INDEPTH ANALYSIS The results, while anticipated, have clearly shaken up the Congress. But the history of elections in the four States shows no direct correlation can be drawn between victory in the latest round and a general election.
In the end, one result eclipsed all others as the curtain came down on what can easily be called the most watched set of Assembly elections in recent years. The verdict was out on Sunday for the first four of the five States that went to the polls through November-December — Delhi, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Mizoram.
However, all eyes were riveted on the Herculean fight staged right in the heart of the national capital: as Arvind Kejriwal trounced Sheila Dikshit in the New Delhi constituency, thousands of broomsticks — the election symbol of the Aam Aadmi Party – went triumphantly up in the air as if to announce that the party had arrived, and beware those who took it lightly.
A delirious AAP spokesman seized the mike at a TV studio and declared that the party will sit in the Opposition in the Delhi Assembly, even as it prepares to replicate its success nationally.
This was no ordinary election. A rank newcomer had taken on a Congress veteran who was not just the Chief Minister of Delhi but who, over the past 15 years, had emerged as the face of the megalopolis. More important, New Delhi represents the political heartbeat of the city as well as the nation. In the event, Mr. Kejriwal’s individual performance from the constituency was enhanced by the power-house debut of his party, which won 28 of Delhi’s 70 seats, trailing the Bharatiya Janata Party by just 3. Not surprisingly, the Kejriwal-AAP show appeared to have unsettled the BJP as much as the Congress, taking some of the sheen off the latter’s own anticipated 4-0 clean sweep of the Assembly elections.
Just months ago, the AAP coming so close to power in a State of such immense political significance would have been unthinkable. A new-born with almost no resources, the AAP had struggled to find suitable candidates for Delhi’s 70 seats. What the party did offer instead was idealism in dollops — misplaced and impracticable, its critics said — and a promise to deliver clean, corruption-free governance. The message caught the imagination of voters cutting across social backgrounds; the AAP cut into the Congress’s votes in the slum clusters as it did for the BJP’s votes among the elite sections. The AAP began by ridiculing politics and politicians, but ironically ended up enthusing voters to turn up at the booths in unprecedented numbers.
So what is the larger message of the elections? If the Congress’s rout in this round is clear, so is the fact that the national mood has strongly turned against the party which won two consecutive Lok Sabha elections in 2004 and 2009.
Not only this, the Congress’s performance in the four States is its worst since 1993, suggesting a convergence of local- and national-level voter disenchantment with the party. What is not so clear is this: If the Congress has lost, will the national verdict go the way of the National Democratic Alliance in
2014? Secondly, how much of the BJP’s Assembly victories can be attributed to Narendra Modi, who campaigned intensively in the four States, addressing rallies over and above what was scheduled for him by the BJP? Indeed, the BJP’s prime ministerial nominee was beseeched by party candidates with requests to somehow squeeze in time for a rally in their own constituencies. So convinced was the BJP itself of the grand Modi-effect that it had him address a rally in Delhi in the vicinity of the Red Fort as a signal of his impending ascent to power.
As it turned out, the Congress retained the Chandni Chowk seat where the Red Fort is located, and in other States too there was little evidence to make a positive link between Mr. Modi’s appearances and the BJP’s victories.
The BJP’s triumph stands diminished by the neck-and-neck fight it has had with its immediate rivals in Delhi and Chhattisgarh. The fight was so close in both States that the final verdict could have been two States won and two lost. In Delhi, the AAP snapped at the BJP’s heels, and in Chhattisgarh the verdict see-sawed until late evening between the BJP and the Congress. Secondly, Sunday’s verdict does not allow easy extrapolation to 2014. The history of elections in the four States shows no direct correlation can be drawn between victory in these elections and a similar triumph in the general election that will follow.
For instance, in 1998, when Madhya Pradesh remained undivided, the Congress won 3-0 against the BJP which at the time headed the National Democratic Alliance government at the Centre. In the 1999 general elections, the NDA won a second term. In 2003, the BJP clinched a 3-1 victory against the Congress which went on to form a government at the Centre in 2004. In 2008, the Congress and the BJP won two States each but it was the Congress which pulled off a second national victory in 2009.
The difference if any between earlier elections and now is this: The Congress today has the disadvantage of a nearly 10-year incumbency. The situation has been made worse by rampant corruption, runaway inflation and policy paralysis adversely impacting the regime’s previous big achievements — on the economic growth front and in the social welfare sector. The absence of clarity on its prime ministerial candidate would seem to have only added to the public perception of the party as corrupt beyond redemption and shooting in the dark when clear, coherent action was needed.
The results, while anticipated, have clearly shaken up the Congress. On Sunday, Congress President Sonia Gandhi made one of her rare appearances at the AICC headquarters after the debacle. Emphasising the need for “serious introspection”, she said — in response to a question — that the party would announce its prime-ministerial candidate at an “opportune moment”. And party vice-president Rahul Gandhi, who has long spoken of the urgent need to reform the functioning of what is now a moribund party, acknowledged that politics had changed, and promised to “move it to a place where the man on the street would have a voice.”
If a suitably chastened Congress leadership accepted that it had a lesson to learn from the AAP, the BJP while triumphant on the outside seemed less sure of what awaited it in 2014.
For, if the AAP has succeeded in Delhi, the regional parties could hold the cards in the States.
'Semi Finals' Winner, Only For BJP
Everything now points to the BJP emerging as the single largest party, by some distance, in the sixteenth Lok Sabha. But the Modi-led alliance will not go into the mid-2014 ‘finals’ as the favourite, in any event not the overwhelming favourite.
The results of the four State Assembly elections conducted in November-December 2013 in northern India confirm one thing: the political marketplace has downgraded Congress stock to junk status. The clear message from tens of millions of voters to the party ruling at the Centre is ‘get prepared to be in the Opposition for quite a stretch’. The Bharatiya Janata Party’s sweep of the two largest States, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, is significant but its cup of joy is not quite full.
While a sterling performance by a fresh-faced debutant, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), has denied it outright victory in Delhi, the knife-edge contest in Chhattisgarh has raised some awkward questions. These questions revolve round how the people of the State, which witnessed the shocking liquidation by extremists of the Congress’s top State leadership in May 2013, feel about governance, security, and the Raman Singh government’s accountability for a grave security failure.
AAP’s performance
The humbling of the Congress and the BJP’s surge in this round have been along expected lines, more or less, but the AAP’s performance has been way beyond general expectations. In fact, as far as political perceptions and portents go, it would not be much of an exaggeration to say that Arvind Kejriwal’s team of dedicated campaigners and contestants in Delhi have stolen the limelight from the architects of the BJP’s sweep of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.
This time the opinion, exit, and post polls can claim to have been on the right side of the popular mood and the electoral trends. However, the vote share estimates and seat forecasts (which have varied significantly and, in the case of Delhi, wildly) have been off in varying degrees, with virtually all the polls grossly underestimating the AAP.
Hindutva spokespersons have depicted the latest Assembly contests as a ‘semi-final’ in which the winner’s form portends an overpowering victory in the ‘finals’ that will be played in April-May 2014. The problem with the analogy is that the guaranteed winner of the other semi-final, which will be played in virtual space, is a constellation of regional and some other non-BJP, non-Congress players, and the finals will be played by three contestants under differential rules — with the two semi-final winners each able to play on only part of the pitch and only the guaranteed loser in a position to play on the whole pitch, more or less.
So how is the contest shaping up for the big prize?
Before we can answer this challenging question, we need to figure out some kind of basic explanatory insight into what has happened in the nine States where Assembly elections have been held in 2013 and what the outcomes add up to, quantitatively and qualitatively. The short answer to the first sub-question, based on what we can learn from the information provided by the opinion, exit, and post polls and also from journalistic reportage, is this. The price rise, the relentless pressures on livelihood and living standards, and corruption have figured high among voter concerns, and on these sensitive issues the big loser is the Congress and the United Progressive Alliance government, which has been thoroughly discredited and has clearly overstayed its welcome.
As for what the 2013 Assembly election outcomes add up to, it is interesting that five of these States, four in the north and Karnataka in the south, aggregate a hundred Lok Sabha seats, while the other four, all in the north-east, make up a combined total of six seats. So this is not quite political India: in fact, the State Assembly contests won and lost in 2013 translate to less than a fifth of the composition of the Lok Sabha.
Secondly, if a trend favouring the BJP can be detected in the northern States that have gone to the polls this year, it is countered by what has happened in the south, signifying the reality that the party that speaks and functions in the name of ‘Hindu nationalism’, or majoritarianism, is not quite a national party in the sense it does not have a serious electoral presence in a large part of India. It is surely significant that these no-go regions cumulatively elect about 250 members to the Lok Sabha, which means the victor of this ‘semi-final’ will go to the ‘finals’ knowing it can play on just one-half of the pitch.
And one does not need political punditry to realise that electoral victory and defeat is made by several factors, local, regional, and national, and any analysis that reduces the diversity and complexity of India’s electoral game to one or two factors will be wrong-headed and deluded.
This leads us to the question whether any ‘wave’ — a decisive and overpowering swing in the voter mood — can be detected across the country in favour of any one party or leader. The question is not irrelevant because historically there have been such electoral waves in India, notably in 1971, 1977, and 1984, under very different sets of circumstances. Modi partisans would of course say ‘yes’. But the evidence-based answer seems to be that while his prime ministerial candidacy has gained traction and momentum and has significantly strengthened the electoral stock of his party, there is no ‘Modi wave’ that the BJP and its National Democratic Alliance partners can ride straight to power at the Centre.
Need for allies
Everything points to the BJP emerging as the single largest party, by some distance, in the sixteenth Lok Sabha. The Congress, some pollsters speculate, could be reduced to half its present strength of 206. The regional, Left, and other non-Congress, non-BJP parties and independents are likely to make up a sizeable proportion of the next Lok Sabha, well above the UPA’s total strength. So what is the threshold from which a Modi-led BJP could bid aggressively to form a government? Given the overall political picture, it needs to be well over 200 Lok Sabha seats for the NDA — which after all is a shadow of the alliance it was when Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a much more acceptable political leader than Mr. Modi, spearheaded it to power in 1998 and 1999.
The essential political truth is that notwithstanding his present avatar as ‘Vikas Purush’, the Man of Development, Mr. Modi does not attract allies; he repels erstwhile allies and also potential allies. It is well established that he is a highly polarising and divisive figure, with a special notoriety rooted in his and his government’s role in the 2002 Gujarat pogrom.
Interestingly, India’s newspapers and news television channels have, by and large, maintained the necessary professional distance in reporting the Modi campaign. But what they have also done is to keep the focus on the deeply troubling path he has taken to the national stage — and on what this portends for secular and democratic governance.
That this essential political truth has had an impact even at the top leadership levels of the BJP was evidenced by Lal Krishna Advani’s revolt against the installation of Mr. Modi, first as the BJP’s election campaign chief, and then as its prime ministerial candidate. Instant media analysis might have concluded that the BJP’s pre-eminent ideologue and strategist was deeply offended because he was overlooked for the top job but that reading is both shallow and simple-minded. The more likely explanation is that Mr. Advani, with his long institutional memory, is disturbed by what lies in store for both the party and the Parivar — given Mr. Modi’s political notoriety, which, among other things, repels potential BJP allies.
All this suggests that the BJP, although assured of its single largest party status, will not go into the mid-2014 ‘finals’ as the favourite, in any event not the overwhelming favourite. Interesting political moves are on, for example, the Congress’s reported attempt to strike a deal with the Bahujan Samaj Party, the alliance manoeuvres in Bihar, not to mention the Telangana drama that lies ahead, that could make a difference on the ground. It is quite conceivable, even likely, that a post-poll combination of triumphant regional parties will, with external support from the Congress and the Left, be able to form the next government.
The rout of the Congress
For the Congress, the humiliation in Delhi was more crushing than the defeats elsewhere. More ignominious than the failure to win Madhya Pradesh after two successive defeats and the fall of the Congress government in Rajasthan was the party’s miserable third-place finish in Delhi. The Congress trailed way behind the Aam Aadmi Party led by Arvind Kejriwal, which has made a sparkling debut.
The close finish in Chhattisgarh was poor compensation for the total rout in the other three States. The party was left grappling with the long-term implications of having lost so much ground to the AAP in Delhi. The extraordinary rise of the AAP testified to the success of the team of activists led by Mr. Kejriwal in drawing new volunteers outside of the traditional political class who effectively channelled the sense of public disgust with mainstream parties.
The four States together send 72 members to the Lok Sabha, and the Congress would now have to acknowledge that its principal rival, the Bharatiya Janata Party, is the front runner for the bigger battle in 2014. Yet, given that these four States were primarily sites of bipolar contests between the BJP and the Congress, this verdict cannot be construed as a “semi-final”, as some analysts are inclined to argue. First, the 2014 general election will take place on a larger canvas with more leading players such as the regional parties, and the verdict will reflect this complex interplay.
This said, there is no denying that in the race to be the single largest party in the next Lok Sabha, the BJP is surely ahead. To attract potential allies, especially from among fence-sitting regional players and to forge seat-sharing agreements before the next election, it is essential to be seen as the party most likely to head the next government at the Centre.
While the results certainly boost the BJP’s chances in 2014, it would be premature to read these as an unqualified endorsement of the party’s Hindutva brand of politics. For instance, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the star performer of the party and a charismatic leader in his own right, has led the BJP to victory in Madhya Pradesh for the second time.
He sought a renewed mandate on the basis of his development schemes and welfare projects and has evidently succeeded. Likewise, in Chhattisgarh, the BJP under Raman Singh banked on food subsidies to win votes. In Rajasthan, the BJP rode on the strong anti-incumbency sentiment, bringing Vasundhara Raje back to another term in office.
The Congress government under Ashok Gehlot failed miserably to make an impact; the development work in the State was uneven, and some of the populist schemes did not reach all the intended beneficiaries. In Delhi, the AAP ran a high-voltage campaign against corruption and the established political class, but the principal beneficiary of the anti-Congress wave was the BJP, which too kept the focus on corruption and rising prices.
If the BJP is seeking to sharpen the ideological divide over secularism by nominating Narendra Modi as its prime ministerial candidate ahead of the Assembly elections, there is little evidence from this round of elections that such a strategy will deliver guaranteed victories on the ground. Mr. Modi was omnipresent as the BJP’s face, yet the campaign stars were clearly the local leaders, and the issues dominant in the election discourse were livelihood and social security concerns.
There is no denying that Mr. Modi has injected some vigour into the BJP’s election strategy with his aggressive campaign style. The Gujarat strongman has expanded his sphere of influence well beyond his home State in the months since he was elevated to the national stage as the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate. Even among those who disagree with his polarising politics are those who appreciate his decisiveness, and his pro-growth measures and relatively corruption-free governance in Gujarat.
If anything, Mr. Modi has also been under pressure to reinvent himself as a mass leader showcasing a development-oriented agenda. Given the apparent ineffectiveness of an enfeebled Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the Gujarat Chief Minister has managed to present himself as a national alternative who can carry his party with him on all important issues. There is as yet no exact measure of the Modi effect in the Assembly elections. What is certain is that the new political energy that Mr. Modi has brought into the BJP’s national election campaign would be a consolidating factor at the national level.
In sum, while the four States are not representative of the rest of India, they offer strong indications of the trend of public opinion in major States of the Hindi heartland. In some of the other States, the Congress is pitted against regional or Left parties, and not directly against the BJP. In some others, the regional parties are the main players with little or no role for either the Congress or the BJP.
After two terms in government, and a series of scams that led to the resignation of Ministers, the Congress-led UPA is likely to lose seats to the BJP and other parties in the next election. Just as the BJP could not have gained critical mass by relying on Hindutva alone, the Congress cannot hope to continue to win votes by merely targeting the BJP’s communally divisive agenda. Building election planks on scare scenarios too can offer only limited purchase.
Whether it is the Congress or the BJP, the message that the voters appear to be sending to the political class is that the party which does not have a credible agenda for governance and development, is likely to perish. The rise of the Aam Aadmi party also signals public alienation from traditional political parties which appear increasingly disconnected from people’s aspirations and expectations.
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