SMALL IS BIG

There are very few nice things to say about the current presidential election campaign. It’s been malicious, slanderous and frankly below the belt. Simply not befitting the country’s first office. But one of the positive fallouts of this vicious exercise has been the genesis of the UNPA. Or should we say, the resurrection of the third front in a new name.

A wise old politician once said that "third front dreams are pipe dreams. It exists only in the fantasies of out of power Chief Ministers." Agreed that Chandrababu Naidu, Jayalalithaa, Mulayam Singh and Om Prakash Chautala are all out of power Chief Ministers who are lurking to get back. But their ambitions are not a pipe dream. I believe, come 2009, these regional satraps will hold the key to the corridors of power in Delhi. And here’s why.

First, if one were to go by the simple thumb rule of anti-incumbency all the constituents of the UNPA are likely to benefit in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. Even by the most conservative terms, the seven party alliance should be able to notch up about 80 to a 100 seats. Which would mean that for either the NDA or the UPA to come to power, they will need a little bit of help from friends within the UNPA.

Neither the UPA nor the NDA seems to be in a position to storm back to power on their own. The backbone of the UPA is its allies comprising of the Left, DMK, RJD and NCP. All these parties stand to lose in the 2009 elections because of the cyclical nature of anti-incumbency. But none of the NDA partners are in a position to capitalise on the UPA's losses. Hence this should go to the UNPA's kitty.

Gone are the days when the road to Delhi passed through Lucknow. Today it passes through Chennai and Hyderabad. Both the NDA and UPA managed to come to power because of a substantial number of seats from Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. Hence the importance of being Amma or Babugaaru.

But does that mean a third front government is going to walk the famous path up Raisina Hill? Not quite. The famous Indian Express Editor Shekhar Gupta had written in one of his columns that for a stable polity at the center, the combined strength of the Congress and the BJP has to exceed 300 seats. The Congress and the Jan Sangh/BJP have outnumbered the regional players in every single Lok Sabha since 1952. To put that same point in another way, a non-Congress, non-BJP government can come about only when the combined strength of prospective third front constituents exceeds the combined tally of the Congress and the BJP. Which is why the Mulayams and Lalus and Naidus of the country will always be kingmakers and can never become King.

The fallout of this has been that successive third front governments have been at the mercy of either the BJP or the Congress. The Janata party in 77, the National Front in 89 or even the United Front in 96 and 97. But, unstable as it may seem, the third front is the ultimate manifestation of India’s federal polity, which enables smaller regional parties to call the shots at the centre. So here’s to the political baby in the cradle. In the big bad world of Indian politics, small is big.