Tamil Nadu alliances and the race for Delhi

In this country’s fractious political landscape amid the possibility of a fractured mandate forcing the formation of a coalition government again at the Centre, pre-poll alliances have assumed greater importance. The numbers will become important enough to affect the Lok Sabha seat arithmetic to be presented to the President. The series of alliances sealed in the past few days by both the national parties, the BJP and the Congress, the largest Opposition party, points to the urgency behind the pre-poll pacts. After Uttar Pradesh (80 seats), Maharashtra (48) and West Bengal (42) come Tamil Nadu (39 plus one in Puducherry) and Bihar (40). The significance of Tamil Nadu in national politics is stressed once again as a flurry of activity led to the two national parties joining regional alliances. While the Congress staying with the DMK-plus was predictable given the circumstances, the BJP returns to a Dravidian poll alliance after 15 years.

The BJP-led NDA and the Congress-led UPA (or possibly People’s Progressive Alliance) may be national power centres, but when it comes to Tamil Nadu, these parties tend to join the regional party-led alliances as a junior partner. This trend, established decades ago with the fading of the Congress as the predominant national party, gave way to regional satraps like Karunanidhi and MGR-Jayalalithaa becoming major influencers of Union government formation. It is understandable that both the BJP and the Congress were prepared to accept as low as five and 10 seats, respectively. This is on the premise that Tamil Nadu’s leaders don’t necessarily nurture prime ministerial ambitions even if they bring a chunk of the 40 Lok Sabha seats. In fact, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry voters have twice chosen decisively, giving 40 seats in 2004 to UPA-DMK+ and 37 to the AIADMK in 2014. The significance of such numbers is obvious.

The nature of coalition politics is such that parties have been known to freely cross over from one alliance to another before the polls, suggesting that ideological considerations are insignificant whereas judging which way the wind generated by the popular vote will blow is more important. The phenomenon isn’t unknown in Tamil Nadu either, though these are the first alliances to have coalesced after the death of AIADMK supremo J. Jayalalithaa in 2016. Having flirted with the Third Front in 2009, her decision to go it alone in 2014 with the line “It’s Modi versus Lady” paid dividends in dramatic fashion with the saffron party-led Tamil Nadu alliance winning just two seats out of 39 while DMK blanked. The void Jayalalithaa leaves in Tamil Nadu’s theatrical politics might see the pendulum swing in Dravidian land, in which both national parties can expect to pad up their fortunes only in piggybacking a ride on the back of one of the Dravidian majors.