The Third Front in Indian Politics: An Assessment

K G Suresh, 

Senior Fellow & Editor, VIF

Introduction

One of the significant developments in the country’s fast changing political scenario has been the rather premature demise of the much hyped 11 party Third Front. After the Jayalalithaa-led AIADMK dumped the alliance with the Left parties in Tamil Nadu within days of its announcement, other key constituents the Samajwadi Party, JD(U) and Left parties decided to contest the elections on their own in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and other states sounding the death knell of the much-hyped initiative.

In the politically crucial Uttar Pradesh. differences arose between the SP and the CPI and CPM over seat sharing, with SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav rigidly stating that his party would contest 78 of the 80 seats in UP.

While the CPI decided to field candidates in eight Lok Sabha seats, the CPM announced plans to contest two seats.

Meanwhile, addressing the JD(U) state executive committee in Lucknow on March 5, the party’s national president, Sharad Yadav, told state leaders not to have much expectations from the Third Front. In fact, he exhorted party leaders to prepare for the Lok Sabha elections and highlight the failures of the incumbent SP government in the state.

Further, going against the spirit of the non-Congress and non-BJP stance of the alliance, the SP Chief, who took the initiative for stitching the rag tag alliance this time, also decided not to field any candidates against either UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi or Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi in Amethi and Rae Bareli respectively.

Thus, as of now, in UP alone, the members of the Front will be locking horns in more than 24 Lok Sabha seats.

In a major loss of face in far away Kerala, after decades of being a steadfast ally of the four-party Left Democratic Front, the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) left the CPM-led alliance to join the Congress-led United Democratic Front.

These developments prompted SP scion and UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav to state that if at all such a front materialises, it could only be after the election results are out on May 16.

Joining issues, former CPI General Secretary AB Bardhan also admitted in a recent television interview that it was a mistake for the Left front to attempt to forge a third front alliance before the polls.

The proposed joint rally of the 11 non-Congress, non-BJP parties, which was to be held in Bangalore, has also been called off.

It was only on February 25 that top leaders of the Left, AIADMK, Samajwadi Party, Janata Dal (United) and JD(S) had met in Delhi to chalk out a common charter of programme. Speaking after the meeting, CPI(M) leader Prakash Karat had said 11 non-UPA, non-NDA parties will fight the upcoming Lok Sabha polls together to defeat the UPA and stop the BJP from coming to power.

Interestingly, the Third Front also did not have the support of either Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee, BSP Supremo Mayawati or BJD Chief Naveen Patnaik, all of whom are powerful satraps in their home states. In fact, Mamata is said to be toying with the idea of a Federal Front or a Fourth Front.

What’s more, the most visible critic of both the UPA and NDA, the Arvind Kejriwal led Aam Aadmi Party (which too had taken the outside support of the Congress during its 49 day Government in Delhi), too is not part of either of these alliances.

Backgrounder

Ahead of the last general elections, one saw former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda taking the initiative for the formation of a Third Front with a massive rally in Karnataka, attended and addressed by several leaders including Prakash Karat, AB Bardhan, TDP Supremo Chandrababu Naidu and BSP’s Satish Chandra Mishra, besides representatives of the AIADMK and the Haryana Janhit Congress.

Ever an aspirant for the top post, the JD(S) supremo goaded all these parties to chalk out a ‘common minimum programme’ but failed to achieve any breakthrough. Mr Gowda was shocked to find that Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati, who had become the rallying point for the new alternative, chose not to concede even a single seat in Uttar Pradesh for his close aide and party secretary general, Kunwar Danish Ali. What’s more, she decided to go it all alone in Karnataka, with her candidates contesting against several JD(S) nominees.

In Andhra Pradesh, the TRS rejected the former Prime Minister’s appeal to accommodate one of his party leaders. In Kerala too, where the Left and the JD(S) have had a historic relationship, the CPI(M) refused to yield important seats demanded by the latter, forcing senior party leader and veteran parliamentarian MP Veerendra Kumar to join forces with the Congress-led UDF.

But then, even as the results were trickling in, one saw the pathetic sight of Gowda’s son and former Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy entering 10, Janpath, with his face covered, to extend his party’s unconditional support to UPA2. It was not long before that he had deserted the Congress to form a coalition Government in Karnataka with the BJP and later backed out in the name of “secularism”, when he had to hand over the chief ministership of the State to the BJP under the 20-month rotation agreement.

In statements bordering on bravado, ahead of the elections, CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury had discounted the possibility of its allies in the so-called Third Front embracing the Congress or the BJP after the Lok Sabha polls.

Yechury had then boasted that regional parties such as the AIADMK in Tamil Nadu and the JD(S) in Karnataka had teamed up with the Left because of pressure from their support base. This, he argued, would not allow them to go over to the BJP or the Congress after the April-May election — unlike in the past.

With the BSP and the JD(S) switching loyalties to the UPA and the TRS walking over to the NDA within days of the poll verdict, an embittered Yechury had to eat his words and state that the post-poll developments have proved that the “cut and paste” alliance was a mistake.

“You are right about BSP, JD(S) and TRS and that is precisely the point that I am making. Our decision is that it was neither credible nor viable and this (deserting the pre-poll alliance) only confirmed that”, the CPI (M) Politburo member said in a television interview.

Subsequently, one also saw the Samajwadi Party along with its arch rival from Uttar Pradesh, the Bahujan Samaj Party led by Kum Mayawati, who had projected herself as the Third Front’s Prime Ministerial candidate in the 2009 polls, together serving as crutches for the outgoing UPA Government after its key allies TMC and DMK walked out of the alliance.

But pushed to oblivion in West Bengal and Kerala, their traditional strongholds, and thereby finding itself on the fringes of national polity, the CPI(M) did not think twice before jumping on to the new Third Front bandwagon, the moment the wily SP leader invited them with his dulcet calls for the revival of the so-called front.

It is but natural therefore that the idea of the Third Front, envisaging a non-UPA, non-NDA alternative at the Centre, has come to be ridiculed by critics as an Utopian concept or at worst a seasonal frog (Barsati Maindak) which appears only during the polls.

The Case Against Third Front

If anti-Congressism was the politically correct stand from the mid-60s to late 80s interspersed with the failed experiments of Janata Party and the National Front coalitions, anti-BJPism laid the foundations of a third alternative. It became fashionable to maintain equidistance from both the Congress and BJP.

Yet, Mulayam Singh Yadav, the present Centre of gravity of the elusive Front, much like his other regional counterparts such as the DMK’s M Karunanidhi and JD(S) supremo Gowda, has always been known for practising the politics of opportunism of the worst kind.

Whether it be taking the help of the BJP to become the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, entering into an alliance with Kalyan Singh (only to dump him later), opposing Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origin and then bailing out the UPA when the Left parties pulled the rug from under the ruling party’s feet, the wrestler-turned-politician has always taken advantage of the most unfavourable situations to turn the tide in his favour. Ideology, principles, norms, conventions, coalition dharma etc have all been like tissue paper for him to be used and thrown.

Reflective of double standards, over the years, anyone, including those who had worked closely with the BJP in the past, became secular once they distanced themselves from the saffron party. This so-called non-Congress, non-BJP Front had no qualms about seeking outside support from the Congress as was the case with the Deve Gowda and the IK Gujral Governments, even as they unashamedly claimed to be the third alternative, losing credibility in the eyes of the electorate. Besides, these Third Front Governments also heralded an innings of instability not to talk about their disastrous performance on all fronts. Most of their time was spent on managing the messy coalition and trying to somehow stick on to power.

With both the national parties realising that they cannot form Governments on their own strength, smaller parties in their quest for a place under the sun and to extract their pound of flesh started gravitating towards them, leading to the formation of the UPA and the NDA.

Even the parties which tried to maintain some semblance of neutrality entered into alliances with the two national parties both at the State and the Centre from time to time. From the ‘compulsions’ of running a State to living up to people’s aspirations and escaping the Damocles sword called CBI, these opportunist regional outfits found alibis galore to defend their alliance with the national parties.

With Jyoti Basu missing the prime ministerial bus in 1996 and the CPI(M) repenting at leisure, the Left parties, which have been at the forefront of the Third Front experiments in the past, too could not resist the temptation of wielding clout over Raisina Hill, when they extended outside support to UPA1, under the garb of “keeping communal powers at bay”.

Thus, the Third Front has come to be viewed as the last refuge for desperate power hungry regional satraps wanting to share the spoils of office at the Centre and extract their pound of flesh with the threat of withdrawal of support as their weapon of blackmail.

Conclusion

Except for the Left parties, all others are purely dynastic or personal enterprises, with no inner party democracy whatsoever. They have no principles, ideology, programmes or vision to offer to the people except hollow slogans of secularism, federalism and farmers’ rights – a key reason for their failure to provide a stable Government at the Centre despite umpteen opportunities to prove themselves in the past. The Third Front constituents as also the other Satraps are expected to switch loyalties to one or the other national alliances, once the results are out.

In the past too, wrangling for power and opportunism have been the hall marks of the short-lived Third Front regimes, which carried the seed of instability in their womb itself.

If the 1996 experiment was a flop show and the 2009 attempt a farce, the proposed 2014 Third Front show would be nothing but a fraud on the people of India.

As a political commentator aptly put it, “In the context of India’s politics, a Third Front signifies a group that stands apart from the Congress and BJP. However, by bringing together any one and every one regardless of their history, ideology or even program, who, for various reasons, is opposed to the Congress or the BJP, the core parties of the Indian Left, CPI and CPI(M), might as well be named the Communist Party of India (Electionist), which sums up their ideological and political bases.”

An Object Lesson for Indian Political Parties

Dr M N Buch (Visiting Fellow, VIF)

China is not a democracy and there is the one party rule of the Communist Party of China (CPC). From time to time the Party holds party meetings at which matters of policy are discussed in detail. The 16^th CPC Central Committee meeting was held in Beijing from 16th to 19^th September 2012 and at the Fourth Plenum the party adopted a document enshrining the policy of the Party, entitled “On the enhancement of the Party’s governance capability”. The Party felt that, “CPC’s ruling status is by no means a natural result of the Party’s founding and will not remain for ever if the Party does nothing to safeguard it”. In other words, CPC has envisaged a day when in China the Party may lose its sole ruling status.

My good friend, Dr. Surjit Mansingh, has sent me a brief note on the CPC deliberations and certain decisions taken by the Party. I am quoting from the note: “We must develop a stronger sense of crisis, draw experience and lessons from the success and failure of other ruling parties in the world and enhance our governance capability in a more earnest and conscientious” manner. The Party said,

“ CPC stresses importance, urgency to enhance governance capability,
CPC summarizes ruling experience
CPC document puts development as top priority of Party's governance
CPC document urges promotion of socialist democracy
CPC pledges to focus on Party building for advancement of ruling capacity
CPC pledges to build up harmonious society of socialism
CPC vows to uphold Marxism as guiding ideology
CPC to adhere to independent foreign policy of peace.”

It might be noticed that enhancement of governance capability is the top priority of CPC and this includes a review of the ruling experience of the Party. This indicates a degree of administrative maturity in which the Party is prepared to do introspection on and review of how China has been governed in the recent past. The enhancement and advancement of ruling capacity is repeatedly emphasised in the resolution passed by CPC.

There are two other items which call for special mention. One is that development as the top priority of the Party’s governance. This means that China’s economy and its growth are both matters of great concern to CPC. The second point is a pledge to build up a harmonious society of socialism. Harmony requires that various sections of society should have a mutual understanding and there should be no social conflict. Socialism in the Indian context would mean social, economic and political justice, equality of status and of opportunity, both of which find place in the Preamble of the Constitution and the establishment of a social order for the promotion of welfare of the people as stated in Article 38. In all social and economic relationships, therefore, equity becomes a key factor. One presumes that CPC, when talking of a harmonious society of socialism, is also thinking along these terms, though the evidence is that China is today a country in which capitalism is rampant. Whatever the meaning that CPC may give to words, the fact remains that there is someone in the Party who is thinking along the right lines.

I have made a somewhat lengthy reference to the 16^th CPC Central Committee meeting because I think there is a lesson in this for political parties in India. My limited knowledge of the subject suggests to me that no party, ranging from extreme left to extreme right, has ever done the kind of thinking or introspection as has been done by the Communist Party of China. How serious CPC is, is evidenced by the fact that there has to be a change of guard in Beijing, with the President and Prime Minister of the Republic being due for replacement. This seems to be a practice in China since Mao Tse Tung died and though initially there were elements of a palace coup in the manner in which the leadership changed, with the coming of Deng Xiao Ping there seems to be a more settled manner in which the leadership changes, generally with younger persons being brought to the fore. Another change is that from the older generation of persons who were experts in guerilla warfare and led the revolution, we are now getting more technocracy, science and administration oriented leaders who are in the vanguard of China’s modernisation. At the same time China seems to have developed a level of corruption which might even be greater than that in India, with this difference that in China corruption does not stop development whereas in India it has now become an enemy of development.

India is a democracy in which there are a number of political parties. The two main parties are the Congress, which can be described as a middle of the road party and BJP, which is considered to be right of centre and also, because of its RSS link, a party with a distinctly Hindu tilt. On the left we have a conglomerate of which CPI (M) is the most prominent member. CPI, the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) and the Forward Bloc are the other main components of the Left. Standing to the extreme of the Left are parties such as CPI-M-L, the Peoples War Group (PWG) and other Naxalite groups which do not subscribe to democracy and are wedded to a philosophy of violence aimed at overthrowing the Indian State. Somewhere between the Left and the Congress are the various shades of the Socialist Party, the two most prominent groups of which are led by the Mulayam Singh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh and Lalu Prasad Yadav in Bihar. The more moderate section of the Socialists, the PSP, seems to have been submerged in the present groupings, which give little evidence of following a socialist agenda but are more interested in caste equations, especially of the intermediate castes, which give them power in localised areas such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Socialism here has been totally overtaken by caste and, therefore, both Mulayam and Lalu can be accused of exacerbating the caste divide. To call these parties Socialists would be a travesty of the truth. Into this kind of vortex of divisiveness have jumped a number of regional parties such as DMK, AIDMK, AGP, Telugu Desham Party, Trinamool Congres, the Party fighting for a separate Telangana, etc., which have a narrowly regional outlook which prevents them from taking a larger view of the nation. Many of these regional parties have corroded the body politic and this has caused very substantial erosion of values in politics. Then we have the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) led by Mayawati, a party of the Dalits which seemed to reach out to all castes and classes. Unfortunately, because the party revolved only around Mayawati, who seems to be whimsical, BSP has not lived upto its promise. One hopes the party will introspect and improve itself.

Whether it is UPA at the Centre or the National Conference – Congress combination in Jammu & Kashmir, BJP in Karnataka, Trinamool Congress in West Bengal, one sees an erosion of the ability, desire and political will to govern and all around one sees the deleterious effect of failure of government. Large swathes of the country are victims of Naxalite insurgency, which government seems unable or unwilling to contain and eliminate. Prices are out of control and every measure that government seems to take to strengthen the economy only results in furthering the miseries of average citizens. Healthcare in the public sector has definitely deteriorated throughout the country. Corruption is not only rampant it is almost universalised to the extent where nothing happens in this country even at the level of ordinary routine without money being demanded. In the matter of legislation Parliament stands substantially weakened, if not paralysed and almost everything is now either decided in the streets or defeated there. One of the disturbing factors is the growing intolerance, bigotry and narrow mindedness which seems to afflict us in so many ways. Some American author writes some comments about Shivaji in one of his books and this causes Maharashtra to burn. One of the most respected centres of learning in Pune and its library was burnt down because this particular author’s book was on the shelves of the library. This was done at the instance of the Shiv Sena. Is Shivaji of such little intrinsic consequence that what some foreign author writes in some obscure book completely debunk this icon of resistance against tyranny? Does burning down a library enhance the status of Shivaji? Salman Rushdie writes “Satanic Verses” and India bans the book. Not only that, but several years later when Rushdie was to attend a literary get-together at Jaipur some Muslims threatened to demonstrate against him and government virtually prevented him from attending the conference. Have we become so intolerant that we cannot permit an author to attend a literary meet? Is Islam so fragile that, even assuming that Rushdie committed blasphemy, this magnificent edifice of a great religion would collapse if Rushdie comes to India? Is Allah liable to demolition by one of his own creations? Christianity gave up the doctrine of blasphemy long ago. The Christian church is as firmly founded today, in fact more so than in the days of Inquisition when heretics were burnt at the stake. Not building a temple of Ram at Ayodhya will not destroy Hinduism just as building it will not strengthen the religion. When the symbol becomes more important than the substance we are in grave danger.

All this background leads upto my main argument, which is that the time has come for Indian political parties to sit down and introspect on what they have been doing in the past and where the future lies for them and for the country. If somebody were to ask me what any of the political parties stand for I would not be able to give any worthwhile answer. For example, what is the Congress? When we were fighting for our independence the Congress was the party into which Mahatma Gandhi breathed life, bringing together various disparate elements so that, from a single platform, they could fight against the British and demand independence. The single aim of the party was to free India from British rule, but the strategy and the tactics by which this goal could be achieved were determined by the party under the leadership of the Mahatma. At the same time certain very clear-cut principles were prescribed. The movement would be asatyagrah, or a campaign based on truth. It would be conducted under the banner of ahimsa, or proactive non-violence. It would be inclusive, which meant that all religions, all castes and all classes would work together in harmony to achieve our goal. There would be no hatred for anyone, including the British and there would be tolerance in the best sense of the word. Another weapon would be swadeshi. This means that we would be dependent only on what we could grow or what we could produce and this was an economic weapon aimed directly at the industrial and commercial hegemony of Britain. It was certainly a weapon of which the British were afraid. Under these circumstances it was possible to define the Congress because a Congress man was fearless, honest, austere, nonviolent and wedded to truth.

Today how do we describe the Congress? What is the core policy of the Congress and what is its ruling political philosophy? I have been shown various election manifestoes of the Party, but I consider them works of fiction written to meet the immediate expediency of a forthcoming election, whose objective is to fool the people into voting for the party. No election manifesto of any party really contains the ideology, the philosophy and the programme of that party. I cannot think of a single document prepared by the Congress Party which tells me what its political philosophy is, what ideological moorings it has, what is its long term agenda and what are the programmes and projects it has in mind which would help it to give shape to the vision it has set itself. It is not even particularly democratic because when a party has a leadership which is almost entirely confined to one family, which militates against the setting up of grass-root units which elect the entire hierarchy, the party cannot be said to be democratic.

Let us come to BJP. RSS is the progenitor of the Jan Sangh and of its successor, BJP. RSS claims not to be involved in politics. In 1925 Dr. K.S. Hedgewar, the founder of RSS, told Mahatma Gandhi, with whom he was then associated, that he wanted volunteers to come together and work for the nation selflessly and, therefore, he was setting up a separate organisation divorced from politics and political parties. Despite this the fact remains that RSS is the mother who has given birth to BJP. The party cannot adhere totally to a RSS agenda both because the Constitution mandates that it should work in a secular environment and because a narrowly communal agenda is not acceptable to most Indians and, therefore, they will not vote BJP to power. Therefore, whilst promoting Hindutva BJP is forced to interpret this in a secular context. Is BJP a Hindu party or does it wholeheartedly accept secular India which does not discriminate between religions? What is its core ideology, what is its vision of India, what are its programmes by which India will become the country it dreams of? In other words, is BJP a clone of the Congress with a sharp Hindu tilt or does it have a political image of its own which distinguishes it from the Congress? We have no document which really tells us what BJP is. Perhaps the party should openly accept that it is there to protect majority interests, but because the Sanatan Dharma firmly holds that no one is “the other” the Party is secular and that the Muslim not also, but specially, is a partner as an equal. This would define the party clearly as being inclusive and not narrowly confined to a Hindu role.

The Left is equally in shambles. Dogmatic Marxism does not hold sway anywhere in the world and in fact the most powerful Communist ruled country, China, is now wedded to capitalism. Where, therefore, are the ideological moorings of the Left? What is the Left’s vision of India, what future does it chart for the country, what will be its strategy and the programmes by which its objectives will be achieved? In Kerala, for example, where the United Democratic Front (UDF) and the Left Democratic Front (LDF) alternate in power, the only ideological mooring of both groups is in capture of power and not necessarily in what will be done after power is captured. We need a very strong ideological statement and vision document from the Left so that we can see where the Left stands and how the Left will conduct itself in the future.

I do not intend to extend this discussion to the numerous other parties which exist on the fringe because my own view is that ultimately they must determine which of the larger parties suits them and, hopefully, the smaller regional groupings can then decide to merge with larger parties. This will cleanse our politics and reduce the corruption which seems to go hand in hand with the virtual blackmailing role of the smaller parties in an era of coalitions. I would, however, commend to the major parties the manner in which the Communist Party of China discusses major matters of national importance and issues relating to how the Party will conduct itself in the future. If, like the Communist Party of China, our major parties are able to produce one or more documents which enable the average citizen to understand the party and its philosophy and then decide which party to support, Indian politics will be become serious, purposeful and sharply focused.