LEADER ARTICLE
Power to Pluralism: Why India's Polity is Not Becoming Bipolar

Many of those who believe coalition politics in India is here to stay also argue that the country''s polity is essentially bipolar, with smaller parties having no choice but to align with the BJP or the Congress. On the contrary, it can be forcefully contended that Indian politics is becoming less, not more, bipolar and that there are indications that the process of fragmentation of the polity is far from over.
There are seven states in which the BJP and the Congress are the only major political players. But these states — Himachal Pradesh, Uttaranchal, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Delhi — between them account for less than one-fifth of the total number of seats in the Lok Sabha. In the other states, either the Congress or the BJP is one of the major political players but the other is minor or insignificant and there are states as well where neither can claim to be one of the poles of the polity.
The December 2003 assembly elections provided evidence that the so-called bipolarity of Indian politics is being threatened even in states that have traditionally witnessed straight electoral battles between the BJP and the Congress. The combined vote share of the BJP and the Congress in MP dropped by 3.2 per cent between 1998 and 2003, the fall in Rajasthan was a higher 5.3 per cent, while in Chhattisgarh the vote share of the two largest national parties declined by 5.4 per cent in this period.
Even at an all-India level, the hypothesis of an increasingly bipolar polity is scarcely borne out by facts. The Congress and the BJP put together did increase their tally in the 543-member Lok Sabha by barely 22 seats between the 1996 and 1998 general elections. However, in the 1999 elections, the combined tally of the BJP and the Congress came down below the 1996 level. In fact, the combined strength of 296 Lok Sabha MPs for the BJP and the Congress in the out- going Lok Sabha was the lowest since 1980.
Those who believe the Indian polity is becoming bipolar overlook the fact that coalition politics can create compulsions for the larger party to woo the smaller ones and not the other way round. In a Parliament with, say, 100 seats, if party A has 49 seats, party B a similar number while party C has only two seats, party C becomes the most powerful party. The very description of two large parties as poles suggests that they are the ones that call the shots, which is not necessarily the case in India.
In UP, for instance, the Bahujan Samaj Party has on three different occasions formed the government in the state with the support of the BJP after having opposed the party during the election campaign. On two of these occasions, the BSP held the upper hand despite the fact that the BJP was the larger of the two parties in the assembly. The BJP''s stake in keeping the SP out of power at that time was greater than that of the BSP. In Himachal Pradesh, in May 1996, the BJP won 29 out of the 68 assembly seats, the Congress 33 and the Himachal Vikas Congress led by Sukh Ram four seats. After the elections, the BJP had to align with the HVC and concede the post of deputy chief minister to Sukh Ram''s son. The point is simple: The BJP needed the HVC more than the latter needed it.
Those who believe India''s polity is bipolar think there is a one-on-one correspondence between the decline of the Congress and the rise of the BJP. The reality is far more complicated. It is true that the period that witnessed the fastest growth of the BJP as an electoral force — from two seats in 1984 to 182 seats in 1998 — coincided with the phase of the most rapid decline of the Congress — from 415 seats in 1984 to 112 seats in 1999. But the two phenomena are not completely correlated. In many states where the Congress has been marginalised, it has been displaced not so much by the BJP as by smaller regional parties.
The marginalisation of the Congress in India''s largest state, UP (accounting for 80 out of the 543 seats in the Lok Sabha), has not led to the BJP becoming a party with unquestioned dominance in the state. On the contrary, the party was reduced to third position behind the SP and the BSP after the February 2002 assembly elections. Even at its peak in the mid-1990s, the BJP in UP never managed to get close to 40 per cent of the popular vote, though it was at that stage the single biggest party in the state assembly.
In Bihar, too, the Congress has been reduced to a marginal presence over the last decade-and-a-half, but its decline has not led to the BJP becoming the dominant party. Laloo Prasad Yadav''s Rashtriya Janata Dal or its forerunner the Janata Dal were the main agents of the erosion of the Congress party''s vote banks while the Samata Party — itself a breakaway group of the erstwhile JD and now a part of the JD(U) — has a strength in Bihar that is equal to if not more than the BJP in terms of its political influence.
As the polity of the world''s largest democracy evolves and as institutions of governance mature, political instability would reflect the internal dynamics of a highly heterogeneous and deeply divided nation state. Coalitions, in spite of their ideological contradictions, are perhaps better equipped to deal with the tensions of such a divided society than single party governments that have a tendency to centralise and homogenise.