Indian voters thrash BJP

Columnist MB NAQVI looks at the electoral trouncing of the BJP.

India went to polls in five states for their provincial Assemblies on Thursday, May, 10. The results are more or less stunning. BJP and the parties allied to it, mainly at the centre, have received a drubbing at the hands of the voters. The governments to be formed in all the five states would be by parties that are opposed to the BJP and the National Democratic Alliance government at the Centre. It is a clear verdict against the Vajpayee government.

Doubtless, the BJP has argued that these provincial Assemblies elections had no direct nexus with the central government. For, most of the issues on which these elections turned were local. Therefore, the significance of elections in each of the five states relates to specific conditions in the province and its problems. Indeed one of its spokesmen has had the temerity to argue that far from having received a punishment in the three southern states, BJP has increased its representation in the three Assemblies. He claimed that BJP has almost doubled its own representation from 7 to 13 in all the three provincial Assemblies put together. From this he inferred that the people have not lost confidence in the BJP. He did, however, concede that it is in West Bengal Assembly polls that BJP has not given a good account of itself.

How important are the local issues and whether in the mind of the voter in any of the states were the local and national issues quite separate, as if they belonged to two different levels, each of them being independent and the voter consulting each at the appropriate time for appropriate action. Insofar, as human beings are concerned, they make up their minds for voting as a result of their combined experiences, frustrations, hopes and promises of various parties. All matters —- parochial, district level, provincial or national —- contribute something to the overall state of the mind. Feelings are interwoven in them as are ideals or objectives that appeal to them. The final decision can seldom be made on just one or two factors alone. The word psychologist used to employ was gestalt or gestalten to describe the combined influences impinging on the minds including their feelings and sentiments. The BJP apologists are obviously stretching a talking point that may have a strictly limited application.

In West Bengal, the Indian press and other media have proved to be false Prophets. Everyone had said that the challenge posed by Mamta Banerjee’s, Trinamool Congress is a very serious one. She was expected to give a very long run for their money to the Communists who have ruled the state for 24 years.  All sages who pontificated over the poll results before its announcement said that the battle is close and that if the Communists are lucky they would just scrape through. In the event all those experts and commentators had to eat their words. The CPI(M) led by Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee —- a non-charismatic personality, dubbed as a crusty intellectual —- has captured two-thirds seats in the West Bengal Assembly. Buddhadeb suits admirably both CPI(M) and West Bengal. All the profuse talk of disillusionment and incumbency factors has proved to be wide off the mark.

Three factors come to mind why West Bengal Communists have such a long life. They opened their innings with an honest and effective distribution of land among the landless. These people remain grateful. These peasants have not deserted the Commies. West Bengal as a whole is better governed than most other Indian states. For all the talk of political violence and socalled lawlessness, crime in West Bengal is among the lowest in India and the government functions —- and up to a point delivers (Kolkata perhaps not included). The third factor is that the Panchayat system has worked in West Bengal largely because of the CPI(M) leadership. It helps the people. Political awareness at grassroots has grown largely because of CPI(M)’s continued work at the grassroots as well as the result of the Panchayats working rather well. There are minuses too for the Communist’s rule. Their blind tolerance of no matter what the trade unions did has resulted in industries fleeing West Bengal, increasing urban unemployment and a sort of de-industrialisation of Kolkata and Bengal has taken place. Even so, on the whole the minorities, particularly the Muslims, vote solidly for the CPI(M). The communal situation in West Bengal remains the best in India. For the voters it seems the pluses are far more numerous than the minuses, hence the longevity of the Communist rule.

Two long-term considerations emerge vis-a-vis CPI(M) and other Communist parties. In these very polls, the Left Front in Kerala state did not make it; the Congress led United Front of Mr. Karunakaran has won. In Kerala the CPI(M) had first formed the government in 1957, ran it well and it went out and came back. Now it has again gone out. This has happened more than once. But the CPI(M) set a record in West Bengal and it remains a world record, Communists being elected in free elections and holding on to power through five elections at full five years intervals! But outside the three states where the CPI(M) has held power (the third being the CPI(M)-ruled Tripura) they remain total outsiders. Their 44 year history of electoral politics illustrates their strong point as well as one major weak point. The strong point is that the CPI(M) governments remain constantly in touch with their grassroots and on the whole govern better than other socalled bourgeois parties. But outside the three states, the Communists have never made any great showing. Specifically they have failed to enter the Hindi belt in any organised or notable way. Why? There is no obvious answer except that the communal (Hindu-Muslim) politics has dominated these areas for over a 100 years and no other force has made any impact on the communal minds. If one were to judge Indian politics over the last 50 years for its results, the verdict will have to be mixed.

Credit will have to be given to the Indians for maintaining the sovereignty of the people, making it stable and strong and containing fissiparous tendencies rather well (with notable exceptions of the Khalsa, Kashmir and minorities in various northeastern states). In economics India’s achievements are again mixed: it has scaled giddy heights of technology, produced world’s second largest reservoir of highly educated and trained manpower and produced a middle class of 200 millions. On the flip side, up to 70 per cent of Indians remain poor and 30 to 40 per cent very poor. The officially defined poverty line is neither here nor there. The point is: do the CPI(M) along with other Left parties measure up to being a national force, with the hope of making a notable impact on the fortunes of India? There is no certainty of that; indeed there are few signs that they are even thinking seriously of this. Witness their wooden handedness with which the CPI(M) leadership prevented Jyoti Basu, their eminence rouge from becoming India’s Prime Minister in 1996.

As noted, the larger significance of these polls appears to be the rejection of BJP rather than the people of different provinces plumping for any particular party or a new force. It appears that they have chosen whoever was available at hand and appeared to be a credible alternative to the rule of the central sarkar. Among the beneficiaries the chief one is of course the Congress, the fortunes of which appear to have turned for the better. Whether the Congress is in the process of a regeneration or coming back to power strongly at the centre as well as elsewhere next time is not easy to say. The Congress victories, attributed mainly to Congress popularity, have come in two provinces, Kerala and Assam. It will form a government in the tiny Pondichery in alliance with another party and its victory there is not decisive, though it happens to be a good enough showing. The Congress would also form a government in association with other organisations and allies in both Kerala and Assam. Here it does seem as if the current importance of Congress has been reestablished, though it has not received an overwhelming popular confirmation. Its allies are not ignorable or mere appurtenances; students and ULFA as well as tribal bodies remains separate forces in Assam in their own right and Congress would have to share power with some of them, though its parliamentary strength is indisputably premier one this time.

In Tamil Nadu, the second biggest state that went to polls, the victory does not belong to Congress; it goes to the rather imperial and imperious lady, the Amma or Ms. Jayalalitha Jayaram, the Chief of All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK). She could not contest the provincial Assembly election because she was disqualified by the Election Commission for having been earlier convicted for corruption. But such was the wave for Amma that the Governor thought it fit to ask her to form the government forthwith, despite not being an Assembly member —- naturally expected to be returned to Assembly within a few months as a matter of course. The voter endorsement of Amma —- and there was absolutely no doubt about it —- carried all the legal hurdles out of her way, at least initially. In Tamil Nadu it can be said that the main significance of the poll results is the defeat of the incumbent Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi of DMK. Tamils were actually choosing Amma over him apparently for the grave sin of having allied with BJP and having propped up its NDA government.

What BJP can argue is that the battle for the centre has not been won by anyone yet. But it is true that the BJP has received a big setback. While states like Tamil Nadu and West Bengal are important, the government at the centre shall turn on what happens in or to what is called the Hindi Belt: UP, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. These states are, relatively speaking, backward and poor in relation to other southern states. Bulk of BJP support comes from these states, particularly UP —- India’s heartland. UP is BJP’s stronghold where its government is still in power. All eyes are now on UP, which will show which way the wind is blowing. Early next year UP goes to polls. Indeed the battle for UP has already started. If the BJP gets trounced in UP early next year, it would be the surest and the final sign that the BJP’s tenure over power at the centre has passed into history. But if it can rebound and take UP, then the battle will be fierce and should be pronounced as open. The presumption being made here is that the way UP goes would roughly be the direction in which the other Hindi belt states would also go. But that battle has not been won by anyone yet. Initial auguries for the anti-BJP alignment are encouraging; certain signs show that in these five states BJP no longer has any great political attraction and popular support to it is eroding. Not even being a clean party can be argued after Tehalka dot com revelations.

What are the alternatives to the BJP? Historically BJP wrested power from Congress. Congress is still a major opposition party. It has just received a boost from these five state polls. But it should not be forgotten that Congress was perceived throughout the last two decades as being on a declining curve with its governance tarred with the brush of corruption and misgovernance, while its ideology (secularism and socialism) has been discredited largely through its own weak and vacillating implementation. Congress has yet to show whether it can give a clean and efficient government where its own ideals would be broadly respected.

The Indian voters threw it out later in the 1990s with an apparent finality. To return to the centrestage and take power, Congress has to go a long way. It is by no means certain that it has the intellectual and spiritual vitality to make the grade. Other forces do not include Communists, though minorities would love them. The theoretical alternatives are only local: Chandar Babu Naidu’s Telegu Desam Party in Andhra Pradesh, Laloo Prasad’s Rashtria Janata Dal in Bihar, Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party in UP and perhaps also Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party and similar caste parties elsewhere. The Congress still appears to retain a primary presence throughout peninsular India, except now in Tamil Nadu. The Congress as a vital factor might remain confined to South India. Its chances in the north seem slim. The alternative to BJP is still hazy and disorganised. Men, groups, parties and causes are there, around which working alliances can be built. But these have not worked in the past, though they were formed twice and ruled for brief interludes. But these were fine interludes that people fondly remember, particularly the VP Singh one. The interplay of three factors —- regional issues, caste considerations and the problem of mass poverty —- would provide both the wherewithal of fabricating an alternative and would also constitute a challenge.

Among the central issues in India in the near future, two are of great interest: one concerns India’s poverty vis-a-vis globalisation reforms that is costing India so dear in terms of felt poverty of 75 per cent Indians and is also giving it good returns for its industrial and commercial elites. The second concern the problem of the basic identity of the Indian. At the heart of the debate is the Hindu-Muslim identities —- now modified or compounded by the caste factor and regional identities —- versus the old Nehruvian construct: a composite secular Indian nationalism for uniting all Indians, viz. the famed Indo-Persian civilisation. Well, secularism preached and practised by Congress governments after Jawaharlal was far too diluted by Hindu communalist feelings and ideas. Secularism became more a sham or facade for Hindu majoritarianism. In any case, the quality of Indian democracy was, or is, none too high; democracy, socialism and secularism were all diluted and debased by Congress and its corruption. But these issues are of immense importance still. Hindu communalism, with its Hindutva bandwagon —- in its crude anti-Muslim form, typified by the demolition of Babri Masjid —- has now triumphed. It is now challenged by Congress and others. It is to be feared that, not knowing anything better, it will fall back on the old methodology through which BJP raised its parliamentary party strength from just 2 to 89. It did so by carrying on an anti-Muslim crusade. Now anti-Muslim activities for BJP and its fanatics also means anti-Pakistan stances and policies. BJP ordered nuclear tests three years ago, deep down, mainly to overawe Pakistan. It might do something dramatic against Pakistan before the next national polls — and win the way Indira Gandhi became Empress of India after winning 1971 war.

That requires Pakistan, apart from keeping its fingers crossed and powder dry, to have a policy designed to strengthen political forces in India that are genuinely anti-Hindu chauvinism — and not merely to befriend the useless Muslim Mullahs. It should help those parties and forces that can defang, and counter, Hindu communalist forces. Pakistan diplomacy should try to create a genuine pro-Pakistan lobby —- not as a covert fifth column but as an open friendly force. But an intelligent India policy —- not an inveterate anti-India one —- is needed. Pakistan’s rightwing and religious parties add to Pakistan Army’s anti India animus. But that has achieved nothing and is now counter-productive. What is required is a political savvy through which anti-Hindu communalist forces are strengthened to make India genuinely non-communal —- and thus safer for Pakistan and India’s own Muslim minority.