Rationally Speaking: Alliance Or No Alliance, It’s Win-Win For Kejriwal 

You can also read this article in Hindi- तर्कसंगत चर्चा- गठबंधन हो या न हो, केजरीवाल को दोनों ओर से लाभ

Arvind Kejriwal’s incessant pestering of the Congress leadership for an alliance has a mix of irony and comedy to it. For a man who once claimed to have taken upon himself the task of cleaning Indian polity of corruption – as some leader does every 25 years or so, him pleading before the Congress party for an alliance is tragicomic.

The rhetoric he’s employing is that Narendra Modi and Amit Shah are dangerous for the country and so he is willing to make compromises for the sake of the nation. That he manages to say it with a straight face itself may tempt someone like me to vote for him. However, there ought to be a well-thought out strategy behind this than making a mockery of himself this way.

What could that be?

I have a possible explanation. In a first-past-the-post system like ours, multi-candidate elections can produce winners that would lose to most candidates in a head-to-head contest. It is not a terrible assumption to say that Bharatiya Janata Party would perform significantly worse if Congress and Aam Aadmi Party formed an alliance for this reason. In the past, Congress has encouraged such short-term alliances by letting regional players grow at its cost to keep “communal forces at bay”.

But, the AAP poses a threat in one of the very few areas where Congress is traditionally strong – New Delhi. So, obviously, it does not make much sense for Congress to ally with AAP even though that might cause some pain to the BJP in the short term. Of course, Kejriwal is aware of this. So, he is banking on solving the co-ordination problem.

Essentially, if all the voters of Congress and AAP realised that them voting for their preferred party might benefit BJP, they may rally behind only one of either Congress or AAP. This is roughly what happened in Delhi assembly elections in 2015. Kejriwal’s cries for an alliance are, perhaps, meant to impress upon voters that they should vote strategically and align behind one of Congress or AAP.

What if they all co-ordinate on Congress? Why would Kejriwal risk losing his entire base? First, I think Kejriwal is aware that most of his voters are die-hard AAP supporters. Second, reasoning this way requires a bit of sophistication.

I would guess, therefore, in such situations, the leader of the party who is more certain about the relative lack of sophistication of his supporters would try to woo the other party into the alliance. If the alliance happens, he wins. If not, he manages to get somewhat strategic voters from the other fold to vote for him while losing little of his base.

You can read previous posts of 'Rationally Speaking' here:

1. Rationally Speaking: Does Social Media Aggravate Bias Or Reduce It?