Who’s afraid of coalition governments?

The BJP began the 2024 general election campaign chanting “abki baar chaar sau paar”, aiming to break Rajiv Gandhi’s 1984 record of 414 seats. The slogan has lost its sheen as the campaign has worn on and reality sunk in. Yet Prime Minister Narendra Modi is insistent that only a big majority government can provide a strong, stable governance model. Truth is, huge mandates damage democracy and make citizens’ lives insecure and unstable. 

Majority governments are poor performers. Massive national mandates can lead to executive over-reach and misuse of State power at all levels. A hefty mandate is often over-read as advance public obedience to anything and everything a leader may choose to do and can be a licence to weaken democracy. There are few checks on overweening executive power when a ruling party is armed with overwhelming numbers. An important institutional check on executive over-reach is the coalition government. 

In fact, in India, it is actually coalition governments which uphold the Constitution’s federal spirit more than governments led by strongman-supremos. In a coalition government, hemmed in by alliance partners, a party with the biggest numbers cannot use the organs of government to impose its will. A government led by an elected autocrat does not respect democratic restraints; a coalition government, forced to cooperate with allies, must necessarily abide by constitutional methods. 

Today, in the media hype about “Modi vs Who”, it is often not noted that in 2019, the BJP won just 29 out of 130 seats south of the Vindhyas. There are still 11 non-BJP Chief Ministers across India. Even nationally, the BJP received 37% of the vote share in 2019, the remaining 63% went to others. The BJP is not as omnipotent, nor is the Opposition as decimated as the BJP would like people to believe. The BJP is still pitching Modi as universally popular when in fact the Modi charisma is waning. Yet, the BJP has used its election victory to deal body blows to democracy, in the conviction that Modi is India’s quasi-monarch.  

The BJP is fighting parliamentary elections in a presidential style with the imprimatur of ‘Modi ki guarantee’ stamped across 543 seats. The last time this happened was in 1971 when the Indira Gandhi personality cult swept the Congress to a two-thirds majority. But four short years later, India was plunged into food shortages, strikes and protests, and by the end of her term, Indira Gandhi had imposed the Emergency. Rajiv Gandhi rode to power with a record mandate in 1984, but by 1988, Rajiv was floundering in the face of the Bofors scam allegations. 

Modi came thundering into office in 2014, but within two short years, the cataclysmic demonetisation exercise of 2016 caused havoc. The hastily introduced GST of 2017, the infamous nation-wide lockdown of 2020 clamped on 1.3 billion people with only four hours’ notice, forcing millions of migrant workers across India to walk hundreds of kilometres back to their hometowns and villages, all became signposts of a government lurching from one unilateral decision to another, causing grave instability in people’s lives. The Indian romance with “strong” governments inevitably leads to heartbreak and disillusionment. 

The BJP has won two victories, but an authoritarian and centralised Modi government has overseen grave democratic backsliding. Two Chief Ministers are in jail even before the framing of formal charges. Over 95% of Enforcement Directorate cases are against Opposition leaders. A Returning Officer in the Chandigarh mayoral poll was caught on camera defacing ballots to benefit the BJP. In Surat, the BJP candidate has already won because all other candidates mysteriously withdrew. All under the aegis of a “strong” government.

Consensus-based coalition governments like those led by P V Narasimha Rao, A B Vajpayee, and Manmohan Singh were dubbed “weak”, but they were high performers. The coalition governments of Rao, Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh were remarkably successful. Coalition governments have brought in dramatic economic reform, overseen high growth, pushed infrastructure drives and policy breakthroughs like NREGA, Aaadhar and RTI. It was a United Front government in 1997-98 which gave us P Chidambaram’s “Dream Budget,” while Vajpayee’s coalition government spearheaded the national highways push. Former RBI Governor Y V Reddy argued in a 2017 speech at the Hudson Institute in Washington that coalition governments are best for economic growth. The coalition decade between 1999 and 2009 saw the fastest growth since Independence! 

There is also a federal principle at stake. Today, the Centre is not allocating funds to states fairly. The Modi government has run up an astonishingly high debt of Rs 100 lakh crore -- two times more than the total of 14 previous governments. The BJP is recklessly flouting its own fiscal responsibility law while restricting the borrowing of states even up to the basic limit. Bengal has been denied NREGS dues. Tamil Nadu and Karnataka have complained of lack of flood and drought relief, respectively, and Kerala has complained of ceilings on its borrowing limit. The BJP’s “double engine” model is a highly problematic concept. What does it mean? Does it mean that only when state governments belong to the BJP can they function as “engines?” This idea reveals a brazen disregard for India’s federal structure. 

The diversities of religion, culture, cuisine are being made secondary to the BJP’s one-nation-one-leader-one- party mantra. A one-leader-one-party mindset leads to scorn for parliamentary processes. Amendments to the harsh PMLA were pushed through as a money bill to make the law even more draconian. The three farm laws of 2020 were passed via voice vote in the Rajya Sabha without proper debate, and they were repealed, too, without debate under executive command. Activists, academics, and journalists have been jailed under anti-terror laws. Some 399 sedition cases have been filed since 2014. 

Vigilantes have taken to the streets. Stand-up comics, inter-faith lovers, those who choose to eat non-vegetarian food are not safe from street attacks and official censure. In a recent Pew survey, 67% of Indians endorsed autocratic rule, but it is democracy alone which can safeguard citizens’ liberties. Today, a terrifying statistic of inequality confronts us: Just 5% of Indians own more than 60% of the country’s wealth. 

Coalition governments need to take everyone along because they need to build consensus. Coalition governments have tended to be more liberal, more consensual and more respectful of federalism than governments with massive mandates. Coalition governments remain the last institutional check on illiberal leadership cults. Don’t be afraid of the idea of a coalition government, because India’s unique diversity makes it a social and political coalition like no other.

(The writer is a Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha), Trinamool Congress)