A spate of splits, mergers, defections and resignations has been seen among the TMC, AAP, and Shiv Sena (UBT) recently. Significantly, all these parties are BJP’s rivals. While such things have happened earlier, the sheer scale at which they have occurred in the past decade is unprecedented. The Rajya Sabha elections held in recent years have witnessed large-scale cross-voting in favour of the party in power at the Centre.
The Congress, too, is not immune from the turmoil. It has experienced a decline in its traditional social support base, organisational strength and ideological moorings. The party has in recent years suffered major setbacks in Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, where defections have destabilised or brought down its governments.
In Rajasthan, the Gehlot-led Congress government barely escaped a collapse. In Punjab, some of its tallest leaders have left the party to join the BJP following disillusionment with its leadership. In recent elections for Rajya Sabha seats from Haryana, MP, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Bihar, some Congress nominees lost even when the party and its allies had the numbers required to win.
However, it is mainly the regional parties which are facing an existential threat. Take the example of the TMC, which has been in power in West Bengal for three consecutive terms and was a forerunner in the last three Lok Sabha elections. Now, there is speculation that it should merge with the Congress, its parent party from which it split in 1998, in order to stay relevant.
At a time when the regional parties are facing the heat, it is interesting to recall that the nation-wide rise of the BJP — which was confined to a few Hindi-speaking states like UP, MP, HP, and Rajasthan till the early nineties — happened mainly due to its tactical alliances with locally entrenched regional parties. It is another matter that the party went on to decimate some of the very same parties. Arguably, the alliance with the BJP has proven to be like the famous embrace of Dhritarashtra in the Mahabharata for some of its erstwhile allies.
Punjab remained an exception for many years because the Akali Dal, as a senior partner of the BJP, allowed the BJP to contest four Lok Sabha seats in 1996 and only 23 Assembly seats in 1997, after their alliance was formalised.
The decline of the Congress as an ‘umbrella party’, which had a wide broad social coalition across the country and represented the broad ideology of Nehruvian India, paved the way for the regional parties to fill the political space.
When the BJP finally emerged as the dominant party in Modi’s India, the prognosis was that regional parties like the DMK, AIADMK, Shiv Sena, NC, TMC, having firm regional-ethnic agendas and a strong support base, would fare far better than regionally-located parties like the NCP, SP and JD(U). Being ideologically oriented and cadre-based parties, it would be hard to dismantle them. However, as the recent developments have shown, both kinds of regional parties are prone to implosion.
How does one explain the phenomenon? Let us look for four possible explanations. First, the BJP, with its strong ideological mooring and committed cadres having RSS linkages, has not witnessed any major desertion even when the party was in doldrums after the 1984 elections when it won just two Lok Sabha seats.
Notably, the Left parties — whose meaningful presence is now confined to Kerala and West Bengal — have also not witnessed significant defections. In contrast, over the years, many regional parties have lost their ideological moorings. This has made defections easier, especially for those who entered politics primarily as a career, often parachuted in by the party leader. In fact, many regional parties have made a marked ideological shift from the middle-ground welfare-oriented liberal politics to neo-liberal, market-oriented values and have even been peddling soft Hindutva from time to time. This has also led party members to cross over to other parties. That the BJP has become a ‘catch-all’ party for deserters has only made things easier.
Second, many regional parties, especially in the Hindi belt, had flourished as they championed the cause of the underprivileged classes and trumped a pro-poor agenda. However, as these parties lacked an organisational base, they soon turned into caste- or community-based parties. Tragically, the same has happened even among the cadre-based regional parties. So, the loyalty of these leaders is to their respective voting communities, not to the party. They feel confident that even after joining another party or breaking from their parent party, they would survive politically. With the exception of Himachal Pradesh, in almost all other states, most of the deserters have managed to win back their constituencies. So, the deterrence in the form of people’s wrath is missing and the immediate incentive of supporting a resourceful party like the BJP is too seductive.
Third, the role of big money in winning elections is a major factor. For politicians, getting access to huge material resources that would help them contest yet another election is a great incentive. Most of the regional parties, even if they have been in power in a state, can no longer match the resources of the BJP, which has been in power in as many as 21 states on its own or in alliance. There is no longer any level-playing field even for the Congress, which has lost three consecutive elections. So, it is also a matter of political survival for the deserters when their original party loses power.
Fourth, the regional parties have had a person- or family-centred leadership. Being dependent on the charisma of the leader, when that leader or his prime inheritor are not up to the mark, the other party leaders cease to see the future of the party. Once they receive an offer from another party on the rise, they willingly jump ship, as has happened now. Also, if they do not cross over, many allegedly fear reprisal of state investigative agencies over allegations of wrongdoings.
So, the desertion is not likely to be deterred by the anti-defection law. The only way to deter such defections is for the electorate to punish defectors when they seek re-election.
Views are personal
