Premature assumptions

Opposition parties lack a coherent alternative plan

With the interim Budget out of the way, the focus is now on the next general elections in May. Opinion polls have started on whether the Indian voter will return Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance government (NDA) to the Centre or not. The Opposition parties are seemingly determined to form a grand alliance, or mahagathbandhan, to challenge the ruling party. Several age-old opponents such as the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh have announced that they will fight elections together. The Congress party is hoping to ally with parties that it opposes bitterly at the state level such as the Trinamool Congress or even the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Indeed, on January 19, leaders from as many as 20 parties shared a common platform in West Bengal to signal their combined challenge to the NDA. But it is not going to be an easy task, as evident from the SP-BSP’s decision to keep the Congress out of the alliance and Mayawati’s assertion that she would reconsider her support to Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan governments if some of her conditions are not met.

Going by some of the recent opinion polls, it would appear that the NDA is way ahead of the grand alliance, though it might fall short of a majority in the House. One of the opinion polls, unveiled in January-end, assessed what the performance of the leading political alliances would be in case the elections were held immediately. The BJP-led NDA, according to this poll, is poised to get 252 seats — 20 short of the majority mark of 272 in the 543-seat Lok Sabha. Though this is considerably less than what the NDA managed in 2014, the fact is that it is within sniffing distance of the critical mark. The result suggests that the NDA will become the largest pre-poll alliance by a significant margin. The Congress-led United Progress Alliance is pegged at 147 seats and all the rest, a sort of a non-BJP, non-Congress front, is slated to get 144 seats. Two other surveys, however, predicted a less flattering picture of NDA fortunes. The verdict in both the surveys was that it will be a hung House, with NDA stopping at 233-237 seats, while the UPA might have to settle for less than 170 seats.   

 There are many reasons why one should not jump to conclusions based on these opinion polls. The fact is these are early days and the easy assumptions made by many about an Opposition alliance unseating Mr Modi may be premature. For instance, there is no overriding seat adjustment in key states such as UP. With little time left before the polls, there is still no clarity whether the Congress is with the SP-BSP combine or whether there will be a triangular contest. Moreover, several regional parties that rule states such as Odisha and Telangana have stayed away from the emerging mahagathbandhan. It is not difficult to see them siding with the party most likely to reach the majority mark. And NDA has a clear edge in all the surveys. Lastly, the grand alliance per se has not yet gone beyond an anti-Modi rhetoric; they have not presented a coherent alternative plan, except for criticising the NDA. The only real promise so far is Rahul Gandhi’s minimum income guarantee scheme, which could be an operational nightmare since it would mean assessing beneficiaries’ income first. It’s time for the opposition alliance to wake up and smell the coffee.