The Opposition front will give us a CMP but how will it silence the catfights and become a beehive?

There are hardly about ten weeks away for the nation to decide the course of its affairs in the general elections but we are still tentative about the second option to the Modi government. Is it going to be the federal front, a cluster of regional satraps who perform extremely well in their states and commiserating with each other’s wrongful treatment, hope to stake egolessly for a Centre that’s more cooperative than unitary? Is it going to be a Congress-led front? Is it going to be UPA III where everybody has the capacity to be first among progressive equals? Does it have a slogan to capture the national imagination other than cutouts of a fighter plane, Constitution or Parliament that talk of holding up institutional integrity but wash little with the voter in the countryside? These are still unanswered questions and though the key architects of Opposition unity — NCP’s Sharad Pawar, Trinamool Congress’ Mamata Banerjee, TDP’s Chandrababu Naidu, AAP’s Arvind Kejriwal and Congress chief Rahul Gandhi — at last agreed to forge a pre-poll alliance and come up with a common minimum programme, it does seem too little too late, simply because it looks like a hurried patchwork rather than being a vision statement for 2020. If this had been articulated even some months ago, the Opposition would have actually been seen as offering an alternative. For truth be told, it would not get such a politically fertile ground ever to turn the tide in its favour.

There is perceptible dissatisfaction about the Modi government’s policies, be it demonetisation, faulty GST, joblessness, economic slowdown and unfulfilled promises. Had the Opposition offered a CMP of recovery earlier and driven it into our recent memory, it would be far more coherent and trustable. Had the alliance coalesced all the constituencies whose interests cannot be seriously represented by the BJP, given its monolithic nature and exclusive politics, then there would not be any hesitation about how they would work this out at the polling booth level. Had they convincingly set up an ideological reason for a title clash, it would be easier for them to explain why social bases would not collide but could be aligned for a common purpose. They even have bypoll results to show it. India is not about gullible voters anymore but smart deal-makers who would like to know what’s on offer rather than buying into the fear of a rabid sequel of an engulfing Hindu Rashtra. All Opposition leaders need to take their fiercest stands yet but even at this 11th hour they are running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. While Mamata is ready to sacrifice her own existence and make peace with the Congress nationally to defeat the BJP, she is riled by the state unit of the grand old party lampooning her in Parliament no less. She told Congress supremo Sonia Gandhi she would not forget the insult and urged AAP to win all seven seats in Delhi on its own steam than tying up with the Congress. BSP chief Mayawati is publicly flogging the Congress for “state terror” like the BJP over the cow slaughter arrests under NSA. SP chief Akhilesh Yadav can hardly rein in his father Mulayam Singh Yadav from praising Modi or give excuses of geriatric senilities. Both SP and BSP have stayed away from the Congress simply because seat-sharing experiments have not resulted in net gain for them, the Congress vote going to hierarchical parties instead of a loyalty transfer. And now that Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has lent some spunk in the Congress campaign, that party believes that it needs to go it alone in all states and rebuild itself with a sprinkling of charisma than subsume its existence to regional parties. The Opposition must realise that Modi isn’t just an enemy, he rose as a reaction to what it is, a pluralistic chaos than warrior knights on a crusade.