India’s ‘third front’ has too many cooks

Eleven parties came together on Tuesday to launch a ‘third front’ in India’s elections, seeking to overcome the incumbent Congress party and its main opposition, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Commentators warn that such a nebulous grouping – though unlikely to come to power – wouldn’t provide the strong leadership and decision making India needs to get economic reforms off the ground and kick start its sputtering economy.

As Victor Mallet wrote in the FT:

The loose alliance includes four leftwing parties and seven regional ones, and aims to present an alternative to the two parties – the governing Congress and the Hindu nationalist opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – that have long dominated the country’s politics…

The main parties have mocked the idea of third front – Mr Modi said it wanted to make India “third rate”, and Manish Tewari, a Congress minister, has called the talk of third, fourth or fifth fronts “the most enduring mirage of Indian politics” – but several of its component parties are led by powerful regional politicians.

Amitabh Dubey, director at Trusted Sources, an emerging market research company, says the one case in which the third front might form a government would be if the Congress Party did miserably and the BJP failed to win more than 200 seats of the total 543. Narendra Modi, the BJP candidate for prime minister, is controversial and disliked by many of the smaller and regional parties, so the BJP would face the possibility of forming a government with a different leader. If it decided that wasn’t an option, the third front could form a government with the support of the Congress from the outside.

That’s a lot of ‘ifs’ – essentially, it is highly unlikely the third front will come to power. But if it did, most people think it would spell gloom for Asia’s third largest economy.

Ironically, what weakens the hotchpotch grouping is the number of strong potential leaders it has on board, including Nitish Kumar, the chief minister of Bihar who is a major critic of Modi, and Jayalalithaa, chief minister of Tamil Nadu, where images of the former Bollywood star have taken over the state capital, Chennai.

A survey conducted in July 2013 by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) finds that the most acceptable prime minister for India, outside the BJP and Congress, would be Nitish Kumar, followed by Mayawati from Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal’s Mamata Banerjee.

But the prominent Indian journalist, Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar, says the strong leaders of the third front have failed to compromise with one another, leaving it without a candidate for prime minister and risking the emergence of a “non-entity” to lead the alliance.

“As far as the Congress is concerned, from my friends in the Congress,” said Mohan Guruswamy, founder of the Centre for Policy Alternatives, at an event organised by the Asia Society on Thursday, “I know that they’ve given up on this and they’re going to bide their time till the next election. They think that khichdi is going to come and it’s in the Congress’ interests to get the khichdi in so that it will fail and they will be able to rebuild it.”

Khichdi is an Indian dish made by mixing together rice and lentils – in this case, a metaphor for a hotchpotch of parties making an unstable government. The suggestion is that the incumbent Congress party would be reluctant to support an unstable third front, even from the outside.

Analysts at Moody’s Investors Service have warned that a fragmented government without either a clear mandate or policy platform would pose a credit risk for India.

“If a coalition of smaller, regional parties without a common economic reform agenda were to take the helm, it would likely provoke further capital flight, thereby increasing borrowing costs and weakening the Indian rupee, and delaying economic recovery,” says Rahul Ghosh, vice president at Moody’s.

Madhavan Narayanan, a journalist, commented on Twitter:

Whenever they form a Third Front in India & pose for photo, am reminded of the Beatles' Sgt Pepper album & this cover pic.twitter.com/xESZttIfGM

— Madhavan Narayanan (@madversity) February 25, 2014

Others believe it is something of an exaggeration to say a ruling third front would be disastrous for economic policy. Markets are – perhaps optimistically – expecting wholesale reforms if Modi comes to power and will doubtless be disappointed if a muddled third front emerges. But many of the parties involved in the alliance have been part of coalitions before and have experience of government.

Dubey takes the example of the United Front which came to power in 1996. That government continued the reform agenda and, with the help of finance minister Palaniappan Chidambaram, oversaw direct tax reforms that are still in place today.

So a third front would not necessarily be a bad thing. Its biggest challenge, however, in trying to sustain an unnatural situation (for India) in which neither of the two leading parties is in power, would be survival.

Related reading:
India’s ‘third front’ seeks to shake up politics, FT
Jayalalithaa lays out campaign to be India’s PM, FT
What if Modi fails to win majority in India? FT