Now after sixty years of sovereignty, we are once again seeing the same fragmenting tendencies rule the party structure. Like some ancient dynasty, the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty ruled over all of India for 42 years till 1989 with only an occasional usurper. Since 1989, the dynasty has never been in full power. It has to adjust to the demands of many regional subahdars and local nawabs.

Luckily for India, democracy thrives without single party dominance. Indeed, one way to admire what India has achieved is its ability to stay united without a strong central authority. Any exclusive powerful authority would have to exclude many or at least treat the core elite better than the periphery. That was what Congress did for its first 42 years. It looked after the upper crust and fed crumbs to the Dalits and the OBCs. When they revolted, the Congress edifice fell apart.

Now each group has its own party and wants a piece of the cake. The old vertical hierarchical caste society is becoming horizontal, though it is still as divided as it was before. There are occasional small unifying movements as with the Yadavs and Paswan in Bihar/UP. But they are local, not national. Nor does the BSP, despite the charisma of its leader, unite all Dalits

The Third Front is an acceptance of this cellular character of Indian society. Class is not reliable as a unifying factor as the Left should know by now. So a double negative factor —anti-BJPism plus anti-Congressism—is the unifying platform. Yet this has to compete against each separate negative. Anti-BJPism is called secularism and can combine many fragments as it did under the UPA. Anti-Congressism is not as strong as it used to be in the Seventies. So the NDA is fragile.

... contd.