With a general election a year away at most, Indian politics presents a bewildering array of scenarios, with none of the two national parties in particularly good shape. The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) has been in power for nine years. But the 80-year-old Prime Minister Manmohan Singh looks ever more diminished. Many see him as the passive head of a corrupt system. Two Cabinet ministers had to resign from the government in May. Railway Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal was exposed in a bribery scandal while Law Minister Ashwani Kumar had to quit after India's apex court fingered him for meddling in the work of the supposedly independent Central Bureau of Investigation. Singh's two terms, especially the second, have been rocked by other controversies. One concerns the allocation of mining licenses in an arbitrary manner at great cost to the government's revenues when Singh was overseeing the Coal Ministry. Even some in his own Congress Party see him as a liability rather than as an asset. In normal circumstances all this plus the anti-incumbency factor should work to the advantage of the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by it. But circumstances are anything but normal for the BJP. The party is currently afflicted with serious infighting, with a small but significant section, headed by L.K. Advani, a former deputy prime minister, opposing the projection of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi as the party's face for the 2014 election — the same Modi whose name seemed forever tainted by the slaughter on his watch of hundreds of Muslim men, women and children in Gujarat by Hindu mobs in 2002. Neither BJP nor Congress will be able to form a government on its own. But the Congress has its allies in the UPA solidly behind it. The same could not be said of the BJP. Most of the constituents of the NDA are opposed to a polarizing figure like Modi being projected as their candidate for prime minister. Janata Dal United, one of the oldest allies, has already quit the alliance in protest. Some other parties are likely to follow suit. The opposition to Modi from within and without may weaken his and, by extension, BJP's appeal to the voters. Moreover, Karnataka elections have proved that Modi's magic, whatever it is, does not work outside his home state of Gujarat. The BJP is still smarting from the trashing it received in Karnataka in May when in an election to the state legislature it lost its only southern stronghold to Congress. Karnataka was to have been its “southern citadel”, a base to reach the other southern states where the party's impact has been negligible. Adding to the confusion is the emergence of regional parties whose influence is confined to particular states but who still want to play a dominant role on national stage. There is increasing talk of a Federal Front which will enter electoral fray as an alternative to UPA and NDA. The problem is some regional leaders including Nitish Kumar of Bihar, Mulayam Singh Yadav of UP, the biggest state in Indian Union, and J. Jayalalithaa of Tamil Nadu harbor prime ministerial ambitions. Even if they manage to win enough seats to form a ministry, its chances of survival are rated very low.
