Dominant parties and niche brands

Assembly elections in Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir were a crowded affair with numerous political groups fielding candidates. But the new legislative assemblies reveal a near bipolar picture, with the BJP and Congress dominating in Haryana and the National Conference (NC), its ally Congress, and the BJP filling in J&K. Among those vanquished are the People’s Democratic Party and Indian National Lok Dal, which have led governments. Add to this the Jannayak Janta Party, Awami Ittehad Party, and J&K People’s Conference, and evidence of a political bloodbath emerges.
Voters are no longer willing to back inconsequential players in an electoral battle. Nothing in politics is etched in stone, and this trend too is unlikely to be permanent or uniformly replicated across the country. What is true, however, is regional politics tends to see pulls and pressures for and against large umbrella parties and niche regional brands. In Haryana and J&K, the pull was in favour of the big players, which offered to be umbrella parties, appealing to almost everyone. In Haryana, the polarisation and subsequent mobilisation seem to have favoured this trend — the Congress, despite its historical legacy as a big tent, lost to the BJP because it was seen as the voice of a single dominant caste. In J&K, a similar trend favoured the NC and BJP in Kashmir and Jammu respectively.
Small parties, however, are important because, in their best avatars, they represent interests/ groups that appear marginal to dominant parties. In some states, especially when there is a pull in their favour on account of mobilisations, they are co-opted by a dominant party as allies — in Tamil Nadu, for instance, the DMK and AIADMK have been generous in accommodating smaller parties in alliances. Dominant parties in Maharashtra, where elections are due, are wondering if they can be aggregators on their own or need to rope in marginal players.