JOIN USTwo layers to the Indian Opposition
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s public declaration that he would work in right earnest for Opposition unity begs the question whether it is a mirage or can it become a reality. First, a comment about Bihar itself that has 40 Lok Sabha seats, of which the NDA with Nitish a part of it back then, won 39 in the 2019 contest, completely decimating the RJD-Congress alliance.
That cannot be repeated with the Nitish Kumar-led JD(U), now in alliance with the Tejashwi Yadav-led RJD, which has the largest voter base among state parties. The Congress is also part of the alliance, which helps with the idea of nurturing opposition unity in Bihar. The social base of the coalition now ruling Bihar suggests that the NDA could lose a number of seats from the state.
Yet, some recent by-election results for assembly seats in Bihar suggest that the BJP is fighting hard. There has been a deep penetration of the national party in the administration, police and even large sections of the media in the state that certainly impacts narrative construction. The bye-election losses also raise questions about the Bihar ruling alliance’s capacity for electoral management in a scenario now confronted by all Opposition parties that all the political finance is headed the BJP’s way while the Enforcement Directorate and Income Tax authorities are headed their way.
Besides, the state that enforces prohibition, a template Nitish Kumar policy said to be popular with women, has been in the news after recent cases of deaths following the consumption of illicit liquor. The CM has, however, been adamant that there will be no compensation for families of such victims and no rollback of prohibition. He obviously sees it as a popular policy. But the more impactful but complex political card in the JD(U)-RJD arsenal is the decision to have a caste census. This is a live issue in a state such as Bihar, which has limited industrial growth, one of the largest migrations of its workforce and intense competition for government jobs and reservation in education. The last caste census was conducted in 1931, and the expectation is that it would show an increase in the numbers of Dalits, Adivasis, and OBCs and smaller numbers than are estimated for the upper castes.
This is a particularly relevant issue after the Supreme Court upheld the 10 per cent reservation for economically weaker sections that include the upper castes, and therefore, in the view of critics, a complete reversal of the initial logic for reservation that is historical ostracism/backwardness. Nitish Kumar welcomed the EWS quota but was one of the first to say that the 50 per cent cap on reservations should also be lifted as it deprives OBCs and EBCs of their share of reservations in proportion to their population numbers.
In the days of domination of Mandal era politics in the Gangetic belt, the demand for a caste census would have ignited politics in other stretches, such as Uttar Pradesh, which sends 80 MPs to Parliament. But currently, it is not clear whether the issue will have carriage outside Bihar. In Uttar Pradesh, the grip of the BJP is strong, both ideologically and socially and the logic of Mandir could have subsumed Mandal.
The question is, what does the idea of Opposition unity mean on the varied grounds of India? For the purposes of clarity, the Opposition can be divided into two streams, the first including parties that have a working relationship with the Congress and the second, those regional parties that do not. For instance, outside Bihar, the Congress is also a junior partner in the DMK-led Front that rules Tamil Nadu (the state sends 39 MPs to Parliament). It is also part of the Maha Vikas Aghadi in Maharashtra that remains intact. Although the Uddhav Thackeray-led regime in Maharashtra (that sends 48 MPs to the Lok Sabha) collapsed earlier this year after a group split and formed a government with the BJP, the alliance remains intact. Its constituents remain the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena, the NCP and Congress.
But then, there are also parties that do not have a working relationship with the Congress. The most significant is the Trinamool Congress which rules West Bengal that sends 42 MPs to Parliament. In the 2019 national election, the TMC won just 22 seats and 43.3 per cent of the vote, while the BJP did remarkably well with 18 seats and 40 per cent of the vote. However, the assembly election of 2021 was a disappointment for the BJP, losing the state poll decisively and getting just 77 seats and a vote share of just under 38 per cent, which was 10 per cent less than that of the TMC, which picked up 215 seats.
Yet the constant Enforcement Directorate action against the TMC top leadership has put the regional party under pressure. On the issue of Opposition Unity, the same Mamata Banerjee who came storming out of her citadel after the 2021 state win promising to create a national Opposition, has retreated after a dud campaign in the state of Goa and souring of relations with a high-profile election manager. Her relations with the Congress remain hot and cold, but at the end of the day, she would be fighting the BJP, and since Congress vote shares in Bengal have collapsed, the national party cannot really queer the pitch for her.
There are two regional parties in power in the respective states of Andhra Pradesh (25 Lok Sabha seats) and Telangana (17 Lok Sabha seats) that do not have good relations with the Congress. Sadly for the Congress, undivided Andhra Pradesh was its strongest bastion when the UPA was last in power at the Centre, but that’s frittered away now. In Andhra Pradesh, the Jagan Mohan Reddy-led YSR Congress Party is said to have a good grip on the state, and there is very little left of the old Congress from which the party was birthed. Telangana CM K Chandrashekar Rao has been one of the strongest proponents of Opposition unity but minus the Congress, which he still sees as a threat in his state where the BJP has also marked a presence. It’s hard to see figures such as him and Jagan Reddy, who gained on the ruins of the Congress, become part of a structured pre-poll Opposition alliance. The same logic applies to AAP, which is in power in Punjab and Delhi after defeating Congress.
Therefore the path is not linear, and the road vanishes at times. Still, if the Congress does revive in states where it is in direct contest with the BJP, then Opposition unity looks feasible. Right now, the Bharat Jodo Yatra puts it on the right path in terms of ideas, but in their bases, regional parties remain stronger electoral opponents to the BJP. It’s a complex algorithm to crack, but at the end of the day, it’s a question of survival for both the Congress and diverse regional forces. After all, the one-man, one-party BJP model also comes with a bulldozer.
(Saba Naqvi is a journalist and author)
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.