Minority governments have two major concerns. Clearing votes of no-confidence and passing legislation.
The first, remaining in office for five years, requires meeting a threshold number of MPs for the ruling party. Meaning, having a sufficiently large mass at the centre of the coalition to keep it together. Our history indicates that this can be as low as 150 seats, but not much lower. The 1996 coalition formed by the Janata Dal and the Communists with two prime ministers, Deve Gowda and Inder Gujral, had only 78 seats — too few for stability and too dependent on external support. After much drama, having survived at the whim of the Congress led by Sitaram Kesri, this fell in two years.
Running a government where ‘allies’ have almost an equal number of seats is not easy but it is possible to finish the term. All three coalitions in office before 2014 survived five years, the first of them confidently choosing to go into elections six months early. This is despite the ruling party in these coalitions having as few as 182 seats (Vajpayee 1999), 145 seats (Singh 2004) and 206 seats (Singh 2009).
It is true that much of the news cycle in these years was occupied by reports and rumours of ‘allies’ sulking, throwing tantrums and pulling out, but all three crossed the finishing line.
In the 18th Lok Sabha, the BJP with 240 seats is the only party that can form a government. It may have lost its majority but it will remain in power as long as it wants to. The BJP’s ‘allies’ know this, they understand also that they will keep their ministries till 2029 and for this reason nave no reason to defend the government except with their vote.
One news report from mid-August described the strange situation this has produced: ‘The NDA constituents remained curious onlookers in Parliament whenever BJP MPs got into heated exchanges with the INDIA bloc. While the INDIA bloc reacted in unison, the BJP remained isolated.
This is because the ‘allies’ have no investment in the BJP’s ideology and no incentive to defend it on issues like the Waqf Bill. This brings us to the second concern of coalition governments: getting legislation passed. If the BJP is assured of a full term, and I believe it is, what is it to do with five years in office?
Its early u-turns on waqf and lateral entry indicate that getting legislation passed will be difficult but again, the history of coalitions informs us that this is not necessarily the case.
The weakest of the three previous coalitions, Singh 2004, was able to get high impact legislation passed. This included laws on the Right to Information, NREGA and the nuclear deal with the United States. The last of these was especially opposed by an ‘ally’, the Communists, but made it through nonetheless. Narasimha Rao had only as many seats as Narendra Modi does today but was able to get parliament to clear the economic reforms that are referred to as liberalisation. And so it would appear that it is possible for weak governments to take strong action, if they have conviction.
It is also the case that strong governments often avoid debate and clear laws in dubious fashion. The BJP in the past hid behind something called the ‘money bill’ to avoid the Rajya Sabha and passed laws on Aadhaar and Electoral Bonds. This will no longer be possible for this current Modi government, given its weakness in the Lok Sabha. So how it’s possible for Modi to proceed?
The only course available appears to be to let go of things that are guaranteed to get into trouble, like the uniform civil code and the national register of citizens. Like Vajpayee, he has to abandon Hindutva and form some other framework of governance and policy. This may not be easy in the absence of a clear vision such as the UPA had, on citizen empowerment, or the first two Modi governments had, on minority persecution. In any case, entering a third term, any leader would have exhausted his grand ideas. Think of Nehru after the 1962 election or Tony Blair after 2005.
The media tycoon Rupert Murdoch gave the then presidential candidate Barack Obama some advice before the 2008 election: He had known all presidents since Harry Truman but none of them had been able to push reform after their first few months. That was the only period in which motivation, energy and goodwill produced results. It should be noted that all of the things Manmohan Singh got cleared that are listed above came within months of him taking office.
Today even those who support Prime Minister Modi feel there is a certain sense of listlessness in this government. What is it intending to achieve? This is not easy to say. The u-turns have come because when the old ways were persisted with in the absence of a majority, they failed. In the absence of new and, importantly, inclusive, ideas from Modi, this directionless drift will continue. The leader will be in office but unable to make impact. The British have a line describing the role of their monarch, who is sovereign but severely constrained: ‘The king reigns but does not rule’.