The world´s largest democracy, whatever may be its quality, is up for elections again. The fallout of the Jain Commission report brought down the government of I.K. Gujral, Parliament has been dissolved, and the battle lines drawn. In February´s elections, the "stability card" will emerge as the make-or-break issue. Millions of Indians, who see economic growth and industrial development as more important than identifying the killers of Rajiv Gandhi (since it is already well known that the LTTE was responsible), are keen to elect a government that will last. The Hindu revivalist Bharatiya Janata Party, which was the single largest party in the last Parliament, thinks it can hijack the stability card from the Congress.
The BJP leaders have cause for optimism, for the post-Rajiv Gandhi Congress resembles the Mughal Empire in decline. However, Prime Minister-in-Waiting Atal Behari Vajpayee would be mistaken if he believes that the BJP can emerge as a monolithic party like the Congress of the Nehruvian era. For the BJP´s conservative plank can never occupy the centrist political space in Indian politics that the Congress has held on to for fifty years.
Look at what the Congress was able to do: In Mizoram, northeast India, predominantly Christian, the Congress promised a "good Christian government" to upstage former rebel chief Laldenga in 1988. In other states, it appeased extreme as well as moderate Hindu and Muslim opinion to forge unbeatable electoral partnerships. In the Northeast and the South, it forged alliances with regional parties to win elections and form governments.
The BJP has a far too-well-defined a political agenda to be able to make friends and win allies with the ease of the Congress. It may engineer defections like it did recently in Uttar Pradesh -but that cannot be overdone by a party which claims the moral high ground. So, for all practical purposes, the BJP itself will remain a "cow belt" phenomenon of the Hindi heartland. If the BJP wants to win more than two hundred seats, it will have to forge alliances with the regional parties. Not without reason did ´Atalji´ congratulate former Prime Minister H.D. Deve ´ Gowda for "bringing regional parties into the Delhi power structure, so that we were all able to interact and understand them". This, even while other BJP MPs were lambasting Deve Gowda for a hundred failures, real or perceived.