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The alliance that is getting frayed

Relationships crack up when one of the partners starts to grab more space than the other person is willing to concede. And the success of an alliance, marital or political, depends on both the parties' willingness not to curb each other's independence even while ensuring that this doesn't militate against the relationship. Naturally, it takes time for such comprehension to evolve, there being no rule of thumb on what is the ideal period of time for such maturity to dawn.

The Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led coalition finds that seven months of cohabitation is not enough, while the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra, after three-and-a-half years of collaborating on the state government, are no closer to reaching unity in diversity.

It is not as if the both the parties had no idea about the difficult path that lay ahead of them, when they tied the knot all those years ago. Despite their commitment to Hindutva, one a hard votary and the other soft, it was obvious even to the casual observer that the differences between the two ran deep. The Shiv Sena, despite its saffron tint, was and remains a regional party, and is leader-based, unlike the BJP that is ideology-based. The BJP has already demonstrated that when it comes to the crunch, issues that nurtured it could be shifted to the backburner, to be pulled out as and when the situation is conducive. This is a tactic that the Sena is clearly not comfortable with, being a party that is cosy with its chief Bal Thackeray's direct approach.

The very fact that the two parties have stuck around for so long, despite it being apparent that the BJP is looking at a time when it will be able to add the Sena's votebank to its own -- post-Thackeray, of course -- is proof that there is only so much mileage that militant Hindutva can provide, and that the Indian electorate, despite its illiteracy, despite its backwardness, despite its apathy, is essentially middle of the road.

The BJP tried its best to alter this essential feature on a national scale, as did parties like the Sena on a locally, but both found to their chagrin that they could hang together or be hanged separately. The BJP noticed a quantum leap in its acceptability and popularity when it froze the divisive issues on its agenda and focused, instead, on bread and butter.

In Maharashtra, the two allies are essentially jostling for the same space. Their area of influence is confined to the space beyond the influence of the Congress and the Third Front, which surprisingly has a decent presence here. The BJP, being a lambe race ka ghoda, has agreed to play the junior partner, but anybody who has studied that party knows that it is not a party that will rest within a static sphere. But its growth has to perforce be at the cost of the Sena, since the two share an electorate. For the Congress or the Third Front voters to swing their allegiance calls for a ground-breaking development, something that is not on the horizon.

Which is why the BJP is in a state of panic over the Sena's insistence on providing free electricity to farmers. It can couch its reservations in any language it likes -- after all, it is accepted that Maharashtra is walking into a financial nightmare -- but the bottomline is very clear. The BJP is worried that the Sena's populist measure will swing voters away from it.

Things would have been different if the announcement over free power was taken by the state cabinet and announced in the normal course of things. But this was a measure announced first by the head of the Sena and has the effect of a ukase on the chief minister. This is not the way the BJP would like the government to be run. Just replicate the same scenario on a larger scale and see the difference. It is rather like Kushabhau Thakre espousing what the central government should do and the prime minister conforming to it. Democracy is not a fiefdom, the BJP knows, and is chafing at the bit because it is in league with a feudal lord who cares a whit for constitutional niceties.

Such a situation would not matter much to the BJP if, one, it was not ambitious about running the federal government and, two, it was not nursing an ambition to head the state.

Unlike most others, Maharashtra has been sympathetic to the saffron cause, and it is also where the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has been actively involved in social work. Given the extent of groundwork done on its behalf, the BJP would be idiotic in not looking at expanding its sphere of activity -- which too will be at the cost of the Sena. It is an odd situation, where two parties that are trying to eat into each other's vote bank are locked in an electoral arrangement.

A look at what has happened to other charisma-based parties like the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazagham and the Telugu Desam Party, once their patron-saint went to the Maker, is illuminating. The vote bank did not break up in those cases, and after some meandering settled down with whom it felt was a natural successor, a former heroine in one and son-in-law in another. In Thackeray's case, two inheritors are being groomed, son and nephew, and it is over their head that the BJP is seeking to expand its base.

It is upset that the free power scheme directly affects its carefully laid plans of ruling the state in the future, for Thackeray's announcement was little short of an election broadcast.

The BJP is comfortable with the status quo, and dreads any change that may go against its interests.

The BJP is also essentially uncomfortable with Chief Minister Manohar Joshi's style of functioning for the same reason that he was handpicked by Thackeray: his unquestioning loyalty. The BJP would like the CM to show a little more spine, a quality that is rare in a party dependent on its founder to bring in the votes. But after having lived with it for so long, its choices were limited. Either to suffer slights, deliberate or unwitting, or to walk out of the relationship.

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Saisuresh Sivaswamy