AFTER the sordid drama over the confidence vote in the Manmohan Singh government, three trends are visible. First, the United Progressive Alliance achieved only a tarnished triumph through horse-trading. Gone is the halo around Dr Singh as someone who wouldn't stoop low to conquer.
Second, the Bharatiya Janata Party has come a cropper despite its efforts to buy support. Its ploy to depict itself as a victim of the Rs one crore "cash-for-votes" scam hasn't worked. The sting/entrapment footage, meant to indict Mr Amar Singh, is apparently blurred and falls short of clinching evidence.
The BJP is utterly confused in its reaction to the committee set up by Speaker Somnath Chatterjee to investigate the scandal. Former Home Minister LK Advani knew he should have reported the scam to the police, but instead exploited it politically.
He repeatedly pressed CNN-IBN to air the sting footage. But when CNN-IBN didn't oblige, the BJP decided to boycott it, a form of pressure bordering on blackmail.
The BJP petulantly says it won't cooperate with the "illegitimate" UPA, even on shared economic agendas. Worse, Ms Sushma Swaraj has plumbed the depths by accusing the UPA of having stage-managed the Bangalore and Ahmedabad blaststo divert attention from the "cash-for-votes" scam!
Third, the Bahujan Samaj Party's Mayawati has been catapulted to the national forefront as a new magnet for the United National Progressive Alliance parties, despite having only 17 Lok Sabha seats. The number of parties supporting her has doubled.
Ms Mayawati's high-profile national entry has ended the near-isolation of the Left after Dr Singh deceitfully approached the International Atomic Energy Agency . It has also eclipsed BJP Prime-Minister-in-waiting Advani from the headlines.
The BSP is a rising star. In Uttar Pradesh, it relentlessly expanded its vote-share and seatsfrom 9.4 percent and 11 seats in 1989, to 11.1 percent and 67 in 1993, to 19.6 percent and 67 in 1996, to 23.2 percent and 98 in 2002.
Last year, it bagged an even more impressive 30.5 percent vote and 206 of 403 seats to become UP's first party to win a majority in 17 years.
The key to this dazzling success lay in the BSP's garnering of non-Dalit, especially upper-caste, votes. It also broke into the SP's traditional Muslim base. Its 26 Muslim MLAs outnumber the SP's 21.
This is the first time that a Dalit-centred party has acquired such a broad base anywhere in India.
The BSP now has MLAs in Bihar, Rajasthan, Chhhattisgarh, Haryana and Uttarakhand. It commands the fourth biggest share (5.3 percent) of the national votehigher than the SP's 4.3 and slightly lower than the CPM's 5.7.
Ms Mayawati is a stellar media figure because she's a Dalit and a single woman, who has fought against heavy odds, including dire poverty and male prejudice. Suddenly, the battlefield for India's Prime Ministership has expanded to include her.
But can Ms Mayawati become the core of a new Third Front? The UNPA-Left has a respectable 20 percent of the national vote and 94 Lok Sabha MPs. Some UNPA constituents, like the Telugu Desam, are likely to grow in the next election. So hopefully, it's said, the Third Front may be in the reckoning.
This linear calculus is based on wishful thinking like the inclusion of the Left's 59 seats, which may not happen. It also places abundant faith in the BSP's ability to poach on other parties.
But during the recent crisis, the BSP could only engineer a minuscule number of cross-votesdespite its readiness to use foul means.
But let's analyse things clinically. Crucial to the success of any party in becoming the fulcrum of a broad front are three factors, besides its numerical strength: ability to provide political cohesion and ideological cement to alliances; forming a bridge between a strongly ideology-driven current like the Left, and disparate regional parties; and ability to build broad, mutually beneficial coalitions.
None of these holds true of the BSP. Its strongly Dalit-centred ideology, even coupled with "social engineering", cannot provide the glue to sustainably unite regionalist and ethnic sub-regionalist parties, leave alone the ideologically fired Left.
The BSP lacks a wide-horizon ideology or vision with distinct positions on matters like the world order, economic policy, secularism, and human rights and security. It's also deeply compromised with communalism, having allied not once, but three times, with the BJP in UP.
This is also true of most UNPA constituents, which had past alliances with the BJP. Their future desertion would reduce the UNPA to an empty shell.
The BSP cannot provide a bridge between the Left and UNPA allies. It has no special affinity with the Left, which has always criticised it for its "non-ideological" approach and corruption.
It's hard to characterise the BSP as a Left-of-Centre force, with a compassionate, humane agenda. Its notion of inclusiveness has more in common with patronage than a shared collective destiny.
Finally, the BSP cannot easily provide alliances through which its partners gain without cutting into each other's vote-bases. Its strong base is confined to UP. It only has a 3 to 5 percent vote in other Northern states, barring Madhya Pradesh and Punjab, where it crossed 7 percent.
This makes it a formidable spoiler, not a winner. The BSP can of course transfer its votes to allies where it's strong. But the reverse isn't true.
The BSP is certain to improve its Lok Sabha tally, probably to 45, even 60 seats. But it'll find it hard to replicate the UP model. The conditions that made that possible politicisation of subaltern layers, a prolonged political impasse, and upper-caste alienation from major parties don't exist in other states. Outside UP, its gains will probably be small.
The UNPA will have a future only if the Left backs it. But the Left cannot ignore the unsavoury past of many UNPA constituents, or Ms Mayawati's monumental opportunism, corruption and personality cult.

Praful Bidwai is an eminent Indian columnist.