Recent experience of coalition politics began with attempts to keep both the Congress and the BJP away (1989-1998). The second phase saw two coalitions led by those same two parties (1999-2004). Are we now going back to post-election alliances rather than pre-poll coalitions?

Just when coalitions were appearing to stabilise, they have started cracking. First, it was the UPA-LF coalition that split on the rock of the nuclear deal. But the NDA was not to be left behind: it steadily kept losing partners — the National Conference, Trinmool, and finally the BJD. One would have thought that the Congress would seize the initiative and create a larger alliance before the elections; but the party, even while forging an alliance with Mamata Banerjee, chose to literally throw away partners in a too-clever-by-half move, announcing instead that it would not have any national level alliance. Come election season and everyone is finding new allies and finding excuses to dump older allies.

This takes away the artificial bipolarity that politics had assumed for some time and alerts us to the essentially fractured character of the political space. In Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, this would produce at least four-cornered contests; Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh would see triangular contests; and so on. In January, the UPA was all set to make a comeback; suddenly, the picture has become more crowded and contingent.

A quick look at the history of coalition politics in the recent past shows that except the Left Front — and perhaps the early alliance of the Shiv Sena and BJP in Maharashtra — very few alliances were either ideological or with any common political programme. Anti-Congressism was the driving force behind much of it. Thus, the BJP carefully cultivated a friendship with anti-Congress forces like the BJD in Orissa, splinters of the Janata Dal like the Samata and the Lok Janashakti, etc. That gave the BJP the critical mass required for forming the NDA. As the ability of the BJP to function as a nucleus of anti-Congressism gets eroded, these parties have no use for the BJP.

... contd.