By Inder Malhotra

SINCE the assembly elections in Bihar are due in five months from now, it stands to reason that the Bharatiya Janata Party should want to make its presence felt in the state.

After all, it is the junior partner in the coalition government there, headed by Mr Nitish Kumar of the Janata Dal (United). Therefore the saffron party’s plan to have a two-day meeting of its National Executive as well as a Swabhiman rally at Patna, made sound sense. But, unsurprisingly, it ended up making a hash of things by precipitating a wholly avoidable confrontation with Mr Kumar and putting under strain what is its long lasting and crucial alliance. What compounded this folly was that the BJP leadership did it all for the sake of giving a huge build-up to Mr Narendra Modi, Gujarat’s highly controversial, if also swashbuckling, Chief Minister. To be sure, he has been the BJP’s poster boy for quite some time. He also deserves credit for his administrative skills. But there is no way he can shrug off his responsibility for the infamous communal carnage in his state in 2002.

Unfortunately, the BJP’s method of glorifying Mr Modi, which unfortunately bore his own stamp, could not have been cruder. Full-page advertisements inundated Patna newspapers. One showed him and Mr Kumar sharing a platform clasping their hands comradeship. Leave alone seeking the Bihar Chief Minister’s permission, he was not even informed. He was so incensed that he not only ordered a police inquiry into the publication of the addled ads but also cancelled a dinner for the BJP top brass he was going to host. The second advertisement, purporting to show that Muslim women were doing very well in Mr Modi’s Gujarat and was working in the IT industry, boomeranged even more hurtingly. It turned out that the young women photographed at their computers were residents of Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh, and had nothing to do with Gujarat.

Unabashed by this, the BJP bigwigs used their rally – at which Mr Modi (who else?) was the main speaker – to deliver the message that while it would like to keep alive its partnership with the JD (U), it would not "compromise on its self-respect". The only possible meaning of this can be that quite apart from the incident over the weekend, the BJP has been feeling that the senior partner in the Bihar coalition is treating it with scant respect. Yet, at the same time, in a manner typical of this country’s politics, both sides also made conciliatory noises. From the BJP’s side, the chairman of its parliamentary party, Mr L K Advani, tried to smoothen the ruffled feathers. The JD (U) president, Mr Sharad Yadav, while deploring the Nitish-Modi ad, has stated that the old alliance is "intact".

NDA Under Threat

However, some seasoned observers of the scene are already speculating that Mr Kumar might do to the BJP in Bihar what Mr Naveen Patnaik had done to it last year in Orissa – dump it and win the state on one’s own. In fact, some JD (U) leaders have been heard to say that in Bihar’s "quadrangular" politics, the JD (U), in cooperation with Mr Ramvilas Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party, can win the election because Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal, the Congress and the BJP would be arrayed against one another, and the Congress party’s plight in the state is visibly poor. Mr Rahul Gandhi has done a lot to revitalise the party in UP but no one has attempted to do so in Bihar. In any case, Bihar and Orrisa are not on all fours. Also, Mr Advani is not wide of the mark when he publicly tells Mr Kumar that the BJP has made a contribution to the good work that has earned the Bihar Chief Minister kudos. The other side of the coin is that if the BJP-JD (U) alliance breaks down the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance would practically cease to exist because it would be left with only two other relatively lightweight constituents, the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra and Shiromani Akali Dal in Punjab.

Whatever might happen in Bihar, the latest events at Patna have serious implications that are not confined to that state but have much wider ramifications. The first of these is the acute disarray, disunity and confusion within the BJP ranks that is growing worse by the day, notwithstanding Mr Modi’s strident oratory directed against the Congress and its president, Ms Sonia Gandhi. Throwing politeness to the winds, it must be said that the biggest setback to the saffron party since the shock of last year’s parliamentary poll is that high hopes pinned on its new president, Mr Nitin Gadkari, have fallen flat. It is becoming increasingly clear that quite a few prominent figures in the party are not reconciled to his leadership. As at all other BJP conclaves, so at Patna several of them stayed away, former Union minister Mr Yashwant Sinha among them. The objectionable language Mr Gadkari used against Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mr Lalu Yadav after the defeat of the cut motion in the Lok Sabha reflected very poorly on him. His mishandling of the Jharkhand crisis after the cut motion vote – during which he flew off to Spain for holiday-cum-business – was even worse. Nor has Mr Gadkari been able to resolve the party’s dilemma about its stand on Hindutva that contributed to its defeat in the Lok Sabha elections.

Lack of Coalition Ethos

Altogether, this is not a good sign for the country. For, even those totally opposed to the BJP recognise the need for a strong and responsible Opposition party. This need is indeed accentuated by what has happened to the great expectations aroused in May 2009 by the electoral success of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance. There is not the slightest sign of a more cohesive, coherent, efficient and effective government most Indians were hoping for. On the contrary, the government is buffeted from one crisis to another, and over a 13-month period has singularly failed to control sky-high food prices. On the issue of the "betrayal of Bhopal", over which public outrage today is much greater than immediately after the gas tragedy in December 1984, both the government and the Congress party are on the back foot.

This brings me to arguably the most serious and long-term challenge to the Indian polity. Since 1996, coalitions have been the order of the day at the Centre. The pattern has prevailed in the states since much longer. The Congress party’s confidence in 2009 that in 2014, it might win a parliamentary majority on its own has already frayed. For good or ill, India is destined to have coalitions for as long as we can foresee at present. The spat in Bihar only confirms what has been obvious for so long: the coalitions may be avoidable but there is no coalition ethos. Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee may have controlled his coalition better than Dr Manmohan Singh has or can. Nor is it possible for chairperson of the UPA and Congress president, Ms Sonia Gandhi to micromanage it from outside.