Sunil Gatade
The late Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar was a sharp politician who knew the worth of political parties and leaders, alliances and coalitions, fronts and combines in the quicksand of Indian politics.
Despite heading a Congress backed government for a brief period, the late leader, whose breakaway Janata Dal outfit had not more than 50 to 60 Lok Sabha members, had once remarked prophetically that Third Front is a third rate front.
Notwithstanding the obituaries written by political pundits and wise leaders alike, the idea of a Third Front has time and again popped up in the Indian political scenario signalling that the efforts to make the polity a bipartisan affair between Congress and BJP have utterly failed.
With the Lok Sabha elections not far away, the idea of a Third Front is again being bandied about in differeent formats and shapes.
SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav, who had parted ways with the Janata Dal under the leadership of Chandra Shekhar is now eyeing the Prime Ministership after the polls by talking of a Third Front. Yadav, who has now been calling the shots in Uttar Pradesh following the unprecedented victory of his party in the Assembly polls earlier this year, wants to use the base in Lucknow to capture Delhi. For many years in Independent India, hold on Uttar Pradesh was considered a must for ensuring power at the Centre.
A canny politician, Yadav was a wrestler before joining politics and therefore knows well the art of more than surviving in the slippery game of power where interests only matter and ideology takes a backseat. Yadav is currently supporting Congress to sustain in power with the fond hope that Sonia Gandhi will reciprocate from outside after the next Lok Sabha elections.
Yadav is not the only leader eyeing Delhi and there is a long list of them who are equally ambitious and cunning. Nitish Kumar of the JD-U is in the BJP-led NDA as part of his strategy to rule Bihar and he leaves no opportunity to project his secular credentials despite doing business with a “communal” party. He wants the BJP to support him for the Prime Ministership in the next polls throws up a badly divided House. Sharad Pawar may be sharing power with the Congress at the Centre as also in Maharashtra, but knows fairly well that the game is up for the alliance in the future and it is time to form new equations.
Known for his networking skills, Pawar like Mulayam feels that the coming elections will be the last chance for him to achieve his life’s goal.
Mayawati whom the Left had projected the leader of a Third front before the last Lok Sabha elections is not sitting quite since her party BSP lost power in Uttar Pradesh. AIADMK supremo Jayalalithaa is an equally ambitious leader who has captured Tamil Nadu and has set her sights on Delhi through a Federal Front which comprises/could comprise leaders like BJD chief and Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, Mamata Banerjee, Nitish Kumar and Sharad Pawar.
Most of these parties and leaders have their specified, localised areas of influence and a prepoll alliance between them does not lead to accretion of electoral support to anyone. That is the bane of the proposed front.
But even some of the most vociferous proponents of the Third Front or a third way in politics candidly concede that the idea is the most enduring mirage of Indian politics.
Their contention is that the science and art of alliance politics shows that a tie up happens between those parties which are compatible and which can help each other. “How can an alliance be possible when the Samajwadi Party cannot help TDP in Andhra Pradesh and Chandra Babu Naidu’s party cannot reciprocate in Uttar Pradesh?”
The last non-Congress, non-BJP front government at the Centre was that of the erstwhile United Front which saw two Prime Ministers H D Deve Gowda and I K Gujral in less than two years.
The government was then supported by the Congress from outside and its end came when the party withdrew support.
Mulayam and the Left parties had formed the People’s Front over 10 years back but the idea had remained short-lived as the SP chief had suddenly abandoned the anti-communal platform to back the NDA in the Presidential elections when A P J Abdul Kalam was put up as the candidate. After the fiasco to their Third Front venture in the last Lok Sabha elections, the Left too has reviewed their stand and are now talking of a Left alternative or the Third alternative.
The experiment of a Third Front had failed in 2009 as the voter felt that an alliance featuring the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Left Front and motley political parties cannot be termed a viable alternative to the two dominant parties, the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party, or even as a “third front”.
The feeling had been that most parties in this front have forged the grouping on the basis of plain opportunism
Besides the lack of enthusiasm among the Left parties for a routine type of front of regional parties,the problem for the emergence of the Third Front has been the attitude of the Congress and the BJP which wants to dominate the Indian politics by marginalizing all other regional and sundry players.
Even leaders of some regional parties feel that the next government would be decided by the fronts led by the BJP and the Congress and there is “no scope for a Third Front”.
Congress and BJP leaders have been dismissing the idea of emergence of Third Front ahead of the 2014 general elections as a ‘mirage’ .
In fact, leaders of both the Congress and the BJP say the possibility of formation of a non- Congress, non-BJP front to takeover power at the Centre is not only dim but also non-existent. Their contention is that the idea has suffered a fatal blow since the Congress and BJP have taken to alliance politics. BJP has ruled the Centre for six long years via the NDA route from 1998 to 2004.
Congress has been sharing power at the Centre for the first time since 2004 with Sonia Gandhi chanting the mantra of unity of secular forces.
“We are not saints. We are not in politics to ensure that some regional leader becomes the Prime Minister and we play the second fiddle”, said a Congress leader. Ditto is the reaction in the BJP camp.
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