Sharing a political terrainIn effect, Mr. Gandhi and Mr. Yadav are converging on remarkably similar political terrain. As politics becomes highly nationalised and even globalised, both the need for regional parties and their long-term viability are becoming increasingly uncertain. For Mr. Yadav, therefore, a merger would not merely be a tactical adjustment for the next election. Both are attempting to reconstruct their respective parties around the same social imagination: a broad multi-religious, multi-caste social alliance, with social justice at its core. But a Congress-SP merger could lay the foundation for a broad biparty system which is more suitable for India.