Whither BJP?

It is unlikely that a party which believes that it will get lucky the way Congress did in 2004, will read much in the assembly election results for the five states. Since the party in question has never bothered to compare  its scraggly grassroots structure with Congress’s undeniable presence, however skeletal, in the five lakh odd villages across the country, it has all along believed that the right amount of intrigue will allow it to have yet another stint at the center. While it is surprising that this mentality does not seem to have changed, even after 7 years of National irrelevance, what is certainly more inexplicable is the fact that this ostrich like approach has been adopted by leaders who attained power only after cutting their teeth in agitational street politics. Since we haven’t had a generational change of leadership yet, we still have the same set of ‘young’ leaders presiding over the BJP’s sure but steady decline.

While Pranab’s Mukherjee’s comments on the BJP’s performance may be termed churlish, there is no denial that the failure to register its presence in states comprising 116 Lok Sabha seats indicate that the general voter is still hesitant to trust the BJP. Leave aside having the Lotus bloom in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Bengal, Puducherry and Assam, the party has had to face the ignominy of seeing its presence shrink in Assam, the only state where it had an outside chance of coming to power.

Let us look at some figures:

Kerala: BJP came second in three seats, up from the regular runner up position in two seats. While there may some substance in allegations of UDF-LDF vote transfer, it is not their opponent’s but BJP’s business to see that they win a seat. Regarding vote share; while they do seem to have registered a 1.25% rise, it still brings them to 6.05%, close to the 5.85% and 5.75%, they had registered in 2001 and 1996 polls respectively. Otherwise, the figures are lower than what they had managed in the civic polls left last year. In a nutshell, BJP remains where it was a decade back.

Tamil Nadu: BJP came second in 1 seat and no, it was not Nagercoil, which it was expecting to win. Vote share wise, it got less than 3% votes. While it was still better than 2006 elections, BJP had indeed won the Ramanathpuram seat in 1996 polls when it had fought without entering into any alliance. Yet again, no forward movement for the part in the last 15 years

Assam: While BJP’s seats have halved, its vote share has fallen only by a percent. The dichotomy in seats and votes is explained by the fact that while its increased presence in Upper Assam was not sufficient enough to translate into votes, reduced vote share in Barak valley ensured that it lost what it had. Anyways, 11% vote share and runner up spot in 24 seats can at best make a party a pressure group, not the ruling party in any state. And this is a state which has held huge promise for the BJP right from 1991. In the last 20 years though, overall the BJP has remained where it was. To blame the AGP for its bad performance, i.e., not forming an alliance is as asinine an excuse as it could be. This excuse by itself is sufficient proof that the BJP was more interested in piggy backing the AGP that emerging as a credible alternative to the Congress in Assam

West Bengal: The current assembly polls are the worst performance of the BJP in Bengal in the last two decades. While in 1991, it managed the runner up spot in quite a few constituencies and bagged a healthy 11.34% vote share, it came down to 6.45% in 1996, further down to 5.19% in 2001 and around 4% now. Forget about many seats, the closest they came to winning was at Madarihat (otherwise considered a sure shot win), where the candidate scored only 25% of popular vote as against a 38% share in 2009 General Elections. In no other seat could the party come remotely close to replicating even the Madarihat performance. Quite a fall for the party focusing on Bengal for than a year now.

What is obvious from BJP’s performance is that the rewards of anti incumbency or any anger against the UPA government will be reaped by the party / leader seen as a credible alternative. With the propensity of BJP’s current leadership to fight is battles in television studios and five star hotels, it is not a surprise that people have little trust in BJP’s ability to offer a credible alternative. A party which has turned its back on its core constituency and does not have any ideology to speak of, can only be a weak clone of the Congress and with the original very much around, why should one vote for the wannabe? Results from Bengal, Kerala and Assam clearly indicate that even the vulnerable Hindu community has reposed faith in TMC, LDF and the Congress, respectively, rather than trusting the ostensible protector of the Hindus.

However, to be fair to the BJP, it did try hard to register its presence as far as campaigning is concerned. Without paying any attention to the carping of an ex-nationalist commentator, it would be fair to state that the party’s endeavor to increase its presence, so that they be of incremental benefit to potential allies. BJP won allies in the 1990s only because the allies felt threatened that their space could be occupied by the BJP or because BJP gave them enough incremental support to challenge Congress in their respective states. Why should any party have a NPA as an ally, after all? Only, fighting elections alone does not make a party powerful. It is finally people’s support that matters and people like to believe in leaders they support. Sadly for the BJP, its discredited central leadership is yet to hang up boots and likewise, it is yet to produce a crop of leaders which could set a popular agenda. Leave aside these states, the BJP's performance in Pipraich Assembly bypolls in UP, where it managed to just about hang on to its vote share and third position, indicates that the UP turnaround is yet to happen. A feeling of jubiliation on Left's defeat will be foolhardy for while a weakened Left may imply death of a Third Front, there still lies an option of a 'Fourth Front', a motely group of parties garnering enough seats to form a rag tag Government for some time. Expecting a hamstrung Gadkari, who anyways did not exactly have a great innings in Maharashtra, to do wonders to the party all by himself, is expecting too much from him.

It is funny that some sections of the media have yet again blamed the RSS for BJP’s poor performance in the polls. Hello, where has the RSS been in BJP’s functioning / electioneering except for exceptions like Madhya Pradesh? Who knows, probably the absence of RSS/VHP/BD volunteers is something which has been impacting the efficacy of BJP’s electioneering!

Election Results: Ominous signs

Like any other elections, results declared on May 13, 2011 have brought cheer to the victims and gloom to the vanquished. While individual states may seem to have given either a thumbs up or a thumbs down to their ruling parties basis ‘local’ issues, a few trends emerging out of these results seem to augur ill for the country in the long run. Please don’t accuse me of stating that State Elections are fought on ‘National’ issues. I would in fact, go to the other end and say that in an election without any emotive central theme, most General Elections are an amalgam of many minor state elections. At the same time, what one cannot deny is that National issues do have a significant impact on the people voting to elect their state government. Hence, results of State Elections are seen as a portent of the people think of a ‘National’ party. Not so long back, it was BJP’s rout in 2007 UP elections which showed itself incapable of forming a strong parliamentary core to any NDA Government, with the loss in cosmopolitan Delhi showing inefficacy of its campaign to people. People voting for local issues do not necessarily jettison the ‘National’ issues at head and may decide to opt for the more ‘pressing’ priority on hand.

Hence, while the people of Tamil Nadu seem to have punished DMK for its corrupt and arrogant ways, of Kerala having withdrawn from the levels of disdain they had displayed towards LDF in the General Elections, people in Bengal seem to have voted for a long overdue change rather than positively reposing faith in the Congress policies. Tiny Pondicherry, has in its own way, has either punished the incumbent (?), rewarded its favorite son (?) or turned its back to the corrupt Congress regime in Delhi (?). Inexplicable, however, has been the choice of the Assamese for they seem to have rewarded a corrupt government, which did not have much to show to its credit and which, by all accounts, was hard pressed to retain even its current seat tally

While it is certainly the case that the scenario of all parties having tasted power at some time or the other has meant that people are no longer having any illusion of one being better than the other. At the same time, it doesn’t mean that the incumbent can go on reaping fruits of office without fear of punishment. After all, even if opposition parties get a share of spoils, that share will certainly be much lesser than what the rulers get and would not percolate at the same rate to their grass-root workers. Hence, the pain of being out of office, and by default, having lesser share of the ‘cream’ should be sufficient to act as a punishing tool for any non-performing corrupt ruling party. Hence, there is no reason why a Tamil Nadu should not vote out a DMK and Assam a Congress.

What is ominous for the country is the clear emergence of minority communal politics as being THE deciding factor in electoral politics. While the newspapers are full of VS Achyutanandan’s heroic campaign against the UDF, relatively little attention has been paid to the fact that the war against corruption seems to have impacted only the Hindu electorate with the Christian and Muslim groups reposing faith in Congress. Lest I be accused of being alarmist, let’s look at some facts and statistics: The UDF comprised of 9 parties these elections and of these, the Socialist Janata Dal is led by a Jain and Janathipathiya Samrakshana Samithy led by a Hindu. Of the others, while 6 of them are led by Christians the balance IUML, is led by a Muslim. Of these 9 parties, the only Hindu led party does not have any representation in this Kerala assembly. In effect, the ruling front now is a minority front, having won on account of consolidation of Muslim and Christian votes. Of course, Hindu support is there but certainly, to imagine that the front will stand for Hindu interests is laughable. Even this UDF victory has been brought about by the spectacular performance of the IUML, which has won 20 of the 24 seats it contested, having virtually swept the Muslim majority Malappuram. Obviously, affinity to community leaders was a more important criterion for deciding their voting preference for the minority communities. It is for the first time that we now have a ‘mainstream’ state of India, being ruled by the ostensible minorities, in spirit and in reality. Lest is sound unconvincing, let us have a look at numbers again. Of the 140 MLAs, 73 are Hindus, 37 Muslims and 30 Christians; More importantly, in the UDF, of its 72 MLAs, only 26 are Hindus while 29 are Muslims and 17 are Christians, i.e., 70% of the ruling class belong to 'minority' communities.

It is interesting that compared to previous LDF stints, the Achyutanandan regime witnessed lesser number of clashes in between the LDF and RSS cadres. Was it because of the not so covert cultivation of the Malayalee Hindu by Achyutanandan? Even now, compared to the local body polls, LDF’s vote share seems to have gone up by roughly the same degree by which the BJP’s vote share has fallen. Did it mean that, faced with a spectacle of even more assertive minority politics, a section of BJP’s voters simply moved to the LDF? If that be so, corruption was not an issue even in Kerala. It will however be foolhardy to imagine this as being the beginning of a more rational left position on issues of secularism. A group of people defined by their visceral hatred of Indian culture and religion can only exploit sentiments and insecurities and not protect the vulnerable.

Coming to West Bengal, it cannot be wished away that Mamata Banerjee was more than aggressive in her wooing of Muslims. Right from the issue of Rizwan’s suicide to tom-toming of the Sachar committee’s report, she has been assiduously trying to paint herself as the new champion of minorities, reciting namaaz in rallies and taking care to cover herself with a green shawl all the times. Even in an issue as ghastly as Deganga, where Muslim hooligans desecrated temples and attacked a hapless Hindu minority, she maintained a studied silence and only accused the RSS/BJP of dividing people. In a state which already had a declared 30% Muslim population in the 2001 census itself, it is likely that this percentage has only increased and they, in effect, decide the rulers of the state. Anyways, the state assembly now has the highest number of Muslims ever elected (59 and around 20% of the assembly) and even the vanquished left has around one third of its MLAs from the minority community. With the defeat of both Buddhadeb Bhattacharya and Gautam Deb, it is likely that the next Left Front Leader would be a Muslim, an overt attempt to mend bridges with the community which has moved to TMC in the last couple of years.

Most inexplicable has been the state of Assam where a Government, buffeted on various fronts, has managed to increase its vote share so spectacularly. Not only has the issue of corruption, both at the State and the National levels, failed to have an impact, the voting suggests a clear consolidation of the Muslim votes in favor of Congress and the AUDF. This, however, still does not explain the victory of Congress in Upper Assam, which has turned its back to both the BJP and AGP. OHere again, maximum number of Muslims have made as legislators till date; 28 or around 25% of the assembly strength. 16 of the 18 AIUDF members are Muslims while 10 of Congress MLAs belong to this community. ne more state seems to have fallen irretrievably to minority politics of the darkest kind.

As expected, the ELM is full of advice to the Left on ‘mending’ its ideology to appeal to the new age. It seems that they miss the point of Left ideology having emerged a victor in this election too. Mamata Banerjee has spared no efforts to underline her commitment to Ma, Mati Manush and has openly proclaimed herself to represent the ‘true’ communist thought. She is all pains to explain that the old ‘communists’ were good while the current are ‘bad’. And what is bad about them: Only the fact that they tried to bring in industrialization and free market economics (of course, by most reprehensible of means but being adopted by State Governments of all colours). It was this desire to change that proved their nemesis. What does the ELM want the Left to change to? No one, not even the ELM seems to know. Little has, on the other hand been said about the barbaric culture they represented, the way they made politics a tool of retribution and violence, how they subverted institutes, killed dissent and made the party an extension of the Government. While the change was long overdue and it is certainly Left’s defeat in 2009 Lok Sabha elections which gave the hapless people a confidence that CPM can actually be defeated, if Mamata’s protestations about her being the ‘true’ communist are correct, a culture change may still elude Bengal.

In the other fortress where Left stands vanquished, issues have never been about ideology for both the UDF and LDF represented same thought process. In spite of its defeat, the Communist thought process is too deeply ingrained in the academia and the political establishment to whiter away just like that.

In a way, not only do these state elections results represent victory of minority communalism, they represent the ever reducing impact of larger issue in public decision making. With corruption being the mantra of the day, no one talks about price rise, which anyways seem to be as ineffectual an election issue as corruption and public loot. Even Tamil Nadu results, which seem to be a saving grace will be rendered meaningless if, the victor walks over to the mother bee of corruption, something which she does not seem averse to.