Topic Of The Day:-“Friends For Polls: On Congress’s Need For More Allies”
The Congress May Have Won This Round Of Elections, But It Needs More Allies
Post-poll alliances between parties, shaped as they are by intractable realities, are easier to form than pre-poll alliances that have to reconcile competing expectations of the prospective partners. Soon after the results of the Assembly elections were out, the Bahujan Samaj Party, which had played hard-to-get with the Congress in pre-election alliance talks, announced its support to the party in both Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. The Congress is just short of a majority in these two States, and the BSP’s support was more than welcome. But the Congress leadership may now well pause to consider the huge number of seats that would have been reaped if a pre-poll tie-up with the BSP had materialised, especially in M.P. With 5% of the total vote, the BSP won only two seats; but a pre-poll alliance would have delivered a total of 143 seats for the two parties in the 230-member House. In the first-past-the-post electoral system, a seat-sharing arrangement, though difficult to realise, holds more benefits than a post-poll understanding. Both the Congress and the BSP may therefore be tempted to think ahead on seat adjustments for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls to beat back the BJP’s challenge. For the BSP, the stakes are higher in Uttar Pradesh than in the rest of the Hindi belt. The BSP’s reasoning would be that in M.P., Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, the Congress needs it more than it needs the Congress. It is for the senior partner with higher stakes to be more accommodative to a junior partner that has nothing to lose and little to gain.In Chhattisgarh, where a huge swing away from the BJP enabled the Congress to win a two-thirds majority, an alliance may seem unnecessary. But the third front of the BSP and Ajit Jogi’s Janta Congress Chhattisgarh got more than 11% of the vote. Given this, the Congress may have to forestall any attempt by Mr. Jogi to link hands with the BJP. In the Lok Sabha election, it will be critical for the Congress to maximise the yield from M.P. and Rajasthan, both big States, in order to squeeze the BJP at the national level; it may not be enough to just nose ahead as it did in the Assembly elections. If it has learnt from its experience in the Gujarat election last year, the Congress may be persuaded to be more accommodative to prospective partners in the other States where it is in direct contest with the BJP. Every victory not only adds to its own tally, but also denies the BJP. The Congress lost Gujarat despite its alliances, and it won Chhattisgarh, M.P. and Rajasthan without any major allies. But the lesson is that it will have to repeat Gujarat, where it adopted a good strategy, and not Chhattisgarh, where it deployed indifferent tactics.
MEANINGS AND WORDS
1) intractable
Meaning : hard to control or deal with.
Synonyms : ungovernable
Antonyms : obliging
Example : “intractable economic problems”
2) reconcile
Meaning : restore friendly relations between.(v)
Synonyms : accommodate
Antonyms : confuse
Example : “the king and the archbishop were publicly reconciled”
3) prospective
Meaning : expected or expecting to be the specified thing in the future.
Synonyms : view
Example : “she showed a prospective buyer around the house”
4) reaped
Meaning : harvest the crop from (a piece of land).(v)
Synonyms : pick
Antonyms : sow
Example : “farmers agreed to continue reaping the land by traditional means”
5) stakes
Meaning : support (a plant) with a stake or stakes.(v)
Synonyms : share
Antonyms : defund
Example : “the gladioli were staked in gaudy ranks”
6) enabled
Meaning : give (someone) the authority or means to do something; make it possible for.(v)
Synonyms : permit
Antonyms : prevent
Example : “the evidence would enable us to arrive at firm conclusions”
7) squeeze
Meaning : firmly press (something soft or yielding), typically with one’s fingers.(v)
Synonyms : permit
Antonyms : prevent
Example : “Kate squeezed his hand affectionately”
8) persuaded
Meaning : induce (someone) to do something through reasoning or argument.(v)
Synonyms : induce
Antonyms : unsell
Example : “it wasn’t easy, but I persuaded him to do the right thing”
9) contest
Meaning : engage in competition to attain (a position of power).(v)
Synonyms : friction
Antonyms : harmony
Example : “she declared her intention to contest the presidency”
10) denies
Meaning : state that one refuses to admit the truth or existence of.
Synonyms : repudiate
Antonyms : espouse
Example : “both firms deny any responsibility for the tragedy”
11) despite
Meaning : contemptuous treatment or behaviour; outrage.
Synonyms : contempt
Antonyms : tolerance
Example : “the despite done by him to the holy relics”
12) deployed
Meaning : bring into effective action.
Synonyms : redistribute
Example : “small states can often deploy resources more freely”
