India's diversity promises shaky coalition yet again

India's masses go to the polls next week in a wide-open election that no single party can win, leaving the prospect of a shaky coalition government of disparate and often ill-suited "allies".
The world's largest democratic exercise will be held over five stages from April 16 to May 13, allowing 6.1 million security and poll personnel to fan out across 543 parliamentary constituencies in 28 states.
India's two main national parties -- the incumbent Congress and its opposition rival the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) -- both know they have no chance of winning enough seats to govern alone.
Consequently, "victory" for either means emerging as the single largest party and then winning over the greatest number of regional parties to secure a parliamentary majority.
For some observers, the growing number and clout of regional parties is a proud reflection of India's diversity, with its 1.1 billion people, dozens of languages and at least six major religions.
But others fear being governed by weak and increasingly unwieldy coalitions where national policy is hostage to the whims of small groups catering to their own parochial constituencies.
India needs "a seasoned leadership to tackle major problems facing the country which are a sharply slowing economy and political volatility in our immediate neighbourhood in South Asia", said political analyst Neerja Chowdhury.
"But we seem to be heading for a fractured mandate," Chowdhury said.
Although some parties will contest the polls as a coalition, the decisive alliance building will take place in what is being called the election's "sixth phase" -- after the results have come in.
Yogendra Yadav, senior fellow at Centre for Study of Developing Societies, sees this final round of political horse trading as a betrayal of voter intentions.
"The problem with post-poll alliances is that they leave the people out," said Yadav, arguing that the final make-up of the government should not be left in the hands of party "middlemen".
Two veteran politicians are the main contenders for the prime minister's office -- the 76-year-old current premier Manmohan Singh of the Congress Party and the BJP's LK Advani, an 81-year-old former home minister.
The two men have traded personal campaign barbs, with Singh portraying Advani as a divisive sectarian and Advani dismissing the prime minister as a "weak" puppet controlled by Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
In the wake of last year's attacks on Mumbai, both parties have sought to position themselves as the natural guardians of India's national security, as well as the best choice for steering the country through the current global economic crisis.
India's fragmented political structure and vast size means that few parties can claim countrywide appeal. That, and a strong sense of religious and social identity, mean that local and regional issues will be more to the fore.
"Local issues in the end are going to dominate... and often of the worst and lowest common denominator -- caste and communal mobilisation," said Ajay Sahni, executive director of the Institute of Conflict Management in New Delhi.
On the campaign trail, Congress is banking on the charisma of its star campaigners from the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty -- Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul, the 38-year-old great-grandson of India's first premier Jawaharlal Nehru.
Advani, despite his age, has kept up a punishing campaign schedule and has been photographed lifting hand weights under the slogan: "He has the experience of 80 and the enthusiasm of 20."
Advani is best known for leading a Hindu revivalist campaign in the early 1990s that breathed fresh life into his party but polarised Hindu and Muslim sentiment.
Neither Congress nor the BJP is expected to garner more than 150 seats, and their combined share of the popular vote is unlikely to top 50 percent.
Alliances are proving a headache for both parties with some regional groups sensing an opportunity to play hardball and waiting to see how the election results pan out before committing themselves.
Others have come together in a loose alliance of left-leaning and regional parties called the "Third Front" which is pushing itself as a viable alternative to the Congress- and BJP-led coalitions.
One major regional grouping, The Bahujan Samajwadi Party (Dalit Society Party), has gone a step further by announcing its intention to fight as a national party and to challenge the big two in their strongholds.
The BSP is led by the charismatic Mayawati Kumari, 53, a firebrand orator and self-styled champion of India's Dalits -- the oppressed class formerly known as untouchables.
Mayawati has made no secret of her ambition to emulate Barack Obama's success in India, and become the country's first "untouchable" prime minister.