The tragicomic end of the BJP-BSP government in UP will evoke no sympathy for either of the two allies. The writing on the wall was clear to everyone except a few day-dreamers in the Hindutva brigade who saw a tie-up with the BSP in UP as a stepping stone to Raisina Hill. Apart from their shared antagonism towards Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, the only bond between the BJP and the BSP was the usual hankering for power. It was inevitable that they should have fallen apart fighting over the spoils.The BJP national leadership had a bigger stake. It tried to give the coalition a long rope and kept a sulking Kalyan Singh on a tight leash in the six months of Mayawati's Chief Ministership. But the BSP had no such compulsions and made its antagonism towards Kalyan Singh obvious even before he assumed office. Its protests got shriller as Singh went ahead to undo what Mayawati had done. State BJP chief Rajnath Singh's bluster that the BJP could rule on its own gave Mayawati the excuse to break the marriage.The UP Governor, Romesh Bhandari, seems to have reacted cautiously this time to the developments in the State by giving Singh time till October 21 to prove his majority in the Assembly. If he fails to do so, no one can accuse the Governor of acting in a partisan manner. Bhandari's response has been apparently prompted by the United Front leaders' confidence that the BJP will find it difficult to lure the required number of legislators from other parties. The UF would also like to make sure that the BJP is not allowed to get out of the mess it has created by blaming the Governor or the Centre. For Bhandari could have justifiably rejected Kalyan Singh's demand for a majority test on the floor by referring to the 1995 precedent when Mulayam Singh Yadav was summarily dismissed by the Centre after the BSP pulled out of its coalition with him.The ignominious end of the BSP-BJP pact in UP raises several questions about the future of coalition politics in the country. Maverick parties such as the BSP have got where they are today by focusing tightly on their limited agenda without giving a thought to the larger picture. But after unceremoniously kicking first the SP, then the Congress and now the BJP, the BSP may have painted itself into a corner by conclusively proving that it is an unreliable coalition partner. It cannot go on blaming the media, and especially this newspaper, for its troubles. At a time when the polity is fragmenting and national parties such as the BJP and the Congress are increasingly dependent on unconventional partners like the BSP to form a government, there is a desperate need for political leaders to hammer out parameters for a workable coalition. It is indeed ironic that the 14-party arrangement at the Centre, which the BJP has mocked at all along, sputters on while its own arrangement with the BSP in Lucknow has cracked up in just seven months. All political parties will have to imbibe more of the spirit of give and take and learn not to speak out of turn if the country has to make some sense of this period of political transition.
