The calculus behind political neutrality Premium

The neutral camp that is sandwiched within the two big coalitions, the BJD, the YSRCP and the BRS, provides an interesting portal to contemporary national politics

What is the strategy of unaligned parties for the 2024 general election? While the “INDIA” alliance (or the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance) has grabbed the headlines, the neutral camp that is sandwiched within the two big coalitions, subject to various push and pulls, provides an interesting portal to contemporary national politics.

There are three major parties in this camp: the Biju Janata Dal (BJD), the Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party (YSRCP) and the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS, earlier known as the Telangana Rashtra Samithi, or the TRS). The Bahujan Samaj Party is left out of the present analysis. These parties had racked up a combined 43 seats in 2019 (22 seats for the YSRCP, nine seats for the TRS, and 12 seats for the BJD), making this camp a crucial arbitrator of national fortunes. All three parties have largely followed the equidistant route since 2014 (except the TRS for a few years, although it seems back in the camp).

We can make two broad comments on the stance of these neutral parties — both explain how these parties have a symbiotic relationship with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the Centre.

The first deals with a personalistic settlement between the Prime Minister and the Chief Minister involving the “credit attribution of welfare”. The second deals with the comfort of these ruling parties in facing a challenger that follows a route to power, based on top-down defections of elite groups rather than bottom-up mobilisation of subaltern groups by taking up “positional” issues relevant to them.

On the credit attribution point, a few days before the Parliament vote, Union Home Minister Amit Shah met Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on a visit to the State. At a public event, Mr. Shah not only congratulated Mr. Patnaik on becoming the second-longest serving Chief Minister of a State in India, but also praised him as a “popular CM”.

It appears like the next round of elections in the coastal State would follow the paradigm set in 2019: the BJP is allowed a fraction of seats in the Parliamentary polls while the BJD’s supremacy is not threatened at the Assembly level. To use a chess analogy, this stalemate is most clearly expressed through a tacit agreement not to attack the respective “kings” of each side.

The BJP’s top leadership’s engagement with Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy of the YSRCP mirrors its engagement with Mr. Patnaik. Last November, when the Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the State, both Mr. Modi and Mr. Jagan Mohan Reddy praised each other from the platform, while vowing to continue their cordial partnership for the “development” of the State. Thus, both leaders contributed to building each other’s personalistic aura as the unchallenged and capable leader in their respective realm, rather than cutting each other down, even as the State units of their parties clash against each other.