One of the main grievances of the Bharatiya Janata Party was that the Congress practised 'vote-bank' politics. This consisted of offering the Muslims various incentives to ensure that they voted for the Congress.

The BJP saw itself as a pan-Hindu party and sought to create a vote bank out of the Hindus. But it made a huge mistake -- it confused varna with jati. This was borne out when the Dalits, who saw Hinduism largely through the prism of upper caste oppression, formed their own vote bank.

This led other castes to question the notion of pan-Hinduism and it was only a matter of time before a new bank emerged, styled as the other backward classes. But there were OBCs and OBCs. Once the process had started, it was impossible not to let a hundred banks bloom. Today, any political leader worth his salt has his own little bank based on his caste.

With such a proliferation of parties, and the consequent intense competition, should not one expect a "convergence of party platforms to the views of the median voter"?  But as we Indians know, that doesn't happen.

Two economists, Kevin Murphy of Chicago and Andrei Schliefer of Harvard, in a paper* about American politics have now come up with a nice mathematical model for all this. As I will show, it fits perfectly with the Indian condition.

"The key idea," say Murphy and Schliefer, "is that people are influenced by those inside their network, but not by those outside. Once created, networks can be 'rented out' to politicians who seek votes and support for their initiatives and ideas, which may have little to do with network members' core beliefs."

"More generally," say Murphy and Schliefer, "this paper is part of a growing body of research in economics that assumes that individual beliefs on many issues are flexible, and that as a consequence, people are vulnerable to persuasion and influence."

These insights are based on some recent research on social psychology and public opinion. It has been "found", for instance, that people are not rigid in their beliefs and that they can be influenced, especially when they do not have significant personal involvement.

It also turns out that social influence shapes decisions. Lastly, voter awareness of political issues and susceptibility to persuasion are inversely related.

Perhaps because it has not occurred to them, Murphy and Schliefer don't put it that way, but trust is the key ingredient. What they call networks are caste groups in India and just as members of a network trust each other to achieve group objectives, so do members of the same caste.

 "This characteristic of networks makes them valuable to politicians, who need only to persuade the leadership of the network on any of such non-core issues, and get the whole network to support their positions.… Networks thus become powerful political forces -- both through votes and through other forms of support -- even on issues that their members do not care much about." Did anyone say vote banks?

But this is not all. Murphy and Schliefer also talk about brokers: "social entrepreneurs such as union or religious leaders are the brokers creating the networks using issues that bind members together. They can then 'rent out' their networks to candidates who seek support."

If this is as the authors say, and it pretty much is, how should candidates think of political competition? "The best positions," they say, "bind the networks that support you, and divide those of your opponent."

Indira Gandhi tried this in 1983 when she made her famous "Jammu" speech. Now with his wooing of the Muslims, Atal Bihari Vajpayee is trying the same thing in reverse.

In economic jargon, the equilibrium is stable if and only if different networks do not allow themselves to be influenced by each other. That, it would seem, is why our caste-based parties maintain such insularity.

What about the issue that interests us most now -- the stability of coalitions? Murphy and Schliefer have examined the conditions for different equilibrium configurations of networks and conclude that a great deal depends on the size of the networks.

In severely segmented societies, the equilibrium is unlikely to be stable, whence, doubtless, Vajpayee's plaintive wish for a less than 22-party coalition this time.

Can two equal sized networks, be in equilibrium? Yes, or to quote, "for a given influence function f, there may exist a range of parameter values d (distance between networks) for which the grand coalition and two equal sized networks are both equilibrium."

That is, provided the core needs of each are met. This is the strongest case for a BJP-Congress coalition, of which I am strong votary, because the core need of both is power and not as both pretend, secularism.

* Persuasion in Politics, NBER Working Paper No. 10248, January 2004.

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