[Of the five editorials reproduced below, only the ToI places the blame for the failure of the allaince to materialise squarely at the door of the Congress. The Asian Age calls it a negotiating tactic on the part of, fairly unpredictable, Mayawati for the coming Lok Sabha poll. The Hindu shares broadly similar sentiments. The HT highlights the salience of Sonia Gandhi, a veteran, playing the role of mediator in future negotiations. The most ominous observation comes from the Indian Express - there's no ideological/political glue binding the potential challengers to the continued BJP rule. It's all cynical arithmetic.
But, all in all, it's generally acknowledged that this failure now is not bound to be replicated in the context of the coming LS poll. It's also generally acknowledged that while it's a setback for the "opposition unity", it was not quite unforeseen either. Be that as it may, a 'Mahagathbandhan' against the NDA, all cross India, is just a mirage. It's not only just not possible, because of divergent compulsions and calculations of the players involved, it's not even desirable either, as an electoral alliance is just not the arithmetic sum total of the votes to be individually polled by the constituents. In case of a compatible alliance 1+1 will be 2.5, if not 3; and in the other case, it'd be <2, maybe by a large margin. Hence, the best case scenario for a nationwide anti-BJP electoral front for the next Lok Sabha poll appears to be a collage of state-specific alliances with the Congress occupying the pole position "nationally", if at all, while it may or just may not even figure in a specific state. All the players involved should rather work towards that instead of chasing a mirage and, then, miserably failing. 1977 cannot be *verbatim* replicated in 2019.] I/V. http://www.asianage.com/opinion/edit/051018/mayawatis-move-likely-to-be-a-negotiating-tactic.html Maya’s move likely to be a negotiating tactic THE ASIAN AGE. Published : Oct 5, 2018, 12:49 am IST Updated : Oct 5, 2018, 12:49 am IST But this needn’t be taken at face value with an extremely flexible politician like the BSP supremo. BSP supremo Mayawati After BSP supremo Mayawati chose to skip allying with the Congress in Chhattisgarh, favouring Congress discard Ajit Jogi’s micro-local party instead, it was evident that she would have little to do with the Congress even in Madhya Pradesh or Rajasthan. Her Thursday announcement thus comes as no surprise. Ms Mayawati fumed at the Congress as much as the BJP, yet she singled out Congress leaders Sonia and Rahul Gandhi for a positive mention, hinting that the chances of a tieup with the Congress for the Lok Sabha polls was still open. But this needn’t be taken at face value with an extremely flexible politician like the BSP supremo. Her final decision may in the end depend on the election results in Rajasthan, MP and Chhattisgarh. If her party can improve its vote percentage in these states from its current status of being very small, she is likely to adopt one kind of posture in the Uttar Pradesh negotiation with the Congress for the general election. If her voteshare slips and the Congress cuts into the dalit vote in the states going to the polls shortly, an apparently weakened BSP may choose another way in UP. For some time the Congress has been left with a very small core vote in UP. Even the Gandhis will be happy to keep the BSP and Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party, both of whose social base will matter at Rae Bareli and Amethi, on their side for the Lok Sabha polls. Therefore, it should be seen if the Congress can make an offer to Ms Mayawati she cannot refuse over Rajasthan, although the BSP leader has spoken of no tieup with the Congress in the Assembly polls anywhere. Mr Yadav has also hinted to the Congress that they choose this road when he asked the Congress to show greater magnanimity to regional parties. The SP leader is apt to worry that if the BSP is totally alienated from the Congress in the coming state polls, Ms Mayawati could be a potential NDA partner after the Parliament election in case the NDA does well. In that scenario it is not unlikely that the BSP will drive a hard bargain with the SP in UP, upsetting SP cadres. That will work to the advantage of the BJP, which is expected to be in serious trouble only if the SP and BSP are able to reach an understanding amicably. Taking steps to avert that outcome will be very much on the minds of BJP president Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Which way the coming Assembly polls go will be a good barometer to gauge the prospects of Opposition unity for the Lok Sabha election in crucial northern states where the BJP had pretty much picked up everything in its path. II/V. https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/editorials/mayawati-congress-alliance-5387135/ Plus and Minus Mayawati’s critique of Congress may or may not matter in 2019 but one thing does: Neither has a shared story to tell voters. By: Editorial | Published: October 5, 2018 12:14:32 am The Congress’s decline is spotlighted but the downward journey of Mayawati’s party is no less striking. The index of Opposition unity for the 2019 polls may just have suffered a crucial blow. BSP chief Mayawati has attacked the Congress, calling it communal, casteist and arrogant, declaring she will not ally with it in the upcoming assembly polls. Or it may have taken only a strategic hit for now, in order that it can raise its head later, once state elections are out of the way. After all, the calculations that political parties make, the games they play for the assembly elections are often dissimilar from those for the Lok Sabha polls. Then again, it could be that Mayawati’s scathing critique of the Congress showcases a power shift in the Opposition ranks — from the national to the regional, from the Congress to parties like the BSP that draw their strength from particular states. Or it might not, given that the BSP itself is fighting a battle for survival over the past decade or so in UP and other states where it has a presence. The Congress’s decline is spotlighted but the downward journey of Mayawati’s party is no less striking. Today, the party which at one time seemed to be growing from a Dalit to a Dalit-plus force is compelled to defend itself in both its core and non-core bastions. If the BJP’s success in propagating a subaltern Hindutva is making a dent, Dalit discourse is also far more divided by the emergence of movements and leaders in the non-party space. In the shadow play, it may not yet be clear, therefore, whether the BSP’s break-up with the Congress, even before an alliance with it, is short-term strategy or more enduring than that. One thing, however, seems certain: The Congress-BSP relationship is driven, from both sides, mostly by calculations of arithmetic, and this is a pointer to a larger Opposition predicament and failure. As they come together or go their separate ways, parties of the Opposition are yet to make even a minimal effort so far to persuade anyone, themselves or the voters, that they intend to fight the BJP armed with something more than a mix of self-interest and anti-BJPism. For all the hype about the Mahagathbandhan (grand alliance) next year, the Opposition hasn’t yet found a united story to take on the BJP’s. In 2014, the BJP rode a narrative of hope and fear, Hindutva and aspiration, change and nationalism, and it has only honed its layered message since. By all accounts, the Opposition hopes to fight this carefully calibrated appeal with a bareknuckled politics that depends only on expectations and calculations of the electorate’s antipathy to the BJP. Ahead of 2019, the question is not whether Mayawati’s BSP will ally with Rahul Gandhi’s Congress to take on the BJP. It is: Do the BSP and the Congress have a shared story to tell to the voter, more persuasive than the BJP’s? A story that can engage and enthuse her while also convincing her that they both believe in it. III/V. https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/short-term-window/article25126171.ece Short-term window — on BSP shunning the Congress OCTOBER 05, 2018 00:02 IST UPDATED: OCTOBER 04, 2018 23:59 IST *The BSP shuts the door on the Congress for now, but gives itself some wiggle room* Even as she shut the door on the Congress, the Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati left a window open. While calling off talks on an alliance with the Congress for the Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan Assembly elections, Ms. Mayawati kept alive the possibility of an understanding for the Lok Sabha election. While she was unsparing in her criticism of the Congress interlocutors, former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijaya Singh in particular, for the failure to reach an electoral understanding, she declared that national-level leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi had honest intentions. Coming from Ms. Mayawati, this is high praise indeed. For the BSP, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh are nowhere near as important as Uttar Pradesh, where it is fighting to regain lost ground. What matters most for Ms. Mayawati is an alliance with the Samajwadi Party in U.P. and not a tie-up with the Congress in these three States going to the polls later this year. Winning or losing a few seats in the three States does not matter as much as spreading the reach of her organisation by contesting in many constituencies. Although, unlike in Chhattisgarh where it allied with the breakaway Congress group of Ajit Jogi, the BSP does not have any viable electoral partners in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, the party sees itself in a growth phase in these States and the risk seems worthwhile given the low stakes. What should worry leaders of both the Congress and the BSP is the war of words that could follow from the closure of the alliance option. Congress functionaries have indicated that Ms. Mayawati could be under pressure from the Bharatiya Janata Party to go it alone and that she might have given in just in order to fend off the Central investigative agencies. The BSP chief, never one to take kindly to personal attacks, responded by saying that Mr. Singh was afraid of the Enforcement Directorate and the Central Bureau of Investigation. The fact remains that in Madhya Pradesh the Congress needs the BSP more than the BSP needs the Congress. For the Congress what is at stake is a shot at power in three crucial States where it is fighting the BJP directly. In at least two, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, the BSP’s vote share could be more than the gap between the victor and the loser. Quite conceivably, the results could cast a long shadow on the Lok Sabha election. If the Congress is unwilling to consider apportioning more seats to the BSP, it is in no small measure due to its fear of the longer-term impact of conceding space to another political animal in what is at present a two-horse race. But, sometimes, as the Congress may realise, there is no way of protecting long-term interests without securing the short-term. IV/V. https://www.hindustantimes.com/editorials/the-importance-of-being-sonia/story-X1mWB4IEPp9n23QT1WBhTI.html The importance of being Sonia For the opposition parties to have a chance in 2019, they have to get together. And for them to get together, someone will have to play the mediator. EDITORIALS Updated: Oct 04, 2018 19:39 IST Hindustan Times As is Trinamool Congress chief and West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee. And Telugu Desam Party chief and Andhra CM N Chandrababu Naidu sees himself as a peer of Sonia Gandhi, and is likely to be more amenable to talking about seat sharing with her than with anyone else.(PTI) Mayawati’s statement on Wednesday, attacking the Congress Party, specifically, its senior leader Digvijay Singh, and announcing her Bahujan Samaj Party’s (BSP) decision to fight the assembly elections in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh alone, had an interesting sentence that pretty much absolved Congress president Rahul Gandhi and his mother and former party president Sonia Gandhi of any of the blame she was directing at the party. It is unlikely that she will change her mind regarding these two states – the BSP is already fighting the elections in the third, Chhattisgarh, with Ajit Jogi’s Janata Congress Chhattisgarh party – although stranger things have been known to happen. It is just as unlikely that Ms Mayawati’s decision will have no bearing on the 2019 parliamentary elections; at the least, it indicates that forming a grand alliance to take on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will not be easy. There are two possible outcomes. One, the opposition parties agree to defer a decision on a grand alliance till after the elections, choosing, instead, to forge locally relevant partnerships that can help them. The alliance between the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the BSP, is one such. This, though, is a messy option, and a risky one too. In a first-past-the-post system such as our own, a simple mathematical analysis will make it clear that the only way opposition parties can compete with the BJP is by combining their vote shares. Then, there’s also the issue that at one level, a pre-poll alliance indicates commitment and a post-poll one, opportunism, which, in some ways, does subvert the democratic vote. Two, the parties somehow manage to forge a grand alliance. For this to fructify, though, as is clear from the Congress and the BSP’s experience in forging an alliance in three key states (Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan), and also from Ms Mayawati’s statement, Sonia Gandhi will have to play a central role. Indeed, when she handed over the leadership of the party to Rahul Gandhi, both Sonia Gandhi and the Congress made it clear that she would focus on the party’s alliances. In an interview with this paper, Nationalist Congress Party leader Sharad Pawar said he, Sonia Gandhi, and Janata Dal (S) leader HD Deve Gowda, none of whom wanted to be Prime Minister, should serve as elder statespeople of the alliance in the making, ironing out differences between parties of various hues. Ms Mayawati, as she has already indicated, is comfortable with Sonia Gandhi. As is Trinamool Congress chief and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. And Telugu Desam Party chief and Andhra CM N Chandrababu Naidu sees himself as a peer of Sonia Gandhi, and is likely to be more amenable to talking about seat sharing with her rather than with anyone else. For the opposition parties to have a chance in 2019, they have to get together. And for them to get together, someone will have to play the mediator. V. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kochi/activist-t-n-joys-last-rites-performed/articleshow/66066499.cms No pain no gain: The price of BSP support for defeating BJP worries Congress as much as another defeat October 5, 2018, 2:00 AM IST TOI Edit in TOI Editorials | Edit Page, India, politics | TOI In the end, Congress dreams of BSP help to end 15 years of BJP rule in Madhya Pradesh collided with BSP’s desire to piggyback on Congress across the Hindi heartland. Without a doubt, BJP is the gainer in the second mahagathbandhan failure after Chhattisgarh. Mayawati was unsparing in her criticism of Congress leaders and their commitment to end BJP rule, before directing her ire at Digvijaya Singh for his remark on probe agencies pursuing the BSP supremo. Interestingly, she left a window open for Rahul and Sonia Gandhi, a sign that it may still be early days to completely write off opposition unity. After Bihar, the gathbandhan idea revived at HD Kumaraswamy’s swearing in ceremony where the bonhomie between opposition leaders, and especially between Sonia Gandhi and Mayawati, was hard to miss. Smaller parties regularly tout Congress’s successive defeats in Gujarat, Karnataka, Manipur, Goa and Uttarakhand – which were essentially BJP-Congress contests – to highlight its need for allies. But it would appear that a pre-poll alliance is more difficult for Congress leaders to swallow than a defeat. The prospect of a BSP rise at Congress expense is not a remote possibility given the precedent of Uttar Pradesh where BSP appropriated Congress’s residual Dalit vote bank after their 1996 alliance. By the 1970s and 80s, when socialist parties made inroads into the OBC category, Congress could still count on Muslim and Dalit votes. BSP’s ascendancy, at least in UP, was a body blow to Congress even as it can be relieved that BSP’s expansion slowed when Mayawati subsumed the Bahujan discourse to her personality cult. The BSP leader has her own personal and political compunctions in driving a hard bargain. The party’s vote share had dipped in MP, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh in 2013 after peaking in 2008. New Dalit leaders like Chandrashekhar Azad Ravan are gaining traction. The upcoming elections in the three states are critical for both Congress and BSP to regain credibility. Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav has exhorted Congress to show a “large heart” and accommodate BSP. But with Congress and BSP finding no common ground against BJP it is Akhilesh, as UP’s main opposition leader, who will have to show generosity to allies if the gathbandhan idea is to survive in India’s most politically important state. Akhilesh will face the same problems too, which gives BJP sufficient reason to smile. -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
