The Congress rout and the BJP gain

The main message from the Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Delhi assembly elections is clear. The Congress stands routed and faces further decline. The Bharatiya Janata Party has made impressive gains. And the Aam Aadmi Party has made a spectacular debut in Delhi.

Although one cannot extrapolate the verdict from these states (which return 72 Lok Sabha seats) to the elections to 543 seats in 2014, the national mood is generally turning against the United Progressive Alliance, not least because of rising prices and corruption. Unless it executes a radical change in economic policy, political strategy and top personnel, it’s likely to lose power.

The results have led some commentators to argue that India is entering a new political era in which the ‘old equations’ of class, caste, community and other identities don’t hold; poverty and inequality don’t matter; and schemes for people’s welfare don’t affect electoral outcomes. What matters is the ‘aspirational’, typically upwardly mobile voter who despises welfare. Narendra Modi has the greatest appeal to this layer. So the 2014 election, like this one, will be his!

This argument is specious. As shown below, the results confirm that the ‘old equations’ remain relevant. Parties that skilfully work with them do win elections. Besides, Modi’s campaigning had no significant impact except in Rajasthan, but this wasn’t decisive.

The four states have long swung between the BJP and the Congress. In 2008, the BJP won 50 percent of their 590 assembly seats. Now its share has risen to 70 percent. While this is a major gain, such results don’t necessarily translate into Lok Sabha outcomes.

For instance, in 1998, when Madhya Pradesh (MP) was united, the Congress won all three states in question. But the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance won the Lok Sabha in 1999. In 2003, the BJP won three of the four states, but lost the 2004 Lok Sabha polls. The 2008 Congress-BJP assembly score was 2-2. Yet, the UPA achieved an emphatic Lok Sabha victory in 2009.

This doesn’t deny the significance of the BJP’s superior performance vis-à-vis the Congress in all four states. But even more salient is the Congress’s rout. The BJP’s victory was total and convincing in Rajasthan and MP, but compromised or thin in Delhi and Chhattisgarh, where it was neck-to-neck with its opponents.

In Delhi, the BJP failed to win a majority, and its vote-share fell from 36.3 to 31.4 percent. The Congress collapsed from 43 seats to a pathetic eight, its vote-share falling from 40.3 to only 23 percent, a historic low.

The real gainer was the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which won 27 percent of the vote despite fielding many unknown candidates. The AAP won handsomely in slums, and bagged nine of the 12 reserved Scheduled Caste seats. Arvind Kejriwal inflicted a humiliating defeat on Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, winning more votes than her and the next candidate combined.

In Chhattisgarh, the BJP won 49 seats to the Congress’ 39, but their vote-share difference was 0.7 percent – 60,000 votes of a total of 11 million-plus. It’s plausible that the Congress could have scraped through, as was expected by many, had its top leadership not been wiped out in an extremist attack in May, had factionalism been contained, and had it campaigned with as much gusto in the central region as it did in the north and the south.

What saved the day for Chief Minister Raman Singh were his welfare schemes, especially his Public Distribution System, which made food grains affordable for nine-tenths of the population, and other measures wrongly branded ‘populist’ – in other words, some of the ‘old equations’ which address poverty and deprivation.

The effects of welfare were screamingly obvious in MP too, where Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan launched a better PDS, a vigorous National Rural Employment Guarantee Act programme, free bicycles for schoolgirls, provision of rural infrastructure, drinking water, roads, etc.

Chouhan, an OBC, contrasted his humility with the hauteur of former Congress CM Digvijay Singh, who let MP languish during his 10-year-long tenure. He also stressed MP’s emergence as India’s highest-growth state with rising development indices, which have pulled it out of its former Bimaru (Bihar-MP-Rajasthan-Uttar Pradesh) acute-deprivation status. He won a two-thirds majority

The BJP’s Rajasthan performance was beyond its wildest dreams. Bagging over 80 percent (162 of 199) of seats, and 45 percent of the vote, it reduced the Congress to just 21 seats, taking a 12 percentage-point lead.

Why didn’t CM Ashok Gehlot’s famed welfare measures – including free medicines, subsidised food, old-age pensions, housing for tribals and Dalits, more government jobs, and India’s best record on NREGA and right to information – help him?

Numerous factors worked against him, besides rising prices, which blunted the effect of welfare measures. These include alienation of Jats and upper castes, who never quite reconciled themselves to this OBC leader; disillusionment among Muslims let down by the Gopalgarh firing, which the BJP exploited by fielding four Muslims, two of whom won; and deteriorating power supply amidst a worsening agrarian crisis.

Ironically, NREGA’s success in Rajasthan became a liability: it raised rural daily wages to Rs300-350, adding to farmers’ woes. Flaws or administrative laxity in service delivery, poor public communication about various schemes, and corruption in cash transfers worked against Gehlot. The BJP’s vicious propaganda branding free medicines as “poison” (probably at the behest of drug companies) confused people.

Many Congress tickets were given to elite nominees of Rahul Gandhi’s advisers who have little comprehension of ground realities. A Gehlot rival was appointed as Congress campaign chief. And there was internal sabotage.

Modi took over election micromanagement in Rajasthan, especially in the south. He deployed 20-25 Gujaratis at each polling booth there. His agents inflamed middle-class Hindu communal prejudice by citing the Muzaffarnagar episode and spreading rumours about ‘love jihad’ among the Jats.

It’s only in Rajasthan that Modi’s rallies were well-attended and productive, leading to a doubling of the BJP’s seats in 23 constituencies to 20. In MP and Chhattisgarh, he addressed respectively 15 and 12 meetings. They had a poor, dwindling turnout. His September 25 rally in Bhopal attracted five hundred thousand people. But curiosity wore out. His November 18 rally drew just 4,000.

In Baghelkhand (MP), despite Modi’s intensive campaign, the BJP’s tally fell from 21 (of 29 seats) to 20. In tribal Chhattisgarh, he attracted much smaller crowds than Rahul Gandhi. The BJP’s score there fell from 35 (of the 62 constituencies targeted) to 34.

Modi’s six rallies in Delhi didn’t help stem the AAP tide or help defeat the Congress. Modi addressed meetings in Chandni Chowk and Sultanpur Majra. The Congress retained both. In Northwest Delhi, many among the bored audience left even before he finished his speech. His appeal is limited and may be decreasing.

That’s no consolation for the Congress. Its prospect remains gloomy and cannot improve unless it radically corrects course by adopting anti-elitist policies, reins in rising prices through the Essential Commodities Act, taxes the rich, and unleashes yet more pro-poor welfare measures.

If this means sacking those most responsible for the UPA’s pro-Big Business policies, including finance minister P Chidambaram and Planning Commission deputy chief MS Ahluwalia, and becoming combatively anti-communal, so be it. The alternative is decimation.

The writer, a former newspaper editor,is a researcher and rights activist based in Delhi. Email: prafulbidwai1@yahoo.co.in