Two other elements of the new third front underline the unsettling of older political reflexes: the absence of the Janata Dal at its heart and the emergence of the BSP at its head.

The most flamboyant herald bearers of the Janata Dal — born as the left-of-centre alternative to the Congress in 1988 and that split for the 13th time at last count — are within the Congress-led UPA today. Lalu Prasad Yadav has reinvented himself as doughty pillar of a Congress-led regime. Mulayam Singh Yadav has just helped the Manmohan Singh government survive the Left-led onslaught. Ram Vilas Paswan is a crucial Congress ally. With Sharad Yadav having migrated to the BJP-led NDA, the UNPA may have to make do with Deve Gowda and Ajit Singh from the many-splintered Janata parivar.

But nothing drives home the political shift more than Mayawati’s leadership role in the third front. Despite her imperfections, Mayawati represents the most radical political impulse to be unleashed in the post-Congress polity. The Dalit leader would be the natural inheritor, therefore, of the mantle of leader of the third alternative in its best version — as the fight against closures built into the bi-polar system. Yet Mayawati’s leadership of the UNPA will be a strange thing.

For all her recent efforts to reach out to non-Dalit groups and pitch a broader political tent, she remains uncomfortable with other political leaders and the media. Under her stewardship, the BSP is opportunistic in the most straightforward sense of the term. If Kanshi Ram dispensed with the Dalit dilemma of which must come first — power or structural reform — in favour of the former, Mayawati has steered the BSP to even greater focus. In every crisis at the Centre in recent memory — including the trust vote on July 22 — she has displayed the same candid brinkmanship. “The BSP will open its cards only at the end,” she says. In other words, the BSP will hold out for the best deal in that situation.

... contd.