Not all political alliances increase the winning chances of the constituent parties. At the Patna rally on Sunday called by Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad , 18 Opposition parties came together on a platform against the Bharatiya Janata Party, but not all of them can make meaningful alliances. The vote banks of many of them are in different States, and there is little chance of their being able to help improve the prospects of one another. The Trinamool Congress leader and West Bengal Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee, will gain nothing by joining hands with the RJD, which has negligible presence outside Bihar, or the Samajwadi Party, whose base does not extend much beyond Uttar Pradesh. Similarly, neither Mr. Prasad nor Akhilesh Yadav of the SP has much to gain from teaming up with the Trinamool. Only the Congress, with a nationwide presence, can hope to benefit from this coming together of different regional parties. The Congress is a small player in West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar, but its national-level ambitions will get a big boost if the Trinamool, the SP and the RJD come together on the same platform. In the present circumstances, the Congress can emerge as an alternative to the BJP only at the head of a coalition of regional parties. But it will have to do a lot more than bring different parties from different regions together; it will need to stitch together viable alliances in each State. In West Bengal, for instance, the Congress cannot hope to tie up with both the Trinamool and the Left Front. The party might have to walk a fine political line to keep disparate elements together at the national level.
For Mr. Prasad, the rally was an opportunity to make a political statement after being dumped by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. It was also an occasion to share the stage with Janata Dal (United) dissident leader Sharad Yadav, who defied Mr. Kumar and chose to stay with the grand alliance. But the fact remains that without Mr. Kumar, the grand alliance is not the same in size or shape, and cannot be expected to take on the combined might of the BJP and the ruling faction of the JD(U). The situation is not very different in Uttar Pradesh where the Congress’s alliance with the SP is not enough to best the BJP. Without Mayawati of the Bahujan Samaj Party on board, the alliance would not gain the critical mass to fight the BJP. Whether the Congress can indeed bring together at the national level parties opposed to one another at the State level is doubtful. But even if it manages that feat, the real challenge will be to present a viable national alternative to the BJP as the head of a cohesive coalition with well-defined policies and programmes. For that, a shared antipathy to the BJP is not enough.
