Bihar Shows That Mahagathbandhans Ultimately Bite The Dust After Initial Success

The collapse of the Bihar Mahagathbandhan, with Nitish Kumar walking out of it, brings to the fore the limitations of an arithmetic coalition based on negative politics and lack of a common agenda. In theory, an agenda that focuses on jobless growth, farm distress, and violent cow politics should unite many segments of the opposition into an anti-Narendra Modi, anti-National Democratic Alliance (NDA) front. But in practice it cannot work beyond one election if the glue that holds you together is not a positive agenda for jobs or growth, but about dislike for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or some other party or leader. This was why the Congress and Indira Gandhi could never be fully beaten by any Mahagathbandhan of opposition parties.

The problem is the same as that of Pakistan. Its self-definition comes from being anti-India, and not pro-itself. Such an idea can bring solidarity against someone you hate, but will fall apart when it comes to doing something for yourself or in partnership with others. Just as Pakistan holds together only by being anti-India, the Bihar Mahagathbandhan holds together only as an anti-Modi agglomeration of disparate parties. It cannot last when the agenda is governance or positive politics. Sooner or later it would have ended in a takeover by the stronger party, in this case the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD). Coalitions of hate are essentially short-term alignments of convenience.

The history of marriages between equals or coalitions of smaller parties shows that they can’t work. Coalitions need a strong core party that acts as a glue to hold the rest of the members together. When this power is divided between two or more parties, it is a recipe for failure.

Mayawati and the BJP once teamed up as equals, but it did not work. The BJP tied up with the Janata Dal (Secular) of Deve Gowda in an equal partnership in Karnataka in the last decade, but that too did not work. If you don’t accept who is senior partner and who is junior, you cannot work together.

The Shiv Sena-BJP partnership in Maharashtra is withering at the roots, primarily due to the inability of the two partners to decide who is going to be the lead player. Before 2014, it was the Sena. Post-BJP, the Sena is not reconciled to the BJP’s rise to the leadership role. The Akali Dal-BJP coalition in Punjab worked because no one is in any doubt who is the leader.

The Janata Party coalition of 1977 that uprooted the Congress party after the emergency could not hold together even for three years despite a massive majority. The V P Singh government of 1989-90, and the United Front governments of 1996-98 – where weak leaders were propped up by larger parties that stayed on the outside – had no hope in hell of surviving, despite playing the politics of caste or religion.

The United Democratic Front (UDF) in Kerala holds primarily because it is a coalition led by two minority interests – Muslims and Christians – with a smattering of smaller parties in support. The day Muslim and Christians fall apart, the UDF is over. The Left Democratic Front in West Bengal remained in power for 33 years because the Communist Party of India (Marxist) was big daddy. The rest were rag-tag parties eager just for a share in power.

The Atal Behari Vajpayee-led NDA-1 remained in power for six years because the BJP provided the spine. The United Progressive Alliance remained in power longer for adding another glue to the Congress’ own numbers: the glue of corruption. Once you allow constituent parties to make money from their ministries, no one has a reason to defect.

This does not mean a Mahagathbandhan will not be formed before 2019, or that it cannot bring the BJP down some notches, if not send it crashing to defeat. But it cannot hold together. To expect Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav to stay together once the BJP has been dethroned is foolish.

The real mahagathbandhan – one with a small ‘m’ – that holds is one of chemistry and people-to-people alignments. The BJP-led NDA is a subtle mahagathbandhan of various Hindu castes, and each has a share in power as part of a broader, mildly Hindu, coalition, led by an acceptable leader. It is not a coalition of parties, but aligned interests.

There can be natural mahagathbandhans decided by chemistry, and unnatural ones led by pure arithmetic. Bihar till recently was the latter; Uttar Pradesh in the last assembly elections was an illustration of the former.

The BJP as a party will be unbeatable once it seals two other castes into its small ‘m’ mahagathbandhan – the Yadavs of UP and Bihar, and Dalits everywhere. It is still a work in progress and by no means a certainty.