STATE PARTIES GAIN PRIMACY
Whenever it takes place, the next parliamentary election will not be a walk in the park for Modi-led BJP government
“FAIR is foul and foul is fair”. The line from Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 1, seem to herald the countdown to the polls to elect India’s 17th Lok Sabha, Parliament’s lower house. Any more similarities or contradictions to what the witches uttered in the Shakespearian play, only time will tell.
There has been intense speculation that if the monsoon is good this year, yielding bumper crops and easing economic hardships, along with other factors, it might prompt Prime Minister Narendra Modi to go for early elections. Advanced by six months, they could be held between Deepavali and Christmas.
Dramatic uncertainties that even Shakespeare could not have conjured emerged last week from the victory scored and defeat suffered in key Karnataka state through which Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had hoped to capture the hitherto elusive South, consolidating their nationwide political hold.
Unseating the Congress and emerging an impressive winner, the BJP, however, fell short of a majority. Invited to form a new government and indeed sworn in as the chief minister, B.S. Yedduyurappa, despite support of billionaires in his ranks, massive organisational machinery coupled with the clout that a federal government enjoys, to everyone’s surprise, failed to win a majority. He resigned in just 100 hours.
With 37 legislators, new CM Kumaraswamy has ousted BJP with support of Congress’ 78 legislators. It revives memories of 1996. BJP’s Atal Bihari Vajpayee had failed to muster majority support and had to resign in 13 days. Kumaraswamy’s father Deve Gowda was briefly India’s prime minister under similar circumstances.
With the two national parties out, regional parties had called the shots.
Relying on election results in a single state when India has 29 would be silly. But the turn of political fortunes in Karnataka indicates return of the regional satraps.
Once again, state-level parties and leaders have gained political primacy. A loose alliance, tentatively called the Federal Front, already in the offing to counter the Modi-led BJP juggernaut may now consolidate.
But the BJP is far from vanquished. Indeed, it has a welloiled organisation that claims 90 million members and support of Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), its ideological mentor, touted as the world’s largest NGO. It is eyeing six states ruled by regional parties that would mean a complete hold over the whole country.
Modi remains wildly popular, as a high-profile, pro-active PM and an orator. But he couldn’t trigger a “Modi wave” in Karnataka and earlier, in Gujarat, his bastion.
He and BJP chief Amit Shah were thought to have perfected the art of winning elections — till Gujarat’s pyrrhic victory and Karnataka shortfall happened. But they are most unlikely to concede political ground and will make political stability their principal plank.
That is because a “front” conjures up fears of political instability, especially among corporate honchos, business classes and the powerful middle class that dominates a fast-urbanising India. They have so far retained faith in Modi and his promises despite the fact that his governance has seriously impaired the country’s social fabric.
The “front” is not easy to form among competing leaders of differing ideologies, some of them with PM ambitions. BJP’s scare will keep them glued, but differences, going by past experience, emerge on cadres working together and on sharing of seats in legislatures. The caste-driven parties would have to work against BJP’s threats and temptations.
Then, communists who provided impetus and intellect to the “Front” formation before have been decimated in their bastions. They could still help, but opposed to BJP, they remain divided on relations with the Congress.
The role of the Congress and its chief Rahul Gandhi is crucial to the prospects of the Front. But he remains the ‘dynasty’ that the regional leaders have grown up opposing.
Old opposition war-horses consider him too junior to lead them. They trust more his mother and former Congress chief, the Italianborn Sonia, who forged an alliance that brought the Congress, with just 145 lawmakers, to power in 2004.
Since becoming a lawmaker in 2004, Rahul has shown leadership sparks only in the last few months. He is young, but with his raspy voice, he can’t match Modi’s experience and oratory. He dresses up scruffily, unlike Modi who dresses for the occasion. He remains India’s most-trolled politician. In the polls campaign discourse that lacked decency, he has won sympathy, if not hearts, by responding gracefully to Modi’s personal jibes.
Compared with the BJP’s organisational machinery boosted by RSS cadres, driven by ideology and aggression, Rahul-led Congress, although spread nationally, lacks cohesion. Karnataka confirms this.
Congress emerged on top but short of majority in three states last year. Senior leaders mismanaged when it came to forming governments. A relatively inexperienced Rahul has retained them. Lost Karnataka was ‘recovered’ mainly because Sonia acted with alacrity.
Thanks to India’s first-pastthe-post electoral system, the party lost Karnataka despite winning a higher number of votes than the BJP. Only quirk of political circumstances helped it turn the defeat into a rare victory — the first in last four years.
Its support to Kumaraswamy has sent out strong signals to the regional parties. It changes perception Rahul created when, in response to a loaded media question if he was “ready” to become the PM, he gave a guarded reply, but a “yes” nevertheless. It did not sit well with regional leaders.
The unmistakable message from Karnataka is the rise of the regional parties. They will have to negotiate carefully the power balance with the Congress, assuming it will be ready to play second fiddle, or even third or fourth in many key states, to those nurtured on anti-Congressism.
Whenever it takes place, the next parliamentary election will be an acrimonious contest — in part, not minimising the importance of other major issues — between BJP’s muscular “nationalism” that denotes a majoritarian approach that has scared and/or marginalised the religious minorities in the elections and an anti-BJP front desperately fighting to hold the BJP at bay.
The unmistakable message from Karnataka is the rise of the regional parties. They will have to negotiate carefully the power balance with the Congress, assuming it will be ready to play second fiddle, or even third or fourth in many key states, to those nurtured on antiCongressism.
The writer is a columnist for ‘The Hans India’. He has co-authored two books, ‘Afghan Turmoil: Changing Equations’ (1998) and ‘Afghan Buzkhashi: Great Games and Gamesmen’ (2000).