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Why Mr Cameron should call Dr Singh
By Tridivesh Singh Maini May 21, 2010The indecisive election results of 2010 have resulted in the formation of an unexpected, though not necessarily unstable, coalition government between the centre right Conservative Party and Centre Left, Liberal Democrats. David Cameron leader of the Conservatives and Nicholas Clegg leader of the latter party, took over as Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister respectively, on May 11. Interestingly, both leaders were not particularly charitable to each other during the televised debates preceding the polls. Many analysts still subscribe to the view that the two parties would make awkward bedfellows.
If one were to briefly analyse the outcome of the polls, there were two crucial surprises. Firstly, most psephologists had predicted a closer tussle between the ruling Conservative Party and the Labour party, which exited office after more than a decade. Second, a more sterling performance was expected from the Liberal Democratic Party, led by the New Deputy PM, which ended up with a mere 57 seats. While the Lib Dems are an integral part of the new government, Clegg who disarmed many with his stellar performances during the television debates would have expected that his party would improve on it's 2005 tally. The 'Cleggmania' was unable to garner too many votes for the Lib Dems however.
It is impossible to ignore comparisons of this election result with results of Indian polls over the past few years. Firstly, while the United Kingdom has had a hung parliament after more than 3 decades, the last such occasion being 1974. In India, no party has received an absolute majority ever since 1984 and all governments, but for the PV Narasimha Rao regime, since 1989 have been coalition governments. Rao ran a minority government. The verdict of 2009, considered a decisive won in favour of the Congress Party, saw the party falling 69 seats short of a majority. Paul Beckett in an article for the Wall Street Journal reiterated this point saying, ‘ Here in India, coalition governments have been the norm for so long that when the Congress party won more than a third of parliamentary seats in national elections last year, it was called a landslide victory’.
Second, there are some parallels to be drawn between the build up to the parliamentary polls and the eventual results in both countries. Many had predicted a swashbuckling performance from the Bahujan Samaj Party led by Kumari Mayawati, the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, in the parliamentary polls of 2009, just as Nicholas Clegg, the new Deputy Prime Minister, was supposed to have trumped both the Conservative Party and the Labour Party in the 2010 polls. If one were to glance at the nature of India’s coalition governments, 7 of the 8 dispensations have been considerably disparate. In the Indian scenario, only once has there been a right-left combination as in 1989. When both the left parties and the Bharatiya Janata Party were part of the VP Singh coalition. Both parties were outside the government however and the combination lasted for only 11 months.
Benjamin Disraeli, one of Cameron's role models, once remarked that 'England does not love coalitions'. The British Prime Minister would thus be well advised to take some coaching classes, on shepherding a coalition, from incumbent Indian PM, Dr Manmohan Singh. Singh successfully marshalled a fragile coalition, The United Progressive Alliance, dominated by the Congress Party from 2004-2009. For four of these five years the left parties were part of the Congress led coalition and maintained a harmonious relationship, in spite of ideological differences on issues pertaining to economic reforms. In 2008 however, the two parted ways over the Indo-US nuclear deal, considered a brain child of Dr Manmohan Singh. The left parties felt that this agreement would impinge on India's sovereignty. Since the 2009 election too, the coalition has been running smoothly, with the Congress Party wielding more authority, due to it's increased parliamentary strength.
It remains to be seen what lessons Mr Cameron can learn from Dr Singh. That said, a lot of Indian terms have found their way into the English dictionary. ‘Coalition Dharma’, a term used in India to refer to the conduct essential for running a successful and harmonious coalition, may be the first Indian inclusion the Dictionary of Politics.
The writer is a Research Associate with The Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. Disclaimer: Views expressed are personal.
