So if ideology is not the glue that can hold together a third front, then perhaps pure political calculation can. It could hang together if it made good electoral sense. Unfortunately, it does not. The ideal electoral alliance is one in which the partners simultaneously increase their likelihood of winning without cutting into each other’s vote banks. A good example of this is the Akali-BJP combine in Punjab. In allying, they avoid splitting the non-Congress vote and thereby increase their chances of winning. Meanwhile, each retains its distinct vote bank. Among the members of a would-be third front, there is little danger of any one party eating into the support base of any other since each of the parties has its own regional strongholds. By the same token they have little to offer one another electorally. Such an alliance will not improve the LDF’s chances of retaining power in Kerala or the AGP’s prospects of making a comeback in Assam. Most of the parties would be almost as electorally well off outside a third front alliance as they would be inside.

Mayawati has pitched herself as the fulcrum for a new third front, but the BSP is not in a position to anchor a third front in the way that the Congress and the BJP anchor their respective alliances. The Congress and the BJP have both brokered a number of mutually beneficial electoral alliances because of the votes that they can offer potential allies in a number of critical states. At present, the BSP can make few such offers. The BSP has scored more than 3 per cent of the vote in only 20 of the 66 assembly elections held from 1998 till today, and only 5 per cent of the vote in ten of the 66. Moreover, many of the states in which the BSP has made the most progress — Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh — are Congress-BJP two-party states in which there are no potential regional allies to be found. The parties with the most to gain from a BSP alliance are currently the very parties from which Mayawati is currently distancing herself and that are the most hostile to a potential third front. If the BSP were a valuable electoral ally to or potential spoiler in West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Assam or Haryana, then the BSP could possibly secure some semi-permanent allies in these states with the lure of its votes. Rather, these are precisely the states (with the partial exception of Haryana), where the BSP is yet to register more than a token presence. Until the party has something concrete to offer potential allies in these states, keeping all of the potential third front partners out of the embrace of either the BJP or Congress will be an extremely difficult task.

... contd.