India Polls: What A Difference A Day Made!
By Raju Rajagopal
22 May, 2009
Countercurrents.org
“Is the sun setting over the Rising Sun?” I had wondered in the days leading up to the elections in Tamilnadu. Pollsters were certain that the ruling DMK party (the Rising Sun sign) would be swept out of most parliamentary constituencies. The Congress party’s Jai Ho slogan had momentarily turned into Jaya Ho, as the media anointed AIDMK’s Jayalalitha as the most likely king-maker in Delhi, in anticipation of a fractured national verdict.
As the nation anxiously awaited the final vote count, hubris was in the air, as pre-conditions for supporting the new government came fast and furious from potential coalition partners. The President had summoned a panel of constitutional experts to guide her in the anticipated complexity of government formation. The market was palpably nervous – “It’s rooting for the NDA,” an entrepreneur friend opined.
But it took a mere three hours on the morning of May 16th, the day of reckoning, to prove all the poll pundits wrong! By the end of the day, the Left had been ‘left behind’ in Kerala and West Bengal. The Fourth Front was ‘all out’ for a mere 28. Mayawati’s mystique seemed to have evaporated into thin U.P. air. The DMK’s muscle and money power, and some say Jayalalitha’s last minute bluster on Sri Lanka, had left the AIDMK and its new allies in the dust. Congress had made a clean sweep of Andhra Pradesh. And Advani’s “UPA is soft on terror” mantra appeared to have failed miserably with the voters of Maharashtra.
In short, the Indian electorate had completely rewritten the rules of the game by resoundingly endorsing the UPA government and voting for stability. It had rudely snatched the ‘PM crown’ away from would-be king-makers.
“Congress, Left, Right and Center,” “Singh is King,” screamed the headlines on the following day. The ‘pound of flesh’ that some of the potential allies were hoping to extract suddenly turned into meek statements of ‘unconditional support.’ And on Monday morning the stock market went berserk (+ 17%) at the prospect of a ‘second inning’ for the UPA, sans the Left. Trading was halted twice as Sensex set record gains, proving once again that India, Inc. is always on the winning side…especially after the fact!
Those left behind tried to put on a brave face at first and talked of collective responsibility for their unexpected debacle. But the bravado melted away quickly as the knives were out and the blame game began. Somnath Chatterjee fired the first salvo at Prakash Karat of the CPI (M) and criticized the Left’s immaturity. “Red Card for Karat” cried one headline. Sandhya Jain of the Pioneer newspaper, a pro-RSS columnist, put the blame squarely on Advani for the BJP’s rout, accusing him of lacking vision and presence, and of not firmly distancing himself from Varun Gandhi. A visibly agitated Tarun Vijay of the Organizer (the RSS mouthpiece), on the other hand, was clear that BJP had lost because it had strayed away from its Hindutva roots. Mayawati smelled a Congress-SP conspiracy to do her in. And Jayalalitha alone held the Election Commission responsible for her poor showing -- the same commission, incidentally, whose work AIDMK cadres had tried to hinder some years back during T.N. Seshan’s leadership.
Turmoil in the NDA camp soon spilled over into the public arena, as Advani announced that he wasn’t inclined to lead the opposition (a stance he subsequently changed under pressure). Murli Manohar Joshi, an open challenger for the job, uncharacteristically blamed the BJP for forsaking Muslim votes in U.P. by not allocating more seats to Muslim candidates. NDA ally Sharad Yadav was blunter: He blamed BJP’s support for Varun Gandhi and its last minute attempts to project Modi as a future PM. Modi, who had enthusiastically campaigned outside his state and had rushed to Delhi several times to offer his advice. Modi now tried to distance himself from the fiasco. (Perhaps, he had never personally claimed to be a PM-in-waiting, but he had certainly seemed to play along with the Modi-for-PM chorus during the last days of the Gujarat campaign, as evidenced by BJP campaign ads repeatedly featuring only his face, ignoring Advani, the real contestant!)
Post-Poll pundits are now busy analyzing the momentous verdict: Was it an endorsement of Manmohan Singh, or was it merely an aggregation of state results? Was it the youth factor and Rahul Gandhi’s magic? Were the voters turned off by the unrelenting negative campaign of the BJP and Advani’s unseemly attacks on the PM? Was it really a vote for secularism?
Noted political analyst Yogendra Yadav observes: “A positive image of the Prime Minister and the Congress president definitely helped. Many of the major pro-people initiatives…such as the NREGA, the farm loan waiver, and the Right to Information Act…did create a positive climate…. It also helped that the party did not become overconfident and did not resort to an ‘India Shining’ kind of campaign. The Congress appeared more responsible, more future-oriented and more pro-people than its opponents.”
Yadav and other analysts were cautious in not over-playing the verdict as a ‘mandate for secularism,’ even though there was a strong case to me made on that account. Better so, given that the UPA government had failed in its ‘first inning’ to take on communal forces and had itself repeatedly resorted to ‘soft Hindutva’; and in every place where the Sangh Parivar had chosen to play the communal card -- Mangalore, Bangalore, Kandhamal, Philbhit etc. – the BJP seemed to have gained ground. Varun Gandhi’s victory, despite near-universal condemnation of his hate rhetoric, was a rude reminder that the real mandate for secularism can only come when the voters themselves resoundingly reject a candidate who blatantly resorts to caste/communal incitement to gain votes.
India, Inc., on the other hand, had no hesitation in over-playing the verdict as a mandate for speeding up economic liberalization. There have already been widespread calls for fast-tracking ‘reforms’ in the banking/insurance sector, which had been abandoned after the Left had flexed its muscles last time. As Yadav cautions, “[Congress] could succumb to the temptation to go in for unbridled economic reforms, now that there is no Left to check it. If the Congress is serious about its future, the party needs to invent a new Left within it. The party does not need a new ideology: it just needs to take its own election manifesto seriously.”
I came to India to offer my solidarity to independent candidate Mallika Sarabhai, who had dared to challenge the politics of BJP and its leader L.K. Advani, in the Gandhinagar constituency of Gujarat. The past four weeks on the ground have given me a unique opportunity to observe at close hand the world’s largest democracy at work, with all of its imperfections. The role of big money, despite the supposed campaign spending limitations; the inability to stop criminals from entering elected offices; and the appeal to the voters’ baser instincts on caste and religious grounds, are particularly shameful. And the spectacle of winning parties haggling for ‘lucrative’ ministerial berths, to say the least, is disheartening. Yet, I leave with deep respect and admiration for the electoral system as a whole, particularly the role of the Election Commission, which has ensured in recent years that the world’s largest electorate can cast their ballots in a reasonably free and fair manner.
Mallika lost her personal battle with Advani, but her point had been made: The Indian voters had stepped up to the plate to decisively defeat the Prime Ministerial ambitions of a man who had spear-headed the BJP’s politics of hate and division.
