Are Regional Parties Better at Fighting the BJP than the Congress?

The regional parties need the Congress — as much as the Congress needs them — to provide a national counterpoint and ideological scaffolding for the united Opposition

Published in The Hindu

There are many subtexts and layers underpinning the discussions — negotiations if you will — to operationalise INDIA, the united Opposition front, in the run-up to 2024 general elections. Given that the main premise of the alliance is to put up a single Opposition candidate against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), one of the biggest sticking points is seat-sharing. This is not a trivial issue; the seats any political party concedes to the united alliance will be seats where its own party members will be unable to contest. This has implications for intra-party dynamics and party organisation. The share of seats is also related to the relative strength of the party in post-poll negotiations. It is thus natural that each party would like to maximise its own share of contested seats.

These considerations may, however, seem petty juxtaposed with the larger rubric of ‘saving democracy’ under which the INDIA alliance has come together. Thus the negotiations are likely to pivot around the ‘winnability’ of the parties in question vis-à-vis the BJP.

The common political trope in this context is that regional parties are better able to repulse the challenges by the BJP than the Congress. Three allegedly empirical facts support this contention: first, regional parties bested the BJP in high-profile State elections; second, the relative strike rates of the Congress and regional parties in alliance vis-à-vis the BJP; and third, Congress’ middling performance in direct contests with the BJP. This perception has been buttressed by the recent Assembly elections where the Congress lost all the three States where it fought in a bipolar contest with the BJP.

At first glance, these arguments seem persuasive. However, there are important caveats. First, the performance of regional parties vis-à-vis the BJP has been mixed. The BJP was defeated by the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal, the Biju Janata Dal in Odisha, and the Rashtriya Janata Dal-Janata Dal (United)-Congress alliance in Bihar. However, it defeated the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party in Uttar Pradesh, and outperformed both the JD(U) (vote share and seats won) and the RJD (strike rate) in the next Bihar election under a different permutation. In Karnataka, another regional party, the Janata Dal (Secular), was squeezed out of the election by the Congress in a three-way election with the BJP.

In each of the States where the regional parties outperformed the BJP, the BJP was/is a fledgling party or operating as a junior partner in an alliance. Despite the BJP’s high-octane campaigns and modus operandi of building organisation by importing leaders from other parties, the timeline to craft a majority mandate in large States can be compressed only so much. However, the BJP’s impressive increase in vote share and the perceived closeness of the contests indicate that regional parties’ hegemony over the BJP is not a foregone conclusion. Equally, if the fundamental premise of INDIA is to put up a united opposition to the BJP, the uncertain fidelity to this premise by many regional parties is likely to play some role in the discussions.

The one exception to the above narrative is Delhi where the BJP is genuinely strong but was defeated by the Aam Aadmi Party. However, AAP’s performance in the recent State elections was dismal. It got fewer votes than NOTA and lost deposits in almost all the seats it contested. It is thus evident that outside of Delhi and Punjab, the AAP needs the opposition alliance more, and the Congress especially, to gain a foothold.

The second caveat is that the national election is no longer an aggregate of State elections with voters making their choice on different considerations in State and national elections. This has two implications. First, that the performance of regional parties in State elections cannot be extrapolated to the national election. Second, the key to contesting the national election is responding to the voters’ expectations and aspirations from the national government.

It is here that the Congress is indispensable but also where serious work remains to be done. It is evident that welfare is not a distinguishing agenda and that questions of federalism and institutional independence are not electorally salient issues. Moreover, the BJP polled more than 50% votes in 16 States and Union Territories in the last election, which means that arithmetic without a framework to provide coherence to the Opposition alliance is unlikely to be effective. The regional parties thus need the Congress — as much as the Congress needs them — to provide a national counterpoint and ideological scaffolding for the united Opposition.

Given the above context, it can be argued that it is the lack of a national counterpoint that is weakening the Congress as also INDIA at this juncture. Over the last two terms, the party has lurched from a narrative of corruption to federalism to social justice without articulating its own vision for the country and fleshing out that vision with a programmatic agenda. Moreover, there seems to be thinking that communal polarisation can be countered through some other counter-polarisation. However, in amplifying caste or regional cleavages, the party is in danger of losing its all-inclusive and nationally representative character. This would be unfortunate both for the party, given its illustrious history, and for the country, with only one party, the BJP remaining as the repository of India’s national ambitions.

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