Third Front: A new twist in Indian politics

TWO remarkable political events occurred in South Asia in March. One was in Pakistan and the other one in India.
On 12th March, at the meeting of nine left-leaning and regional parties, a Third Front was constituted to give the country another political alternative after the Lok Sabha elections, taking place in April-May. This move was to do away with a two-horse race with the country's oldest political party, the Congress, vying with the Hindu nationalists, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
On 16th March, Prime Minister of Pakistan Gilani conceded to the demands of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to restore (not to reinstate) the top judge of the Supreme Court Iftikhar Chaudhry and his colleagues sacked by President General Musharraf on 3rd of November 2007 when he declared the emergency. This announcement ushered in rule of law and road to democracy in Pakistan.
Politics in India have taken a new shape over the last decade. No more can all-India national parties command influence in all states or obtain majority in the Parliament. They have to form coalition with minor parties to constitute governments in New Delhi. The days of Congress majority government in New Delhi have disappeared as was seen during Indira Gandhi's era.
India is so large with its 1.5 billion people that regional interests override national interests and that is the reason why regional parties, based on caste or state-issues, do well in states. Regional parties are often personality-based and personality clash exists within the states.
Some of the regional parties are like "snakes" that wiggle in or out from New Delhi governments according to the wishes of the leaders of the regional parties. They want to extract maximum "pound of flesh" from national governments for themselves and their supporters.
Both BJP and Congress-led governments in New Delhi have formed coalition governments with nineteen or twenty parties. By forming coalition governments, the major parties have to compromise with their manifestoes to keep their governments united. The current Congress-led UPA (United Progressive Alliance is a coalition of twenty parties.
The parties making up the Third Front have around 70 seats between them in the 543-member lower house of parliament, most of them belonging to the communists. But they are looking forward to making other smaller parties such as the Biju Janata Dal (BJD), which heads the government in Orissa.
"India needs an alternative to the so-called national parties," Chandrababu Naidu, chief of the Telegu Desam Party, a prominent member of the Third Front, told reporters. "If the Front's numbers are really good then the Congress could be forced to extend support to its government to keep the BJP out," said independent analyst Kuldip Nayar.
In India, the two-party system has been disappearing fast by a bewildering array of political parties claiming to represent various interest groups in a country of more than one billion people, dozens of regional languages and at least six major religions.
Deve Gowda has spearheaded the loosely-knit coalition, whose most prominent parties are the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), the Telugu Desam Party and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagan representing the states of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu respectively. Gowda led one of the few non-Congress and non-BJP governments as Prime Minister in 1996, but his tenure lasted less than a year.
The ambitions of regional political leaders have been demonstrated by the fact that some of them wish to follow Gowda's example to prime ministership. Mayawati, a dalit (untouchable), the Bahujan Samaj Party leader who heads the Uttar Pradesh government, proposes to field her party candidates for 450 seats of parliament.
Mayabati recently hosted a dinner for the leaders of the Third Front and made it clear that she would join it if she was nominated prime minister. Ultimately, she agreed that every party would keep its options open and decide about the leader after the elections. The differences were too many to be resolved. Another female leader Jayalalitha, a former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, also singled her ambition.
Neerja Chowdhury, columnist for the Indian Express newspaper, blamed the national parties' downhill side on their lack of "charismatic pan-India leaders with mass appeal." Their decline could be gauged from the fact that the Congress and BJP are in straight fights only in 8 out of 28 states.
It seems that the smaller parties are expected to play hardball with Congress and BJP. For some years the Congress or BJP has not been able to form governments in New Delhi because the two-party system has disappeared as various smaller parties represent interest groups in a country.
In recent days, CPI-M veteran leader Jyoti Basu expressed that it would be difficult in constituting the Third Front and this has put CPI-M into uncomfortable position with the supporters of Third Front.
Another dimension of Indian politics is the use of religion by Hindu nationalists. There is a political calculation in BJP in dividing Indian people on communal lines for the sake of creating safe vote-banks. It is difficult to create a solid Hindu vote bank for they are divided on caste lines. Varun Gandhi's recent alleged inflammatory communal statement is an instance in point. The alleged statement has disappointed secular-minded people in India and BJP supports Varun's candidate in the election. Investigation is going on to verify the veracity of his statement to which he denied. In recent days, both Prime Minister and the prime ministerial candidate from BJP leader L.K Advani had a war of words against each other on their records.
This is a "replay of the 1990s," said Subhash Agrawal, political analyst and editor of India Focus magazine, referring to the anti-BJP and anti-Congress alliances that take shape every election year. He said poor planning and inflated egos were likely to prevent the Third Front from ever forming a government. "These people don't even want to campaign with each other sometimes," he added.
Only the future will tell whether the optimism generated by the Third Front is justified. That both the Congress and the BJP are mocking its creation shows that they are jittery.
A recent poll by Nielson for the Star News channel predicts a Congress Party is likely to secure the most seats (about 257 seats) in the 543- member of the Lok Sabha but not enough to govern alone. The Third Front could hold the balance of power after the election.
Some political observers say Indian politics is like an onion, with alternating layers of blame and counter-blame going all way from now until the election in April-May. The state of Indian politics reminds us of what Sir Winston Churchill said: "Politics is more dangerous than war, for in war you are killed once."
The author is former Bangladesh Ambassador to the UN, Geneva.