Third Front a hollow threat

The much talked about idea of a political ‘Third Front’ has lost steam. The formation of the front, created mainly by the Left parties (mainly CPI and CPM), has been announced at least thrice since the Left withdrew its support to UPA mid 2008. But now it is trying to silently distance itself from the idea. In reality, the front – supposedly a ‘third’ political alternative to Congress-led and BJP-led government – has been a foolish idea right from its conception. Prakash Karat, having failed to topple the UPA government on the Nuclear deal, wanted to desperately come up with some damage control measure, since his ability of decision making and steering the communists in right direction (I mean left direction) - was seriously at stake. And so he came up with this idea - of a non-Congress, non-BJP front. And surprisingly he did initially find takers in a bunch of political parties that were completely clueless about what they were supposed to do to expand their role at national level.

The already dissolving third front was initially comprised of mainly regional parties which do not exert as much influence as the Congress or the BJP at national level. Apart from the Left parties (CPI, CPI-M, Forward Block and other left parties), the other constituents of the front were TDP, AIADMK, TRS, and few other useless parties like Deve Gowda’s JD-Secular (JD-S). In true sense the Congress and the BJP are the only national level parties and frankly speaking only one of these two deserve to come to power with or without support of smaller parties. There was another national level party - Janata Dal (JD). But it disintegrated speedily into factions ranging from JD-A to JD-Z. Not really that many. Humor aside, but there are so many factions of the former Janata Dal that it’s hard to keep count of those: JD-U, RJD (Lalu), LJP (Paswan), JD-S (Gowda), BJD ( Biju Patnaik) and so on. A classic example of how a national party broke down into regional parties.

The third front has always faced entry and exit of partners before every fresh announcement of its formation.

• Mayavati’s BSP was a part of it for initially as the lure of making her the front’s PM candidate was too good to be ignored. But now Maya is no longer with the front.


• Sharad Pawar led NCP had also shown inclination towards the third front at the very beginning. But Pawar made a couple of U-turns and now he doesn’t look too serious about joining the front.


• Chandrababu Naidu (TDP) did not want to get along with Congress or BJP. Understandable. But what made him see ideological similarities in Left tha he chose to be a part of the front ? Only he knows.


• AIADMK chief Jaya Lalitha initially agreed to be a part of the front, but now she has confirmed that she will look for allies after post poll.


• TRS has formally dumped the front and decided to join NDA since BJP promised the party to give serious consideration to carve Telangana state out of existing boundaries of AP.


• Deve Gowda is not in a state to figure out what to do. He is being totally sidelined since his party is expected to win only two seats. Independents would have more demand than him. His son has met Sonia Gandhi.

This shows that there are too many cracks already in the front. Not surprising when parties with non-intersecting political agendas and ideologies come together. As Advani said – “Indian politics is mostly bi-polar. Not aligning with Congress or BJP does not mean that there is a new front. Post elections, it wouldn’t be surprising to see the constituents deserting the front and aligning with either Congress or BJP”. Well, we don’t have to wait even that long, the front has already started dissolving even before the elections are over. As one Congress leader said – all he can see in the third front is ‘negativity’. He is darn right. The Left-exhibited negativity is going to overshadow all other parties in the front. Karat became too over-confident too early about the success of his idea. He even claimed that he would be the one in position to demand support of UPA, rather than extending support to UPA. A few sensible people that surprisingly do exist in CPM seem to have reminded Karat that he may fall on his face on his claims. Karat soon went on back foot and is now saying that he is open to idea of supporting UPA.

The reality is there really is no alternative to Congress-led or BJP-led government. Each have their own drawbacks (Congress favors minoritism and reservations and BJP has religious quirkiness). But both the fronts agree on the most important front - development, both have a market-friendly thinking and have leaders who are pro-reforms. Left on the other hand has vowed to review each of the positive pro-development reforms done during UPA tenure and threatened of rolling them back it sees a need to do so. That would be a disaster. Remember unlike last 5 yrs, the Left will be ‘in’ the government and not an external supporter – and that would be too harmful.

Nevertheless if the parties in the front do get a sizable chunk of the vote share due to reasons like sheer luck, or poor voter turnout or division of votes between too many candidates, it can get to play king maker. We have had several incidences in the past where a leader of a regional of a third front has become PM by cobbling up external support from other parties. Examples are – Deve Gowda, Chandra Shekhar, I.K. Gujaral, and even Morarji Desai (in 1978). But none of these have lasted full term and on the contrary have fallen apart quickly. It’s not possible to keep too many ideologically differing parties knitted together for too long time. Too many people have to be kept happy at the same time and that doesn’t work well for the country. Alliances like UPA or NDA have been time tested ones on stability. And if third front does get a fair share of votes, then the best solution is to keep it away from power. And that can happen if the two mainstream groups join hands. Yes, it means Congress and BJP should join hands.

The idea of Congress and BJP coming together may sound silly, but is a very logical and powerful idea that would be India’s interest. Consider at the following facts:

• All pre-poll analyses and surveys indicate that the Congress and BJP would be the top two leading parties but would be far from majority. UPA and NDA have seen several allies leaving them.


• The Left led third front after coming to power has promised to rolling back the economy would be disastrous. Prakash Karat is more dangerous than Maya, Lalu, Paswan all put together.


• Sharad Pawar a supposedly ‘true’ ally of Congress attended the joint Left-BJD-NSP rally in Orissa. It is nothing but a clear warning that he wants to claim PM’s post and can even ditch the UPA and join hands with Left. Sharad Pawar, although being a sharp administrator and an able leader, has always ridden on politics of back-stabbing and greed. With only a handful of seats in NCP’s name nationwide, he should realize that he deserves nothing more than a couple of cabinet ministries.


• Can we afford Maya holding the top post of this nation ?


• After all over past years we have seen political rivals joining hands for a common cause. We see businesses acquiring (or you can call them uniting with) rival businesses in order to achieve a common goal. Why not then in politics. The common goals here are variety of issues ranging from development, reforms, foreign affairs, international policies, defense, pro-western and pro-USA alignment and many more. And the advantage is that both BJP and Congress have leaders who agree to a common agenda on all these issues. We don’t mind having two PMs in the five-year term, each playing his role for 2.5 years as a part of power sharing deal. This will have multiple advantages – one, with nonsense parties like Left and other non-development parties out of picture development reforms can proceed on full steam. Second, BJP and Congress can both curb each other’s extreme activities – like BJP going overboard on religious issues and Congress going overboard on appeasing minority communities.


• Investor confidence would get a boost on seeing the two most pro-develompment parties coming together. FDI would go up and Stock Market would get the much needed boost.

Poll results would be out on May 16th and this possibility will remain a dream. P.A. Sangma and a couple of other Congress veterans have already expressed this idea openly to media. P.A. Sangma claimed that Rajiv Gandhi would have welcomed this idea. If only this possibility turns into reality. This had the potential to turn into a model so sustainable that voters would have preferred this forever. The regional parties would have had to either sit in the opposition or pack their bags and vanish from playing a role at national level. The biggest benefactor of this arrangement would have been the people of this nation for whom government exists in first place.

Authored by: Mandar Garge