the Babri
Masjid, Muslims had started moving out as part of their
anti-Emergency struggles. The Dalits remained with the
Congress in a patron-client kind of relationship, but
they too began to desert the party as soon as they saw an
alternative in Mr Kanshi Ram's Bahujan Samaj Party. This
process came to a fruition in the wake of the Mandal-
Masjid politics of social polarisation.
The BJP, despite its best efforts, could not fill the
void created by the Congress collapse. In fact, for the
BJP now, as it was for the Congress then, it is not
possible to manage the changed social relations in U.P.,
in a vertical structure of power. What is required is
horizontal management of power relations as well as of
the emergent political equations among these social
groups, through a coalitional arrangement of power-shar-
ing.
Despite attempts to create a new political majority in
U.P., the prevailing social coalition of the OBCS, Mus-
lims and Dalits is unlikely to translate itself into an
electoral majority in the foreseeable future, either in
the term of one party or even as a coalition of parties.
It can, at best, aspire to a coalitional arrangement of
sharing power. If its constituents fail to arrive at an
agreement, the social coalition which implicitly contains
a political majority will disperse into fragments which
would become politically available to the BJP and even to
the Congress.
New Principle
The logic of the situation demands that a new principle
of sharing power is evolved among the OBCs, the Dalits
and the Muslims, and in turn between the two alliances:
the United Front and the BSP-Congress. The support base
of each is concentrated in one or the other section of
the social coalition, but it also overlaps across them.
Hence, the only workable solution which can shape into a
somewhat longer-term arrangement is to divide the five-
year term of the chief minister into three periods. For
the first two years, the chief minister may come from the
BSP and may take a deputy chief minister from the other
alliance. Likewise, for the next two years the chief
minister and the deputy chief minister can come respec-
tively from the U.F. and the BSP-Congress alliance. For
the last year, both the alliances should agree on a
Muslim chief minister nominated by the U.F. This proposal
attempts to balance the claims of the prospective partn-
ers of coalition in terms of their perceived "indispensa-
bility" as well as their respective electoral strengths.
Although it admittedly addresses the demands of expedien-
cy, the proposal is not at all outlandish. Many repre-
sentative democracies in the world have found similar
solutions. For example, the Liberal Democratic Party in
Japan ruled as a coalition of powerful and stable fac-
tions whose nominees alternated in the office of the
Prime Minister. An analogous pattern is being tried out
in Turkey. A similar constitutional arrangement is a
feature of the Swiss political system. There is no
reason why such an arrangement cannot be made to work in
U.P. today. Over time, it may grow into a convention to
handle similar situations in other states and even at the
Centre. Until two stable coalitions of parties as in
Kerala or a two-party system as in Rajasthan or M.P.
emerges in all the states and at the national level, a
power-sharing coalition through time-sharing is a transi-
tional necessity. Ignoring this will push our represen-
tative system into a deeper crisis.
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