People do not want a ragtag coalition
The idea of a Third Front crops up every time an election approaches, and then dies down for want of oxygen. It is happening now too, with the lok Sabha poll scheduled for May 2014, but widely expected earlier. Politicians who raise the issue generally belong to the regional parties and the left that are not comfortable with supporting either the BJP or the Congress. Yet, the fact is that many of these politicians have at one time or the other been part of coalitions led by the country's two major political parties, or have supported them from outside. That they should hope for a Third Front, despite such past alliances, has got nothing to do with their avowed desire to offer the country a credible alternative to the Congress or the BJP. Instead, leaders of the regional parties and the left Front are more eager to get their share of the pie which has been denied to them otherwise. They are no longer content with being ‘king-makers', but want to be king. There is nothing wrong in having such ambitions, but the problem is that many of them do not see eye to eye on normal days. What the situation will be when they have to share power, can only be imagined. After all, if power can be a glue, it can also be the cause of disruption. We have seen in the past the disastrous consequences for the country when poorly cobbled so-called Third Fronts have collapsed like a pack of cards. The primary reasons for that were the competing ambitions of senior leaders and the fact that they had to depend on outside support for their survival. The regimes of neither HD Deve Gowda nor IK Gujral could come close to completing their tenures despite enjoying the support of the left and an assortment of other smaller outfits. The Congress pulled the rug from under their feet and left them disintegrated. And now, when the BJP-led NDA and the Congress-led UPA have managed to draw many parties to their fold, the space for a Third Front is very limited, to say the least. It is unlikely that the left and the regional parties among themselves can secure 270 odd seats in the lok Sabha to form a Government. It must also be remembered that a few key regional parties are poised to join the NDA either immediately before or after the election, given the scenario that the Congress is on a sticky wicket this time around and could end up with far fewer seats than it won in the last election.
In any case, even the left parties, especially the CPI(M), have on many occasions in the past ruled out the formation of a credible Third Front. Their pessimism is based as much on hard electoral mathematic as it is on the realisation that it would be difficult to manage the Front, much less a Government, with leaders who have historically been at one another's throats and have been contesting against one another at the State level. Given these realities, the fond hope of regional and left leaders that they can be the torchbearers of a Third Front, is bound to be shattered.