BHARAT BALLOT 09: A MATTER OF COALITIONS

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 NEW DELHI 000686

SIPDIS

DEPARTMENT FOR SCA/INS

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PGOV PREL PINR KDEM IN
SUBJECT: BHARAT BALLOT 09: A MATTER OF COALITIONS

REF: BHARAT BALLOT 09 SERIES


1. (SBU) Summary: The fragmentation of political power away
from Delhi and the national parties to the states and
regional parties means that no single party is capable of
forming a national government by itself in India. With
little more than a week to go before the start of the polling
cycle on April 16, the intense period of negotiations and
deal-making to lock in pre-poll alliances has ended and the
election campaign has begun in earnest. Going into the
polls, Indian electoral politics today hinges around five
axis: a Congress Party-led alliance; a Bharatiya Janata
Party-led alliance; a communist-led Third Front; the
Brahmin-Dalit combine of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister
Mayawati; and a "Fourth Front" of regional political parties
in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. This cable explores the nature
of coalition politics in India. We will examine the Congress
Party and BJP alliances in subsequent cables. End Summary.

Coalitions Here to Stay
--------------


2. (SBU) Indian parliamentary elections are notoriously
unpredictable because of the inherent difficulty of assessing
the pulse and mood of an electorate that is so widely diverse
in geography, language, ethnicity, religion, economic status
and a host of other attributes. A large roster of viable
political parties makes it harder to assess their relative
strengths during any given election cycle. Caste and ethnic
configurations and local development and governance issues
can shift widely from one constituency to the next, making it
even more difficult to predict aggregate results.


3. (SBU) However, one of the few predictions that can be
made with a high degree of confidence about the upcoming
April-May parliamentary election is that it will result in a
coalition government, as no single party has the strength to
come close to a majority in parliament. Every Indian
government since 1991 has been a coalition (or a minority
government supported by other parties.) And, this trend has
been accelerating over time. The current United Progressive
Alliance (UPA) government is a coalition of 13 political
parties in government and at least half a dozen that support
it from the outside. The previous 1999-2004 National
Democratic Alliance (NDA) government was a coalition of close
to two dozen parties.

Powers Shifts Away From the Center
--------------


3. (SBU) For the last 40 years, political power in India has
moved steadily to regional parties or single-issue parties,
which are often caste-based and dominated by a single
personality. The once mighty Congress Party, which led the
freedom struggle and for long held absolute power in Delhi
and the states, has lost its luster and fallen on hard times.
It once served as a coalition in itself, bringing together
all of India's castes, religions and ethnic groups under one
umbrella. The Congress Party's credibility has eroded over
time because of the arrogance of power, the autocratic ways
of its leaders, its failure to respond to regional
aspirations and its inability to adapt to the changing India.



4. (SBU) The penchant of the Nehru-Gandhi family to
centralize power in its own hands and bring down regional
party leaders to ensure that no one can challenge its
supremacy has been particularly damaging to the party.
Regional political leaders, especially in the key states of
Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, have steadily peeled away from the
party and set up their own political bases. The result has
been that the Congress Party is virtually nonexistent in
these two states that together comprise about more than 20
percent of the lower house of parliament. These two states

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were at one time the heart of the Congress Party's electoral
calculations and the disappearance of the party's strength
there mirrors its national decline.


5. (SBU) The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has
never been a truly national party. With roots in Hindu
nationalism as a response to centuries of Muslims and
Christian rule, its appeal was limited to the Hindi heartland
in northern India. While it has managed to spread to the
non-Hindi speaking states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Orissa and
Karnataka, the BJP has not been able to sufficiently broaden
its appeal geographically and across caste and identity lines
to threaten to win a majority on its own. Both the Congress
and the BJP must, therefore, rely on fractious and unwieldy
coalitions with smaller parties to govern.

Pre-Poll and Post-Poll Alliances
--------------


5. (SBU) Coalition politics in India is of two stripes. In
pre-poll alliances, parties reach an understanding early,
generally before the candidate nominations have been declared
and the elections campaigns begun. The allied parties
apportion election districts in a state or a region between
them on the basis of some seat allocation formula that is
roughly commensurate with the strength of each party in the
sub-regions of that state or region. By pledging to
consolidate their votes in each district, the allies improve
their chances against candidates of other parties in these
districts. In post-poll alliances, the parties come together
once elections results have been declared. They have fought
the elections independently and often against each other.
Both types of alliances are common in India. Indeed, both
are necessary in order for any configuration of parties to
reach a stable majority in parliament and form a viable
government.

Ideology-free Coalitions
--------------


6. (SBU) The distinctive feature of coalition politics in
India is the almost complete absence of any ideological
grounding of most of the regional parties when it comes to
alliances for governing coalitions. Pre-poll alliances are
forged only so that parties can pool their voter bases and
avoid multi-cornered contents. Once the elections are over,
political parties, big and small, negotiate for the best deal
they can get to secure a piece of the pie, which different
parties see differently. Some parties, for example, will not
want ministerial berths in the federal cabinet and will
bargain for power in their home states. Others will want
specific portfolios in the federal cabinet because they
consider them either as a source of patronage (Railways) or
fund-raising (Chemicals and Fertilizers, Steel, Coal, Mines).
Still others will demand a certain policy change or
government action designed to benefit a specific person or
group as the price for their support - the price demanded by
the Samajwadi Party in return for its support to the UPA
during the July 2008 confidence vote reportedly was an UPA
agreement to slow down prosecution of Samajwadi Party
president Mulayum Singh Yadav in a criminal corruption case.


7. (SBU) There are only a handful of combinations that can
be ruled out in advance. Only one or two of these are on
pure ideological grounds - it is difficult to imagine, for
example, the communist parties entering a BJP-led coalition
at this time (although they have supported each other in the
past.) A few other combinations are unlikely for political
rather than ideological reasons - most regional parties that
battle each other in a given state would likely not be a part
of the same coalition in Delhi (Tamil parties DMK and AIDMK,
for example). Similarly, regional parties whose principal
opponent in the state is the Congress Party would not likely
be part a coalition led by the Congress Party (Shiromani

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Akali Dal). Beyond that the parties see the field open to
them to reach the best deal possible, regardless of any
ideological compatibility issues.

The 2009 Fault Lines
--------------


6. (SBU) The frenzy of negotiations, deal-making, feints and
counter-feints over pre-poll alliances ended last week, with
several crucial alliances sealed and many that did not
materialize. Both the Congress Party and the BJP got some
rude shocks, with the Congress having greater difficulty
finding partners ahead of the polls. As the campaigns have
entered full swing, the main alliance fault lines are as
follows:

Congress Party: It entered into pre-poll alliances with the
Karunanidhi's DMK in Tamil Nadu, Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool
Congress in West Bengal, and Sharad Pawar's Nationalist
Congress Party in Maharashtra. It failed to reach an
understanding with UPA allies: Malayum Singh Yadav's
Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh, Lalu Prasad Yadav's
Rashtriya Janata Dal and Ram Vilas Paswan's Lok Janashakti
Party in Bihar, the Nationalist Congress Party outside of
Maharashtra. Tamil Nadu's PMK also left the UPA alliance to
team up with another regional party in that state.

BJP: It has entered into pre-poll alliances with the Janata
Dal-United in Bihar, Shiv Sena in Maharashtra, the Shiromani
Akali Dal in Punjab, the Indian National Lok Dal in Haryana,
the Rashtriya Lok Dal in Uttar Pradesh, and the Asom Gana
Parishad in Assam. The BJP could not reach an agreement in
Orissa with its long time partner, the Biju Janata Dal, which
broke away to fight alone in that state.

Third Front: The communist parties have been working hard to
assemble a third alternative to challenge the Congress and
the BJP. Parties that have signed on with varying degrees of
commitment include the four communist parties of the left
front, the Telegu Desam Party and the Telangana Rashtriya
Samiti in Andhra Pradesh, the AIDMK in Tamil Nadu, and the
Janata Dal-Secular in Karnataka.

Fourth Front: Lalu Prasad Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan in Bihar
and Mulayum Singh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh, after having dumped
the Congress Party ahead of the polls, have pledged to
support each other in their respective states and not field
candidates against each other in Bihar or Uttar Pradesh.

Mayawati: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati's Bahujan
Samaj Party has not attempted to enter into an alliance or
understanding with any other party. It goes into the
election with its Brahmin-Dalit combine alone and will
contest countrywide although its strength lies mainly in
Uttar Pradesh.
BURLEIGH