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UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 NEW DELHI 000686 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR SCA/INS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PREL PINR KDEM IN
SUBJECT: BHARAT BALLOT 09: A MATTER OF COALITIONS 
 
REF: BHARAT BALLOT 09 SERIES 
 
¶1.  (SBU) Summary:  The fragmentation of political power away 
from Delhi and the national parties to the states and 
regional parties means that no single party is capable of 
forming a national government by itself in India.  With 
little more than a week to go before the start of the polling 
cycle on April 16, the intense period of negotiations and 
deal-making to lock in pre-poll alliances has ended and the 
election campaign has begun in earnest.  Going into the 
polls, Indian electoral politics today hinges around five 
axis: a Congress Party-led alliance; a Bharatiya Janata 
Party-led alliance; a communist-led Third Front; the 
Brahmin-Dalit combine of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister 
Mayawati; and a "Fourth Front" of regional political parties 
in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.  This cable explores the nature 
of coalition politics in India.  We will examine the Congress 
Party and BJP alliances in subsequent cables.   End Summary. 
 
Coalitions Here to Stay 
----------------------- 
 
¶2.  (SBU) Indian parliamentary elections are notoriously 
unpredictable because of the inherent difficulty of assessing 
the pulse and mood of an electorate that is so widely diverse 
in geography, language, ethnicity, religion, economic status 
and a host of other attributes.  A large roster of viable 
political parties makes it harder to assess their relative 
strengths during any given election cycle.  Caste and ethnic 
configurations and local development and governance issues 
can shift widely from one constituency to the next, making it 
even more difficult to predict aggregate results. 
 
¶3.  (SBU) However, one of the few predictions that can be 
made with a high degree of confidence about the upcoming 
April-May parliamentary election is that it will result in a 
coalition government, as no single party has the strength to 
come close to a majority in parliament.  Every Indian 
government since 1991 has been a coalition (or a minority 
government supported by other parties.)  And, this trend has 
been accelerating over time.  The current United Progressive 
Alliance (UPA) government is a coalition of 13 political 
parties in government and at least half a dozen that support 
it from the outside.  The previous 1999-2004 National 
Democratic Alliance (NDA) government was a coalition of close 
to two dozen parties. 
 
Powers Shifts Away From the Center 
---------------------------------- 
 
¶3.  (SBU) For the last 40 years, political power in India has 
moved steadily to regional parties or single-issue parties, 
which are often caste-based and dominated by a single 
personality.  The once mighty Congress Party, which led the 
freedom struggle and for long held absolute power in Delhi 
and the states, has lost its luster and fallen on hard times. 
 It once served as a coalition in itself, bringing together 
all of India's castes, religions and ethnic groups under one 
umbrella.  The Congress Party's credibility has eroded over 
time because of the arrogance of power, the autocratic ways 
of its leaders, its failure to respond to regional 
aspirations and its inability to adapt to the changing India. 
 
 
¶4. (SBU) The penchant of the Nehru-Gandhi family to 
centralize power in its own hands and bring down regional 
party leaders to ensure that no one can challenge its 
supremacy has been particularly damaging to the party. 
Regional political leaders, especially in the key states of 
Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, have steadily peeled away from the 
party and set up their own political bases.  The result has 
been that the Congress Party is virtually nonexistent in 
these two states that together comprise about more than 20 
percent of the lower house of parliament.  These two states 
 
NEW DELHI 00000686  002 OF 003 
 
 
were at one time the heart of the Congress Party's electoral 
calculations and the disappearance of the party's strength 
there mirrors its national decline. 
 
¶5.  (SBU) The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has 
never been a truly national party.  With roots in Hindu 
nationalism as a response to centuries of Muslims and 
Christian rule, its appeal was limited to the Hindi heartland 
in northern India.  While it has managed to spread to the 
non-Hindi speaking states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Orissa and 
Karnataka, the BJP has not been able to sufficiently broaden 
its appeal geographically and across caste and identity lines 
to threaten to win a majority on its own.  Both the Congress 
and the BJP must, therefore, rely on fractious and unwieldy 
coalitions with smaller parties to govern. 
 
Pre-Poll and Post-Poll Alliances 
-------------------------------- 
 
¶5.  (SBU) Coalition politics in India is of two stripes.  In 
pre-poll alliances, parties reach an understanding early, 
generally before the candidate nominations have been declared 
and the elections campaigns begun.  The allied parties 
apportion election districts in a state or a region between 
them on the basis of some seat allocation formula that is 
roughly commensurate with the strength of each party in the 
sub-regions of that state or region.  By pledging to 
consolidate their votes in each district, the allies improve 
their chances against candidates of other parties in these 
districts.  In post-poll alliances, the parties come together 
once elections results have been declared.  They have fought 
the elections independently and often against each other. 
Both types of alliances are common in India.  Indeed, both 
are necessary in order for any configuration of parties to 
reach a stable majority in parliament and form a viable 
government. 
 
Ideology-free Coalitions 
------------------------ 
 
¶6.  (SBU) The distinctive feature of coalition politics in 
India is the almost complete absence of any ideological 
grounding of most of the regional parties when it comes to 
alliances for governing coalitions.  Pre-poll alliances are 
forged only so that parties can pool their voter bases and 
avoid multi-cornered contents.  Once the elections are over, 
political parties, big and small, negotiate for the best deal 
they can get to secure a piece of the pie, which different 
parties see differently.  Some parties, for example, will not 
want ministerial berths in the federal cabinet and will 
bargain for power in their home states.  Others will want 
specific portfolios in the federal cabinet because they 
consider them either as a source of patronage (Railways) or 
fund-raising (Chemicals and Fertilizers, Steel, Coal, Mines). 
 Still others will demand a certain policy change or 
government action designed to benefit a specific person or 
group as the price for their support - the price demanded by 
the Samajwadi Party in  return for its support to the UPA 
during the July 2008 confidence vote reportedly was an UPA 
agreement to slow down prosecution of Samajwadi Party 
president Mulayum Singh Yadav in a criminal corruption case. 
 
¶7.  (SBU) There are only a handful of combinations that can 
be ruled out in advance.  Only one or two of these are on 
pure ideological grounds - it is difficult to imagine, for 
example, the communist parties entering a BJP-led coalition 
at this time (although they have supported each other in the 
past.)  A few other combinations are unlikely for political 
rather than ideological reasons - most regional parties that 
battle each other in a given state would likely not be a part 
of the same coalition in Delhi (Tamil parties DMK and AIDMK, 
for example).  Similarly, regional parties whose principal 
opponent in the state is the Congress Party would not likely 
be part a coalition led by the Congress Party (Shiromani 
 
NEW DELHI 00000686  003 OF 003 
 
 
Akali Dal).  Beyond that the parties see the field open to 
them to reach the best deal possible, regardless of any 
ideological compatibility issues. 
 
The 2009 Fault Lines 
-------------------- 
 
¶6.  (SBU) The frenzy of negotiations, deal-making, feints and 
counter-feints over pre-poll alliances ended last week, with 
several crucial alliances sealed and many that did not 
materialize.  Both the Congress Party and the BJP got some 
rude shocks, with the Congress having greater difficulty 
finding partners ahead of the polls.  As the campaigns have 
entered full swing, the main alliance fault lines are as 
follows: 
 
Congress Party: It entered into pre-poll alliances with the 
Karunanidhi's DMK in Tamil Nadu, Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool 
Congress in West Bengal, and Sharad Pawar's Nationalist 
Congress Party in Maharashtra.  It failed to reach an 
understanding with UPA allies: Malayum Singh Yadav's 
Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh, Lalu Prasad Yadav's 
Rashtriya Janata Dal and Ram Vilas Paswan's Lok Janashakti 
Party in Bihar, the Nationalist Congress Party outside of 
Maharashtra.  Tamil Nadu's PMK also left the UPA alliance to 
team up with another regional party in that state. 
 
BJP: It has entered into pre-poll alliances with the Janata 
Dal-United in Bihar, Shiv Sena in Maharashtra, the Shiromani 
Akali Dal in Punjab, the Indian National Lok Dal in Haryana, 
the Rashtriya Lok Dal in Uttar Pradesh, and the Asom Gana 
Parishad in Assam.  The BJP could not reach an agreement in 
Orissa with its long time partner, the Biju Janata Dal, which 
broke away to fight alone in that state. 
 
Third Front: The communist parties have been working hard to 
assemble a third alternative to challenge the Congress and 
the BJP.  Parties that have signed on with varying degrees of 
commitment include the four communist parties of the left 
front, the Telegu Desam Party and the Telangana Rashtriya 
Samiti in Andhra Pradesh, the AIDMK in Tamil Nadu, and the 
Janata Dal-Secular in Karnataka. 
 
Fourth Front: Lalu Prasad Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan in Bihar 
and Mulayum Singh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh, after having dumped 
the Congress Party ahead of the polls, have pledged to 
support each other in their respective states and not field 
candidates against each other in Bihar or Uttar Pradesh. 
 
Mayawati: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati's Bahujan 
Samaj Party has not attempted to enter into an alliance or 
understanding with any other party.  It goes into the 
election with its Brahmin-Dalit combine alone and will 
contest countrywide although its strength lies mainly in 
Uttar Pradesh. 
BURLEIGH