MAHAGATHBANDHAN sweeps Bihar! Many newspapers ran a variation of this headline last November to describe the victory of the alliance of three parties: the Janata Dal United JD(U), Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the Congress over the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led National Democratic Alliance (NDA). The scale of this defeat for the NDA was probably as stunning as its victory in May 2014. In the 16th Lok Sabha elections, the BJP-led NDA had wiped the competition clean in Bihar – as in many other states – by winning 31 of the 40 Lok Sabha seats. This was the BJP’s best ever performance both at the national level and in Bihar.

The mahagathbandhan (MG), literally meaning ‘grand alliance’, formed shortly after the 2014 general elections, was the result of a strategic choice made by the vanquished after their disastrous performance.¹ Notwithstanding the MG’s claims of being an alliance based on principles and ideas, its primary and almost sole interest was to check the BJP, which had become the first party in thirty years to obtain a majority of its own in the Lok Sabha. Post the general elections, the BJP in many ways came to occupy the traditional Congress position as the party against which the opposition could potentially unite.

Yogendra Yadav’s pithy formulation of number 1, 2 and 4 [JD(U) + RJD + Congress] coming together to defeat 3 (BJP) summarizes and illustrates both the strategic as well as the narrow scope of the MG.² Yet, the victory of the MG over the BJP-led NDA in the assembly elections more than a year after the Lok Sabha elections came against great odds. This paper has a limited agenda – it examines the origins of the alliance, its sustainability and speculates on its future prospects.

Post-poll survey results after the general elections showed that a consolidation of upper castes, dalits and economically backward castes worked in favour of the BJP-led NDA giving it an edge over its competitors.³ The NDA obtained a bulk of the lower OBC votes, a group which traditionally supported the JD(U). Similarly, it also obtained more votes from the dalit castes as compared to the RJD-Congress alliance and the JD(U). At the same time, the survey underlined the Yadavs continued preference for the RJD-Congress alliance. In terms of the traditional regions of the state, the NDA performed well across the state, while the RJD-Congress alliance did well only in eastern Bihar. The JD(U), the ruling party, not only did badly across the state but was also squeezed in its traditional stronghold region of Magadh.

 

The results show that the BJP’s social coalition did not merely threaten its competitors but had the potential to render them insignificant. The BJP had not only managed to consolidate its base but also expand it. The results threatened each of the defeated parties in different ways. For the RJD and the JD(U), it indicated that their social bases were shaky and for the Congress, nothing could have been more ominous than the emergence of the BJP as the single largest party.

At the same time there was hope, at least a mathematical one, based on the working of the single-member simple plurality (SMSP) electoral systems. In SMSP electoral systems, in which one candidate with the largest number of votes is returned from a constituency, parties have an incentive to share constituencies among themselves before the election to prevent a wastage of votes. Theoretically, pre-electoral alliances and/or seat adjustments lead to a more successful translation of votes into seats. This collusive behaviour is supposed to work to the benefit of the alliance partners, as they would pool their votes in favour of the single candidate of their alliance in each constituency. Theoretically, it is expected that the supporters of a party would vote for allied parties in constituencies where it is not contesting and likewise receive votes from allies in constituencies it contests.

In SMSP systems, multiparty competition without pre-electoral alliances and/or seat adjustments not only leads to vote wastage but also makes competition uncertain. In Bihar, a triangular contest has always worked to the advantage of the BJP-led NDA, since the votes against the NDA get divided between the competing parties, leaving the NDA candidates with the largest number of votes. In the past, the fact that either the Congress or the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) had stayed away from the RJD helped the NDA. A variation of this happened again in 2014, with the non-NDA being broken into two separate blocs, the JD(U) and the RJD-Congress respectively. Though the combined vote share of the non-NDA parties (47%) in the general elections was much higher than that of the NDA (39%), the fragmentation of votes among the non-NDA parties left them with only nine seats. There were, therefore, important lessons in the defeat.

 

The alliance formation began hesitatingly and went through a series of steps and a few mis-steps before the MG finally succeeded in November 2015. The process began in May 2014 when the Congress and the RJD supported a motion of confidence in favour of the Jitan Ram Manjhi-led JD(U) government. Soon after, in June they also supported the ruling party’s candidates in the elections to the Rajya Sabha. In August 2014, the three parties reached an agreement for the by-elections to the legislative assembly. Their success in the by-elections pushed the alliance forward. The JD(U) subsequently helped the RJD win a seat in the Legislative Council. However, two mis-steps quickly followed. First, the alliance did not hold in the neighbouring state of Jharkhand and the incipient formation of the Janata parivar also broke up with the Samajwadi Party (SP) moving out.

The grand alliance almost replicated the BJP campaign in the 2014 elections. First, it showed greater synergy by quickly working out a seat-sharing agreement. Second, it decided to project Nitish Kumar as the face of the alliance. Third, contrary to expectations, the MG’s campaign was also more focused thanks to the Indian Political Action Committee (IPAC) – a professional team.⁴ The IPAC strategy, which relied on marketing techniques for political communication, reduced the role of parties to implementing pre-worked out plans, narrowing the space for friction and allowed the alliance to present itself as a cohesive entity.

To translate the mathematical possibility into an electoral victory, the MG had to overcome three main challenges. These included unshackling the lock-in effect, bridging the social divide, and bettering the promise made by the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre. This paper does not examine how these challenges were actually addressed on the ground but only lays them out.

 

The coming together of traditionally rival parties in the MG had to first break what E. Sridharan called the ‘lock-in’ effect of coalition politics in India.⁵ It was assumed that parties will stick to particular coalition partners when they have limited choices outside of the alliance, especially if the choice is restricted to competing parties. Consequently, this restrictive choice leads to a lock-in effect, brings in a certain degree of stability and is one of the key elements of the explanation for the frequent formation of multiparty minority governments at the federal level in India.

The BJP’s alliances with the Shiromani Akali Dal (Badal) in Punjab, the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra and the JD(U) in Bihar would count amongst the long-standing alliances in the country, comparable to the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) and CPM-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) in Kerala and Left Front in West Bengal respectively. Repeated alliances over time reinforce patterns of competition and subsequently create a lock-in effect. Consequently, the space to manoeuvre reduces as party positions vis-a-vis competitors harden and parties become prisoners of their alliances. Under such circumstances, a change or reversal in positions will require enormous political will on the part of the actors involved.

 

If we only focus on the cooperative dimension of the coming together of political parties in alliances, as we are often prone to do, we will miss the impetus for change. Most coalitions are characterized by both ‘cooperative and competitive tensions’ between partners.⁶ While partners cooperate with each other vis-a-vis a rival front/party, they simultaneously also compete with each other for greater space/control over the alliance/front.⁷ The lock-in effect works only so far as these rival pressures are balanced. A party in an alliance has an incentive to break away when it calculates that the gains of defection are higher than cooperation.

The JD(U) walked out of its alliance with the BJP and the NDA, expressing ‘deep apprehensions’ over the appointment of Narendra Modi as chairman of the electoral campaign committee for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.⁸ The party claimed that the appointment was divisive and would not help attract more parties to the alliance. The split was in many ways a symbolic message intended to convey a lack of confidence in the BJP-led NDA and an attempt to open a new front. The Congress capitalized on the split by immediately supporting the JD(U) in the trust vote.

This break-up and the immediate support it received, created space for new relationships. Subsequently, after the 2014 elections, the formation of the grand alliance became easy because first, the ‘principal national opposition party,’⁹ the Congress, by then reduced to one among many players, was no longer a threat, and second, the rivals, JD(U) and the RJD felt that they would be better off together than separate. This unshackling allowed for elite collusion, the first step towards building an alliance.

 

The second challenge for the MG was to overcome the long history of social divide in the state. This was necessary to ensure that the different social groups transferred their votes to parties representing other social groups in the alliance. This has not been easy in Bihar given the nature of political mobilization over the last couple of decades.¹⁰ Caste groups have fragmented and been apportioned between parties, with each of them representing increasingly ‘narrower slices of the electorate’.¹¹ This mobilization strategy, often based on channelling resentment, not only pits groups against each other but has subsequently also affects what parties can do in government.¹² Consequently, notwithstanding an elite agreement among the leaders, a ‘coalition of extremes’ is easier to create and sustain than a coalition of social groups who happen to be closer to each other in the so-called rank hierarchy.

 

The animosity between the RJD and the JD(U) goes back a long way. The Samta Party, which subsequently metamorphosed into the JD(U), represented Koeri resentment with Yadav domination within the Janata Dal. As chief minister, Nitish Kumar had attempted to create a constituency among the more backward and economically weaker sections of the OBCs who too begrudged the Yadavs.¹³ Therefore, this coming together of elites may not have actually worked on the ground. In the past, for instance, both in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections and the 2010 assembly elections, the alliance between the RJD and LJP did not add up since the supporters of their respective parties did not vote for each other. In fact, in 2009, Ram Vilas Paswan lost from Hajipur, a stronghold constituency of the LJP.

The NDA, it appears from the various statements of its leaders, primarily banked on two negatives against the grand alliance. First, it believed that the contradictions between the allies and their differential demands during seat sharing would lead to a breakdown. Second, it also expected that the deep differences and distrust between different categories of voters of each of the parties in the alliance would prevent vote transferability.

 

The victory of the MG over the NDA indicates that the social divide was indeed bridged. How it actually managed to do so will require closer examination. However, the Lokniti-CSDS surveys do provide us some clues. They found that the acceptance for the alliance among different communities barring the upper castes, went up as the campaign progressed.¹⁴ This indicates that communities crossed constructed group boundaries when they favoured the alliance. This movement is not surprising since the survey also indicated that more people felt that their household economic condition had improved rather than deteriorated, and more voters felt that there had been ‘a lot of development’ compared to those who felt that there was ‘no development at all’ during the tenure. These voter perceptions were obviously based on the experience of considerable infrastructural development and governance reforms in Bihar during Nitish Kumar’s tenure.¹⁵ This positive feeling naturally created ‘more expectations’. Shastri, Kumar and Palshikar conclude that besides the strategy, there was a great deal of hard politics involved which pushed the MG home.¹⁶

 

In a federation with a strong Centre, the central government always looms large. The third major challenge for the MG was, therefore, to overcome the myriad ways in which the central government attempted to influence the election outcome. With the coming together of political parties in the MG, the BJP used the power of central government to not only derail and show the alliance in poor light, but also highlight the importance of the Centre for the advancement of the state.

Just before the elections were officially declared, the central government announced an economic package worth 1.25 lakh crore rupees for the state. Economic and development packages have time and again been used by political parties to sway voter preferences. The BJP believed this humongous development thrust would give it a political advantage by impressing upon voters that the central government held the key, and that it pays to be on the right side of the Centre.

The Centre it appears also played an active back room role in the unravelling of the incipient Janata parivar.¹⁷ In April 2015, six parties linked to the former Janata Party decided to merge and form a larger entity. However, a couple of months down the line, the coming together did not seem to be headed anywhere. The SP, a key constituent of the proposed new entity, moved closer to the BJP-led NDA during the monsoon session of Parliament and then subsequently opted out feigning ‘insult’. Media reports suggest that some sort of agreement was worked out between the SP and BJP, which led to the former opting out of the merger. It was speculated that the rapprochement was possible because the central government controlled the agencies probing numerous cases against the party leaders. The Congress too had previously used the same mechanism to ensure that the SP continued to support the United Progressive Alliance (UPA).¹⁸ The main aim was to break the alliance, split the votes and show that there was no united opposition against the BJP-led NDA.

Finally, the NDA campaign was central government driven in other respects as well. Besides the prime minister, more than 20 Union ministers campaigned extensively in the state and some of them were apparently stationed in the state for more than a month.¹⁹ Furthermore, the state level leaders supposedly had little say in both the ticket distribution as well as the way the campaign was managed.²⁰

 

 

The fact that the MG was able to overcome the might of the central government must not be overlooked. The Lokniti-CSDS post-poll survey results corroborate this conclusion. Most respondents, for instance, not only held that Nitish Kumar was a more capable leader compared to Narendra Modi, but also felt he was better placed to both provide employment and develop Bihar.²¹ The survey highlights how a Centre-focused campaign could misread the mood at the ground level. While the NDA focused on backwardness of the state to highlight the importance of the central government, the voters on the contrary felt that they were actually better off.²²

 

How sustainable is the MG? Coalition studies tell us that alliances formed to solve an immediate problem often have major strategic consequences in the long-term. Consequently, anticipating outcomes is an important task for any alliance. Previous coalition experiences in India show that disparate and diverse parties have managed to move beyond formation when they have institutionalized relationships.²³ Successful coalitions first of all recognize that the alliance is composed of distinct elements which have come together for limited purposes. Second, they are essentially adept in managing three post-formation dynamics, including issues and elements unanticipated at the time of formation, building and managing the relationships and running the government.

Successful alliances at the state level, like the UDF and the LDF in Kerala and the NDA-I (1999-2004) and the UPA-I (2004-2009) at the Centre, share a common feature. They had instituted a variety of coalition management mechanisms including agreements and coordination committees which have played an important role in enlarging the arena of commonality. These mechanisms not only function as safety valves but increase the space for dialogue between partners and aid in the building of a common framework of thought and action.

The MG as of now has no officially declared coordination mechanisms in place. Consequently, it is unclear how it will handle differences and disagreements, unexpected events and incidents and maybe even posturing by the partners. It has to recognize that as the terms and conditions at the time of the formation of the alliance change, parties in the alliance will also modify their goals and expectations. Historical experience shows that in the absence of an institutionalized bringing together mechanisms, coalitions have struggled in the face of circumstantial impulses and demands. The struggle of the UPA-II (2009-14) and the numerous self-goals when it ignored coordination mechanisms, is probably a good example. From past coalition experiences it may be concluded that the sooner the MG institutionalizes its relationship, the greater the chances of its survival.

 

The MG’s future prospects primarily hinge on its sustainability. Some of its leaders have spoken of taking the alliance beyond Bihar. The ‘beyond Bihar’ talk ignores the fact that the MG began with a limited agenda and has done little to enlarge it subsequently. The victory has given the opposition a psychological advantage which at best has helped restore some dented egos. In the context of Bihar, the MG has serious limitations. Again, the Lokniti-CSDS survey results are instructive in highlighting the limits of the MG as a social coalition.²⁴ The economically backward and the dalit castes will no doubt watch government functioning closely.

In a non-regionalist state like Bihar, parties have to constantly be on an ‘identity-mobilization treadmill’²⁵ to beat their competitors. Dissatisfied groups can be mobilized on alternative and more attractive platforms. Unless the MG becomes more inclusive, not merely moving by bringing other non-dominant castes on board but by creating a shared identity, or what Prerna Singh calls a ‘we-feeling’,²⁶ it is likely to remain on the treadmill. The MG needs to work towards creating a framework where governments are not seen as representing victories of limited social groups. This we-feeling framework implies building a societal consensus for public welfare where provisioning of public goods is not perceived as a zero-sum game between particular communities but as a common good.

 

While the idea of a MG in terms of a strategic alliance may travel beyond Bihar, the MG itself is unlikely to do so. The RJD and the JD(U) are territorially limited to Bihar and do not have a presence in other states. Moreover, the Mandal project on which the MG is based has since its inception succeeded only at the local level.²⁷ It has not been possible to institute a forward-backward cleavage at the national or all-India level given the differences among various groups within each category. Unless the MG thinks out of the box and reinvents itself, it is likely to merely remain a strategic device to compete with the BJP-led NDA.

 

Footnotes:

1. In the Lok Sabha elections, the JD(U) had gone alone while the RJD and the Congress had fought together as an alliance.

2. Yogendra Yadav, ‘Political Vacuum in the Bihar Win’, The Hindu, 23 November 2015.

3. Sanjay Kumar, ‘BJP Crafts a New Social Coalition in Bihar’, Economic and Political Weekly 49(39), 27 September 2014, pp. 95-98.

4. Vandita Mishra, ‘The Leader and his Machine’, The Indian Express, 5 July 2015.

5. E. Sridharan, ‘Why are Multi-party Minority Governments Viable in India? Theory and Comparison’, Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 50(3), 2012, pp. 314-343.

6. George Tsebelis, ‘When do Allies Become Rivals?’ Comparative Politics 20(2), 1988, pp. 233-240.

7. K. K. Kailash, ‘Institutionalizing a Coalitional System and Games Within Coalitions in India (1996-2014)’, Studies in Indian Politics 2(2), 2014, pp. 185-202.

8. Rahi Gaikwad, ‘JD(U) Severs Ties With BJP on Modi Issue’, The Hindu, 17 June 2013.

9. E. Sridharan, op. cit., fn 5.

10. Sanjay Kumar, Sanjeer Alam and Dhananjai Joshi, ‘Caste Dynamics and Political Process in Bihar’, Journal of Indian School of Political Economy 20(1&2), Jan-June 2008, pp. 1-32.

11. Tariq Thachil and Emmanuel Teitelbaum, ‘Ethnic Parties and Public Spending: New Theory and Evidence From the Indian States’, Comparative Political Studies 48(11), 2015, pp. 1389-1420.

12. Santosh Mathew and Mick Moore, ‘State Incapacity by Design: Understanding the Bihar Story’, IDS Working Paper 366, Institute of Development Studies, Brighton, 2011. http://www.ids.ac.uk/publication/state-incapacity-by-design-understanding-the-bihar-story (accessed 10 December 2015).

13. Shaibal Gupta, ‘Not Just an Eight-Year Itch’ The Indian Express, 28 November 2013; Shaibal Gupta, ‘Writing a New Script in Bihar’, The Indian Express, 19 May 2014.

14. Sandeep Shastri, Sanjay Kumar and Suhas Palshikar, ‘Voters Had Better Image of Bihar Than PM Modi Painted’, The Indian Express, 10 November 2015.

15. Shaibal Gupta, ‘Four Down, More to Go’, The Indian Express, 24 November 2009; Santosh Mathew and Mick Moore, op. cit.

16. Sandeep Shastri, Sanjay Kumar and Suhas Palshikar, op. cit., fn. 14.

17. Shahira Naim, ‘MSY’s Break-up With Janata Parivar Not Linked to Polls’, The Tribune, 6 September 2015. http://www.tribune india.com/news/nation/msy-s-break-up-with-janata-parivar-not-linked-to-polls/129713. html (accessed 20 December 2015).

18. Sanjay Singh, ‘How CBI Case Against Mulayam Singh Changes With Political Tide’, Firstpost, 22 July 2013. http://www.firstpost. com/politics/how-cbi-case-against-mulayam-singh-changes-with-political-tide-974787.html (accessed 20 December 2015)

19. Aman Sharma, ‘Bihar Polls: Almost All Union Ministers Campaigning in Constituencies’, The Economic Times, 27 October 2015. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/bihar-polls-almost-all-union-ministers-campaigning-in-constituencies/articleshow/49554103.cms (accessed 12 December 2015).

20. Priyanka Rath, ‘Reasons Why Narendra Modi-led NDA Lost in Bihar’, 8 November 2015. http://www.ibnlive.com/news/politics/reasons-why-narendra-modi-led-nda-lost-in-bihar-1162213.html (accessed 12 December 2015).

21. Sandeep Shastri and Vibha Attri, ‘Bihar Rates its Favourite CM Nitish Kumar as More Capable Than PM Narendra Modi’, The Indian Express, 10 November 2015.

22. Shastri, Kumar and Palshikar 2015, op. cit., fn. 14.

23. K.K. Kailash, ‘Middle Game in Coalition Politics’, Economic and Political Weekly 42(4), 2007, pp. 307-317.

24. Shastri, Kumar and Palshikar, op. cit., fn.14.

25. K.K. Kailash, ‘Regional Parties in the 16th Lok Sabha Elections: Who Survived and Why?’ Economic and Political Weekly 49(39), 2014, pp. 64-71.

26. Prerna Singh, ‘We-ness and Welfare: A Longitudinal Analysis of Social Development in Kerala, India’, World Development 39(2), 2010, pp. 282-293.

27. Yogendra Yadav and Suhas Palshikar, ‘Political Parties and Elections in Indian States: 1990-2003’, Journal of Indian School of Political Economy 15(1&2), 2003, pp. 5-44.