Reports have been trickling in of a new detente between the two backward caste stalwarts, Mulayam Singh Yadav and Lalu Prasad Yadav. The two leaders have been partners before, in the shortlived Rashtriya Loktantrik Morcha in the late ’90s, for instance, which proclaimed equidistance from the Congress and BJP.

While an understanding with Mulayam Singh Yadav might come in handy for a beleaguered Lalu Yadav in his home state in Bihar — as a step towards rallying together all anti-Nitish forces in the state — it could have several other political spin offs. An unintended, or intended, consequence, of a rapprochement between the two Yadav chieftains could be that it could add to the growing bargaining power of regional parties at the national level.

Over the parliamentary polls in the 1990s and after, the presence of the regional parties has increased enormously in the Lok Sabha. All the regional parties put together polled 32.8 per cent votes and won 174 Lok Sabha seats in 2004. Though this is still far short of the magic figure required for forming the government, as the figures in Table 1 show, there has been a dramatic increase in the percentage vote and seat share of regional parties in Parliament — and an equally spectacular decline of the national parties in the same period.

It is unlikely that either the Congress or the BJP, can form the government at the Centre on their own in the near future. While the Congress support base has shown a steady decline in the ’90s, as Table 2 shows, the BJP has been finding it difficult to cross the 25 per cent vote share.

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