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Relevance of the Third Front |
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The purpose of the third front is to carve out for itself a political space which is both anti-Congress and anti-Bharatiya Janata Party. Given the fact that the third front sees itself as being avowedly secular, that space can only emerge at the expense of the Congress. This is indeed the case since, except for the communist parties, all the other parties that make up the third front are former breakaways from the Congress. In fact, the rise of the third front had been predicated upon the decline of the Congress. The rise in the fortunes of the Congress, as manifest from the results of the recent assembly poll, should not please those who feel that the third front has a viable political future. Before the Assembly elections, following the retirement of Mr Jyoti Basu from the post of chief minister of West Bengal, Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mr Basu took the initiative to set up the People’s Front, the third front in a new incarnation. This had the blessings of two former prime ministers, Vishwanath Pratap Singh and H.D. Deve Gowda. The obvious target zone of the People’s Front is Uttar Pradesh where assembly elections are due and where neither the Congress nor the BJP is in a comfortable position. The hopes of the People’s Front must be driven by that Shibboleth of Indian politics which said that whoever wins Uttar Pradesh wins India.
Whatever be the aspirations of the People’s Front - there is no doubt that Mr Yadav’s ambitions go beyond becoming the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh - it remains an amorphous political formation. It has no clear ideological programme save anti-communalism and it is yet to put forward policies that will be different from those pursued by the Congress and the BJP. It is also not free from a dash of opportunism. This is clear from the fact that it did not reject outright overtures from the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazagham (AIADMK) supremo, J. Jayalalitha. The latter, it seems, has no political scruples and is bereft of all forms of integrity. But this did not stop some of the People’s Front leaders from welcoming Ms Jayalalitha and from expressing the hope that she would join the front.
Nurtured in an ideological and programmatic vacuum and on the look out for dubious allies, the People’s Front’s future does not look too promising. Its leadership must recognize that by being hostile to the Congress, it is only strengthening the position of the BJP since both the Congress and the People’s Front are contestants for the secular space in Indian politics. Moreover, the People’s Front is still only a bits and pieces player. A government formed by it, at whatever level, will inevitably be vulnerable unless it has the support of one of the big parties. The People’s Front’s tactics fall way behind its political aspirations. It must choose, if it wants to grow, between realism and Mr Yadav’s antipathy for Mrs. Sonia Gandhi.
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