No pain no gain

No pain no gain

The price of BSP support for defeating BJP worries Congress as much as another defeat.

In the end, Congress dreams of BSP help to end 15 years of BJP rule in Madhya Pradesh collided with BSP’s desire to piggyback on Congress across the Hindi heartland. Without a doubt, BJP is the gainer in the second mahagathbandhan failure after Chhattisgarh. Mayawati was unsparing in her criticism of Congress leaders and their commitment to end BJP rule, before directing her ire at Digvijaya Singh for his remark on probe agencies pursuing the BSP supremo. Interestingly, she left a window open for Rahul and Sonia Gandhi, a sign that it may still be early days to completely write off opposition unity.

After Bihar, the gathbandhan idea revived at HD Kumaraswamy’s swearing in ceremony where the bonhomie between opposition leaders, and especially between Sonia Gandhi and Mayawati, was hard to miss. Smaller parties regularly tout Congress’s successive defeats in Gujarat, Karnataka, Manipur, Goa and Uttarakhand which were essentially BJP-Congress contests – to highlight its need for allies. But it would appear that a pre-poll alliance is more difficult for Congress leaders to swallow than a defeat.

The prospect of a BSP rise at Congress expense is not a remote possibility given the precedent of Uttar Pradesh where BSP appropriated Congress’s residual Dalit vote bank after their 1996 alliance. By the 1970s and 80s, when socialist parties made inroads into the OBC category, Congress could still count on Muslim and Dalit votes. BSP’s ascendancy, at least in UP, was a body blow to Congress even as it can be relieved that BSP’s expansion slowed when Mayawati subsumed the Bahujan discourse to her personality cult.

The BSP leader has her own personal and political compunctions in driving a hard bargain. The party’s vote share had dipped in MP, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh in 2013 after peaking in 2008. New Dalit leaders like Chandrashekhar Azad Ravan are gaining traction. The upcoming elections in the three states are critical for both Congress and BSP to regain credibility. Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav has exhorted Congress to show a “large heart” and accommodate BSP. But with Congress and BSP finding no common ground against BJP it is Akhilesh, as UP’s main opposition leader, who will have to show generosity to allies if the gathbandhan idea is to survive in India’s most politically important state. Akhilesh will face the same problems too, which gives BJP sufficient reason to smile.