The era of the defectors

Can we even think of the Labour Party poaching a sulking Boris Johnson at the behest of the industry, which will give it funds and a possible edge with conservative voters in a tight race in British polls? Or consider the equally outlandish thought of, say, Nikki Haley crossing over to Joe Biden’s team after failing to evict Donald Trump as the front-running Republican challenger in the presidential race?

- JAWED NAQVI

It would be just as preposterous to imagine a Kennedy scion deserting the Democrats for Trump in their opposition to Biden.

In bourgeois democracies, two opposite parties often come together to undermine their electoral mandate. Dressed up as a national cause, the poaching of popularly elected deputies from rival parties is peculiar to Indian democracy, to a lesser extent to other South Asian countries too.

In India, this political cannibalism has become rampant. Popularly elected MLAs from this or that party are crossing over to a higher bidder. So the reports say. The phenomenon finds a fair share of coercion too. Threat exists from the powerful inducer of defection of unleashing revenue sleuths or opening criminal probes on vulnerable and, in all probability, corrupt members of rival groups, to force a split.

One can only note with vapid contempt the political events unfolding in India’s richest state of Maharashtra. It’s the richest state, of course, home to the Tatas and Ambanis, but also the province where farmers have committed suicide in droves, in hundreds of thousands, a bulk of them since the advent of India’s free market economy in the 1990s.

A chunk of the MLAs till recently loyal to an alliance, which had the Congress party as a key member, broke away on Sunday to join Maharashtra’s ruling coalition, of which the BJP is the architect. Ajit Pawar became deputy chief minister, and a handful of MLAs who defected with him were given ministerial posts. The venal move is presumably aimed at foiling opposition unity. The fracture and the rewelding were neither unique nor new.