Verdict
2004 is surely as momentous as the defeat of Indira
Gandhi and the Emergency in 1977. There have been
more decisive outcomes, in terms of yielding a clear
majority in Parliament, like Indira Gandhi's triumph
in 1971 and Rajiv Gandhi's landslide victory in 1984,
but no election other than 1977 has arguably articulated
the voice of the Indian people as clearly as 2004.
The message is unequivocal: India firmly rejects the
economic, social and political agenda of the Bharatiya
Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance Government.
To explain the defeat of the NDA in terms of anti-incumbency
or to say that the BJP was let down by its allies
or that the rural voter has prevailed over the urban
is to throw red herrings on the road to understanding
the reasons for the ouster of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee
Government. There certainly was a mosaic of factors
that contributed to the outcome in each Lok Sabha
constituency in each State. There is, however, one
set of reasons that, barring the odd exception, is
common across the length and breadth of the country
for why a sufficiently large number of voters did
not press a particular button on the electronic voting
machines. They felt insulted by the BJP's claims about
the economy doing exceptionally well. They refused
to buy the stability argument of the NDA. They were
angry about the ruling coalition's ugly tirade against
Congress president Sonia Gandhi. And they obviously
did not believe the claim that a government headed
by Mr. Vajpayee is the best one to govern the country
for another five years.
The BJP, flush with its unexpected victory last December
in three major States and with the string of good
news about the macro-economy, thought it was going
to be a cakewalk over the demoralised Congress. The
NDA first espoused the `Feel good' theory. While macro-economic
parameters such as the GDP growth rate and exports
have indeed been positive, the regime in New Delhi
overlooked some obvious facts. First, the country
had seen a better economic performance earlier. The
NDA wrongly assumed that the people would believe
the record in one year (2003-04) foretold the future.
Secondly, and this was more important, for years whatever
growth had taken place had benefited only certain
regions and classes. Be it job creation, health services,
education or even nutrition, for the vast majority
things were not very much better and they were tired
of the promises of a new India. The crude `India Shining'
campaign was increasingly seen as cruel propaganda
by most Indians who continued to struggle to make
ends meet. Statistics can lie but the ground reality
cannot. What the NDA forgot was that the citizen still
possessed the ultimate weapon that could be used against
an insensitive and manipulative government. This was
indeed wielded to show the NDA the door. The coalition
did attempt to change strategy mid-course and first
turned on the Sonia Gandhi as foreigner issue. But
when the anti-Sonia campaign turned vituperative,
this was yet another insult to the Indian voter. Even
the `stability' slogan found few buyers when the BJP
in the closing weeks tried every trick in the book
to enlist as many new allies as possible. Voters could
hardly be expected to trust a coalition that became
more and more desperate to return to power.
The election turned out to be predominantly a vote
against the NDA, but it was also a vote for parties
that promised to be empathetic to the condition of
the ordinary citizen. In retrospect, how could it
have been different when one political formation held
out, for instance, the promise of 100 days' employment
to every rural family while the other was content
to speak of $100 billion of foreign exchange reserves
and making India `a great power?' Yes, the Congress
did also choose its allies wisely (notably in Tamil
Nadu and Maharashtra) and the NDA was no match for
some local configurations (Tamil Nadu was the best
example). However, the more important factor that
drove the NDA to a stunning defeat was a larger all-India
anger at the NDA. It is important to recognise that
even States that overwhelmingly voted in favour of
the BJP last December have now seen a marginal but
distinct shift in favour of the Congress. In Chhattisgarh,
Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, a dispirited Congress
was expected to be wiped out in the Parliamentary
elections. But while the Congress tally of 10, at
the time of writing, is half the 20 it got in 1999,
it is certainly more than it expected. The Congress
may well have done much better if it had believed
in itself in these States. The extent to which the
voter was prepared to turn against the BJP is exemplified
by the results in Gujarat. The BJP had as recently
as December 2002 shown that it had a stranglehold
on the State. Yet it ended up with what can only be
described as an embarrassment: a loss of 12 out of
26 seats - with many of the losses in areas that witnessed
the terrible violence against Muslims in March 2002.
To return to the anti-incumbency argument, which is
often the lazy explanation offered for electoral outcomes.
Yes, voter anger against the party in power - whatever
its hue - expressed itself in both Andhra Pradesh
and Karnataka. But if anti-incumbency is the dominant
force, how does one explain the victory of the ruling
parties in West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Bihar,
Orissa and Maharashtra? Another trivial interpretation
is that the rural electorate has voted with its feet
against the NDA, while, by implication, the supposedly
more enlightened urban residents had allied themselves
with the forward-thinking NDA. This again is a self-serving
explanation. Yes, rural India has by and large voted
for the Congress-led alliance. But so too has the
electorate in most of the urban constituencies of
Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad. An
interesting statistic is that urban voters have on
occasion shown a greater anti-NDA sentiment in the
Lok Sabha elections. In the Secunderabad constituency,
two-time Union Minister of State for Railways Bangaru
Dattatreya of the BJP was defeated by a margin of
70,000 votes. This was six times as large as the gap
between the total votes polled by the BJP/TDP and
Congress candidates in the Assembly elections in the
same constituency. Yet another theory is that the
BJP was let down by its allies. This is hardly the
case. Yes, the Telugu Desam Party has ended up with
25 seats fewer than in the 13th Lok Sabha and the
All-India Anna DMK with 10 seats less. However, the
BJP cannot hide the fact that, other than in Karnataka,
its own performance has been dismal. It has lost 42
seats (nearly 25 per cent less than its 1999 tally
of 180), has emerged an embarrassing fourth in Uttar
Pradesh and will come behind the Congress, which it
used to deride as incapable of crossing the double-digit
mark in the new House.
The BJP will, in the days to come, project an air
of injured pride. It will ask itself how much more
it could have done than working towards peace with
Pakistan and even softening its Hindutva colours.
One can only speculate that perhaps the voter could
not also forget that it was the BJP that was in power
in Gujarat in March 2002, that it was the party that
made India go openly nuclear, and that it had its
eyes and ears more attuned to earning praise from
the international financial community than to improving
the lives of the people in the country. After tasting
power and expanding its base among India's middle
and upper-income urban classes, the BJP paid the price
for becoming disconnected from reality. India twice
gave the BJP an opportunity to rule, but on both occasions
it failed to rise to the challenge. Now in the most
amazing of elections, the country has decided to withdraw
the remit to the BJP-led coalition and hand it over
to the Congress and its allies.
Will the Congress-led Government do any better? One
can only hope that the new coalition at the Centre
will learn from past experiences. The grand old party
has been out of power for eight years. It was written
off, but has managed to claw back after realising
that it has to respect coalition politics. It was
the Congress-initiated brand of economic reform that
India has rejected twice - in 1996 when the Narasimha
Rao Government was voted out and now in 2004 when
the Vajpayee Government, which followed the same policies,
has been shown the door. It must surely recognise
at least now that the people are demanding broad-based
and inclusive economic policies. They will not accept
an approach to the economy that makes India one of
the fastest growing economies in the world but also
one where a dominant under-class gets left behind.
In election 2004, the majority has shown that it will
not be bribed by vague promises of India becoming
a superpower in 2020. This certainly is India shining.
Source:
The Hindu, 14 May 2004
