NATIONAL POLITICS 

Rajni Kothari on the Third Force in Indian Politics

 As the Congress goes down, the national polity faces two completely opposite models, one presented by the BJP and the other by the "third force". Common to all three of them is one striking failure, namely of providing an institutionalized structure that could give to the country a viable model of governance in which party organization on one hand and issues to be addressed by the incoming government on the other play their respective roles.

At present while there is agreement on almost all aspects of policy and in respect of the issues that the State ought to be dealing with more so than in the past there is a striking erosion of basic consensus that cuts across parties. The agreements seem to be on populist measures - from social policy based on Mandal to an economic policy increasingly emphasizing employment and poverty eradication. There seems to be little consensus, however, on the institutions and procedures through which these agreements are to be pursued, the structure of power through which they are to be craned through.

All parties and alliances are found to be increasingly engaged in tearing each other apart, tearing one's own party and alliance apart, with a growing loss of trust or faith among so-called "allies" and all of them being subjected to increasing incidence of factionalism. There is evidence of delinquent behavior on all sides, with Mr. George Fernandes supporting Mr. Nitish Kumar and his pro-BJP politics, with Ms. Mayavati engaged in breaking the BSP to pieces, both caste-based and otherwise, the Gujarat BJP moving away from the RSS line and engaging in all kinds of skirmishes, the Telugu Desam making the family a basis for factional disputes while politicians like Ms. Jayalalitha are found to be using national chauvinist appeals each taking the system further and further away from one based on a functioning party system.

The Congress is found to be operating without the "Congress system" that had given it a distinctive role in the national polity, the BJP is found to be increasingly operating without an integrative ideology and leadership while the "third force" and the arguments made out for creating a third force appear to be too transitional, temporary in respect of the time-frame within which it is conceived, too much based on expediency and ad hocism, always aiming more at numbers and less at carving out a political process, let alone producing politics that is purposive.

The basic challenge that the "third force” facing is how to avoid the pitfalls of both 1977 and 1979 when all it could achieve was produce a catch-all party and 1989-90 which was based on bringing together parties opposed to the Congress but which had nothing much in common (despite some refreshing new thinking on social policy as well as aspects of economic development).

This time around, the effort to produce an alternative to the Congress and the BJP seen is to be once again based on a negative identity, doubly negative on this occasion, namely at once non-Congress and non-BJP but nonetheless negative in terms of what the "third force" is opposed to rather than what it stands for, giving rise to a fresh macro-structure of alignments and producing a truly functioning alternative.

It could well be argued that the very broadening of identity that one is opposed to could produce an effort that has a better ideological meaning than was the case under the earlier essentially anti-Congress mould of thinking. For this to work there is need to conceive the idea of an alternative to the Congress and the BJP in terms of a new exercise in party-building.

Unfortunately it is precisely here that the third force seems to be lacking. What is being visualized is the opposite of any "party-building exercise, the very conception of a third force being the opposite of building a coherent party or even a well-knit coalition of groups and factions... In its very conception, the third force seems to be loose, fragmented, pluralistic, broad spectrum, diffuse and ideologically ambivalent.

It could well be that for these very reasons the new model might work as it would be more in keeping with the kind of pluralistic polity that the nation needs at this point of time. But for this to happen a completely different set of ideas of organizational behavior will have to be accepted and worked towards, the very opposite of what the BJP model or the CPI(M) model provides for.

The resulting system that is likely to emerge will be based on three competing coalitions and shifting alliances left of centre, right of centre and centrist, with a variety of regional constellations and social structures appropriate to each. It is the uncertainty inherent in such an effort that leads to a lurking desire among many to continue with the Congress and its dominance, no matter what the social cost and the further erosion of the democratic political process that this may entail.

Indeed, if the Congress survives, it will be precisely for this very reason. Increasingly the Congress's appeal is becoming negative because nothing else seems likely to work. But of course its continued loss of legitimacy, in the minds of the common man, makes this an increasingly unviable proposition.

(Source: The Hindustan Times, 5 January, 1996)