SOROOR AHMED discusses the relevance or otherwise of a third front in the present political scenario. He opines that people are no longer attracted towards so-called parties based on dynastic rule or communalism.
There always exists a space for the Third Front in India, that is, between dynastic rule and the communal politics. But there is a problem too. Those in the so-called third camp either have their own brand of dynasty – Chandrababu Naidu, Jayalalithaa, Mulayam Singh or so on – or they have their own political compulsions.
In this way the non-emergence of the genuine Third Front in the Indian politics can be interpreted as the weakness of our democracy. The two big parties the Congress and the BJP have for the last so many years been surviving just because they either indulged in the dynastic rule or shamelessly pursued the communal politics.
If the dynasty keeps itself aloof – as it did in the mid-1990s – the Congress slides into oblivion. Similarly a strong section of the BJP thinks that it is out of power because it adopted soft-Hindutva. It can come to power only after whipping up another round of communal passions. The use of CD in the recently held assembly election in Uttar Pradesh was the part of that thinking. Thus dynasty and Hindutva politics are the USPs of both these two major parties of the country.
For the first four decades, barring a brief period of about three years (1977-80), there was one party rule in the country. After that came the age of non-Congress and non-BJP alliances. This was followed by the BJP and Congress-led alliances. They are the National Democratic Alliance and the United Progressive Alliance.
Now there is talk of reviving what is called the Third Front. Some defeated and disgruntled politicians of different states sat in Hyderabad to chalk out a plan to come up with a non-BJP and non-Congress alliance. This is not a new experiment. It was tried in 1990s, but with little success. However, a close look would suggest that the champions of third combination had often allied either with the BJP or the Congress.
For example the Janata Dal leader, Vishwanath Pratap Singh, had to seek the support of both the Left and the BJP – true from outside – to come to power in 1989. This was the post-poll arrangement. And when his government collapsed after the BJP withdrew support 11 months later and Chandrashekar became the Prime Minister the latter could do so only with the help of the Congress, which was till a year ago his bitterest enemy.
However, it is in the mid-1990s that two such Fronts came up. The first one was the National Front under H D Deve Gowda (1996-97) and the second one was the United Front under Inder Kumar Gujral (1997-98). Save the change in leadership the two Fronts were absolutely the same. Even the ministers in both the Union cabinets continued to held the same portfolios. Both Gowda and Gujral ruled for about 11 months each.
Though most of the constituents of these two Fronts fought the 1996 parliamentary election on the slogan of anti-BJP, anti-Congress both Gowda and Gujral governments survived on the outside support of the Congress. Both the governments collapsed after Congress party, then led by Sitaram Kesri, withdrew support.
But the recent move to set up the Third Front by some of these elements who were part of the past Fronts has something to do with their respective political ambitions. As the election is far away they just wanted to keep themselves alive in the media. In fact Mulayam Singh Yadav just faced an election which he lost. Thus save the Presidential election there is absolutely no such relevance of the Third Front just now.
But with the BJP’s communal card not working any more and Sonia Gandhi’s dynastic magic not attracting so many voters now there certainly is scope for the genuine third option. Whether the political parties are realizing its importance or not or whether they are serious or not at some places the people have thrown up surprising results. For example in Assam last year a front formed by the Muslims secured a substantial number of seats. Though the BJP was expecting that the division of Muslim votes would help it come to power with the Asom Gana Parishad its dream remained unfulfilled. The Congress managed to remain in power, but secured much less number of seats.
Another interesting result was of Malegaon Municipal Corporation election held recently. Out of 72 seats 26 were won by the Indian Muslim Congress Party, a hurriedly prepared group which came up after the last year’s blast. All the other parties, including the BJP, Congress and Nationalist Congress Party fared rather badly.
Ironically the Muslim group with the help of Shiv Sena and some other smaller groups managed to capture the Malegaon Municipal Corporation. Shiv Sena and the Muslim group may be strange bedfellows but this development is a pointer to the fact that at many places people genuinely hate both the Congress and the BJP. For many they are the two sides of the same coin as they have the same economic, foreign, and domestic policies. In many states the Congress is pursing the same communal politics for which the BJP is notorious.
At the state level be it Lalu Yadav or Mulayam Singh Yadav, the Left in West Bengal, Tripura or Kerala, Chandrababu Naidu, Karunanidhi or Jayalalithaa all were initially the product of the non-Congressism and later non-BJPism. But since none of these parties can emerge as the national alternative they had to join hands with either the BJP-led or Congress-led alliance. At the later stage in the state politics too Lalu and Mulayam had to rely on the Congress to run their respective governments.
There is no denying the fact that at many places in the country the Congress and the BJP now win elections by default. The people, it seems, do not give votes to them out of love for their views, ideology or programme. The virtual absence of national level political parties is really a matter of concern for the Indian democracy. Dynasty and communalism cannot work as a magic wand for ever.