The bulk of the media and parts of the intelligentsia, after first coming to terms with the Congress Party system, now prefer the two multiparty coalition systems: the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) or the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), even when the UPA is only going in for post-poll alliances with its erstwhile colleagues. The one thing that worries the media is a Third Front.
But India has had fairly successful third fronts before, including the V.P. Singh-led front in 1989, and the United Front in 1996-98, not to speak of long-lasting coalitions in states like West Bengal and Tripura. The problem is undoubtedly the influence the Left has, as it did in the last UPA coalition. Politicians do not suddenly become unstable or rapacious if they join the Third Front.
Has Naveen Patnaik become a weaker politician just because the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) broke its alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and the BJD is considering a post-poll alliance with the Third Front? Is J. Jayalalithaa a weaker, more whimsical, politician because she is with the Third Front? No. Then why this constant carping by commentators?
This is because the media and corporate interests are more comfortable with the Congress and the UPA, and the BJP and the NDA. As their manifestoes show, there is little difference between the two. The Third Front would prefer a more pro-people agenda and try, through direct intervention in the economy, to reduce the sufferings of the poor and the middle class. It would not, as the current government is doing and the BJP would do, concentrate on increasing liquidity in the banks.It would tighten financial regulations and try, through a massive public works programme, to increase employment, which in turn would increase incomes and consumer demand.
This kind of neo-Keynesian programme the rich would not like, just like they did not care for the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA).
But for all its weaknesses this act has provided jobs and income to crores of rural poor.A Third Front government may even extend this scheme to the urban poor as the common minimum programme promised. Another problem for critics is communalism. It is true that the Congress did little to protect the Babri Masjid, apart from writing letters of protest over the removal of the barricades protecting the mosque. The central paramilitary forces were not even empowered to shoot to protect the mosque as their accompanying magistrates were not instructed to give such permission.
Critically, the Justice Liberhan Commission, that was appointed to submit a report on the demolition and associated events by March 1993, has not yet done so.
History shows that the Third Front is the best alternative.
Kamal Mitra Chenoy is Professor of Indian Politics, JNU.
This article was published in The Asian Age.