THE REAL IPL

It’s May 7^th and I just cast my vote for the lok sabha elections in India.

It’s by far the largest ever exercise of universal adult franchise anywhere in the world, and is conducted with fair degree of organization and transparency under the aegis of the election commission of India.

So, I hear all you cricket fans ask, what does all this have to do with the IPL???

Well, I believe this IPL i.e. the Indian Politicians League, which is about to commence, post May 16^th, when the results for the lok sabha elections shall be announced, to be much more thrilling, high stakes, speculative and relevant than the Indian Premier League, and hence to be the real IPL.

With the onset of May 16^th, I believe we will all find ourselves witnessing a scramble by all parties concerned, to ‘buy’ themselves the players (read parties and MP’s) for their respective teams (read ‘post poll alliances’). Each MP shall be offered crores and crores for his support (I do not speculate on this. It has already been alleged and demonstrated on the floor of the house last year when the incumbent government faced prospects of being toppled upon the withdrawal of support by the left party on the back of the Indo-US nuclear deal).

Unlike the previous lok sabha elections, this year is going to see an ever more fractured verdict, with the seats in the lower house of the Indian parliament being fragmented more and more in favour of the regional parties. In such a situation, the national party to emerge as the single largest party, whether it be Congress or BJP, would not even have half the number of seats of the desired number of 272 to form a government at the Centre.

A likely scenario which may emerge is as follows:

PARTY	SEATS	%AGE
CONGRESS	130	23.94%
BJP	115	21.18%
BSP	45	8.29%
SP	30	5.52%
RJD	25	4.60%
NCP	35	6.45%
CPM	40	7.37%
SHIV SENA	10	1.84%
CPI	10	1.84%
DMK	10	1.84%
OTHERS	93	17.13%
TOTAL	543	100.00%

 

 

While the above is merely a hypothesis introduced by me to illustrate my point, I believe the result would be much on the above lines with some tweaking of numbers and parties in different places. However, the verdict would be clear (pun intended): the Indian democracy would have evolved!!!

The process of evolution of the Indian democracy has brought us to the point where, as we will witness in this year’s lok sabha elections:

1.        The voter turnout would have increased;

2.       The youth awareness and participation would have also increased;

3.       The prospect of any party (regional or nationalist) obtaining absolute majority as it did in yesteryears, is long forgotten;

4.      The regional parties have gained in dominance with the people of each state/union territory preferring their local parties to the national parties;

5.       The regional parties combined hold more seats than the nationalist parties combined.

In such a situation, there would be only one end result to the electoral process: COALITION GOVERNMENT.

Well that is not such a bad thing after all. In fact, in my view, a coalition government has the virtue insofar as it provides for representation of different regional interests in the government and provides a conduit for each state and Union Territory to participate in the governance of the country in real terms rather than being subjugated by the whims of a nationalist party with its nationalist agenda. It has an intrinsic counter-balancing quality and prevents complacence on the part of the ruling party by keeping it always on its toes.

Of course there are negatives of a coalition government also, but I do not wish to expound on the same as I believe that coalition governments are here to stay (unless of course we amend the constitution to provide for a bi-partite system akin to the US of A). A coalition government is the natural extension of democracy working in its truest sense and the way it has always been intended to work. The US version of democracy juxtaposes the bipartite condition on the democracy, thereby appearing to have a cleaner verdict, but really suppressing the true spirit of democracy in the process.

However, what is not desirable, and in fact despicable, is the prospect of coalition government by way of ‘post poll alliance’. It is nothing but horse trading and rubbishes any notion of beliefs/manifestos and agendas. The deliberate strategy by all parties to not form any alliance prior to going to polls is because they really do not care about aligning with other parties having similar ideologies. They only care about coming to power. Hence they keep their options open, and with concerted design, indulge in horse trading and payments/incentives to get support of more and more MP’s to their ‘team’ to reach that sacrosanct number of 272!!! Even if some pre-poll alliances are formed, these are brittle and fall apart with the slightest external or internal stimulus.

So this is what I call the real IPL. We will all see it play out post May 16^th and we all know that the stakes here will be much more than its cricketing counterpart. It will affect all of us in real terms as opposed to the cricket counterpart which only results in feelings of momentary elation or disappointment and nothing else. We will see each party bid for players with much more zest than Vijay Mallya or Shahrukh Khan. Heck, we may even see some image building and PR by the resulting team.

We will most definitely also see the Congress, BJP and the third front give up their so called ideologies and go to bed with whoever gets them into power.

Who will come to power? Time will tell.

Maybe the better outcome is for Congress and BJP to combine and form a government which will be much more stable and decisive than one formed by coalition of multiple parties. After all, if they are going to compromise on their stated principles, then they may as well go all the way and sleep with their nemesis!!! Between the two of them, they would command a substantial number of the seats and would need a third or a fourth wheel which would be obviously replaceable. They will then be able to carve up the ministerial positions and the booty amongst themselves. Maybe even convert the PM post to a time share concept rather than a pre-ordained and over-rated 5 year tenure. After all, sleeping with one enemy alone, is better than sleeping with the whole lot of them, for if you sleep with only one enemy, you may get away with being called an ‘opportunist’, but if you sleep with all of them, you will not only be termed ‘an opportunist’ but also other derogatory terms which I will leave you all to toil with, in your minds…