Narendra Modi wants all 21 seats from Odisha for the BJP in the parliamentary elections. In West Bengal, he exhorts voters to elect Mamata Banerjee's party in the state, but to vote for him in the general elections.
The Congress is less expressive, but its expectation from the electorate in states where regional parties dominate is along similar lines. In short, both the parties are convinced that for a stable government at the centre voters must look beyond regional parties. Both essentially believe that the latter are an unwelcome baggage, a problem that has to be managed and tolerated. No one would make it explicit though.
The entire discourse on contemporary politics tends to treat the regional powerhouses with some disdain.
Ignoring regional players can be the undoing of yet another national party
This despite the fact that they have been the key to government formation at the centre for over two decades and that they account for close to 220 seats in the 543-member Lok Sabha and more than 50 percent of the country's votes.
Even the champions of federalism - as opposed to centrism - appear scared of the idea of regional players having greater representation, and thus a greater say in policy matters, in Parliament. Surely, something is amiss. We have either failed to gauge their significance in the democracy or we want to pretend they don't exist.
All speculation over the coming general elections revolve around political formations anchored by either the BJP or the Congress.
The wisdom doing the rounds is if either secures more than 190 seats, it would be in a position to attract allies to form the new government. The possibility of a 'third front' is ruled out since it has proved to be disastrous so many times earlier. Such a front, it is argued, is an amalgam of dissimilar entities with no ideological coherence; plus it carries the possibility of imploding from the pressure of too many ambitious leaders. There is not much to argue with here.
But our obsession with government formation post the elections overlooks one crucial point: how does the government run beyond that.
The big party anchored coalition does not mean perfect alignment in thinking among all partners. The regional parties have their own constituencies to protect and are guided by their own agenda. These might run - and often do - contrary to the policies of the bigger partner. The UPA coalition in both the avatars have been full of friction, public show of acrimony and bitterness. The NDA's experience earlier was no better - remember Jayalalithaa bringing down the Vajpayee government?
The support of regional players dilutes whatever coherence - policy or otherwise - the other parties could have. Imagine Narendra Modi and Mamata Banerjee discussing economic policy matters as partners in the next government; or Modi working out an independent Sri Lankan policy without coalition partner AIADMK chief J Jayalalithaa's approval, or him aggressively pushing industrialisation which might be at odds with the support bases of the partners.
UPA II has been full of conflicts of a similar nature which have rendered it weak and ineffective.
The point is that big parties can hardly afford to ignore the interests of the allies even when they are in the anchoring role. Forming a government may be a simple matter compared to drawing a perfect alignment of interests among the constituents of a coalition. But neither the Congress nor the BJP is ready to accept this fact.
They expect regional allies to be silent partners in the government, allowing them full operational freedom. To put it more correctly, they still are not prepared to give the regional parties their legitimate space on the national governance sphere. This has to be sheer arrogance.
Coalition politics has been around for long, but it has not matured well enough to produce stable, durable governments. Unless big parties learn to be sensitive to the interests of regional partners while making decisions, cohesive governance would be a chimera. It calls for a mindset change.
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