EC blows bugle, India takes poll position
As debates over national security, agrarian distress, jobs and identity take centre stage, the Lok Sabha polls in 2019 will be too complex to be reduced to just one variable
NEWDELHI: In 2014, soon after the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) historic win in the general elections, a senior leader of the party was asked what lay ahead. He said, “2019. As soon as you win, the clock starts ticking towards the next polls. A second term will cement our legacy.”
Reeling from its worst ever performance, a Congress leader had a similar response about the next objective. “All our attention must be focused on 2019. We have to survive five years, and come back. Otherwise the party’s very existence will be under threat.”
Ever since 2014, it appears that both the incumbent, the BJP, the main Opposition, the Congress, and a range of regional forces have been waiting for precisely this moment. With the Election Commission announcing the dates for elections to the 17th Lok Sabha, India formally enters poll season. What will be the nature of this election? What are the issues at stake? How do the numbers stack up as campaigning begins?
NATURE OF COMPETITION
In India, the electoral competition is largely between political parties, and the party with the highest number of parliamentarians, either on its own, or in a coalition, gets to form the government. So the voter is essentially selecting not just a representative to frame laws, but also the party the candidate represents, and eventually the Prime Minister. The legislature and the executive are conjoined.
This may appear basic, but it is precisely this debate which played out in 2014. Were voters electing MPs, or were they electing a PM? Narendra Modi arguably turned it into a presidential race.
In 2019, the BJP is attempting to do the same. It is asking voters a simple question: would you rather have Modi or an unknown leader in a weak coalition government? The Opposition is hoping to take the election in exactly the opposite direction. It would like voters to consider local factors rather than focus on national leadership.
ISSUES AT PLAY
But an Indian national election is too complex to be reduced to just one variable. As citizens grow more aware, aided by the spread of technology and mass media, the importance of issues will only grow.
National security has shot up the charts as an electoral issue in the aftermath of the February 14 Pulwama terror attack.
The BJP’s narrative is the following. The Modi government has cracked down on terror. The February 26 air strikes represented Modi’s decisiveness; he “taught Pakistan a lesson”. Only a BJP government can keep India secure, a weak coalition government will preside over a weak security regime and would never have the strength to take on Pakistan. The Opposition’s script on the issue is comparatively muddled. There are segments which refer to the air strikes as a matter of pride for the armed forces, and would like to shift the conversation. But there are others who question Modi and ask: Did the terror attack in Pulwama itself not represent an intelligence failure? What was actually achieved in Balakot? Didn’t the fact that an Indian plane go down and an Indian pilot captured represent the government’s weakness?
The second issue is agrarian distress. The Opposition argues the following. The government has not implemented the Swaminathan Commission recommendations on Minimum Support Prices. Farmer incomes are at a low; either margins are so low that livelihood is difficult or farmers are actually getting less than their cost of production and are thus driven to despair and debt traps. The BJP, for its part, cites the PM-Kisan Scheme — a promise of ₹6,000 to small and marginal farmers — as a landmark income support initiative. In addition, the Modi story for rural India goes beyond agriculture and focuses on assets. The government cites construction of houses and toilets, the distribution of gas cylinders, and electricity connectivity as big accomplishments. The third issue is jobs.
The Opposition says that despite promising millions of jobs every year, the government has been a dismal failure on employment creation. They point to both demonetisation and the roll-out of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) as having actually destroyed jobs. The BJP argues that there has actually been substantial job creation in the service sector; the Mudra loans indicate a spurt in entrepreneurship; the government has also improved India’s ranking in the ease of doing business, which facilitates investment, which, in turn, facilitates jobs.
The fourth issue is identity, which encompasses both caste and religion.
For the Opposition, the BJP regime is marked by a strong element of Hindu upper caste domination, which is geared against Dalits. By suggesting that the BJP is against reservations, pointing to the presence of upper castes at the top echelons in the party, arguing that there is a tilt towards Thakurs in key states such as UP, and claiming that caste atrocities have increased, the Opposition is looking to wean away Dalits and perhaps even sections of OBCs (other backward classes) from the BJP. On caste, the BJP has attempted to keep intact its wide coalition. By restoring the original provisions of the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, the government hopes to convince Dalits its interests are supreme; by introducing 10% reservation for economically weaker sections, it hopes to signal to “general castes” that the government has taken steps to make the system more just for them; by pointing to the ongoing work of the commission to sub-categorise OBCs, BJP will tell OBC groups that it is drawing up a more equitable system.
The identity debate will play out in the realm of religion, too. Some opposition parties will be vocal in pointing out that the BJP regime was marked by outright majoritarianism; state-backed vigilantism in the name of cow protection; and marginalisation of Muslims from the political sphere. The Congress will seek to capitalise on the Muslim vote, but not make this an explicit part of the agenda for they fear that it will lead to counter-consolidation of Hindus in favour of the BJP. For its part, the BJP will make an attempt to play the Hindutva card, in order to construct a wide vote across caste and class cleavages. From blurring the line between nationalism and Hindutva and encouraging polarisation on the ground, expect the BJP machine to deploy a range of tools.
POLITICAL ARITHMETIC
But Indian elections are not won or lost only on leadership and issues. It is a complex landscape with multiple states, multiple parties, and a battlefield where arithmetic often reigns supreme.
The BJP swept north, west and central India in 2014. Replicating the performance in these regions will be particularly difficult because the party now faces multiple layers of anti-incumbency in many of these states. It also has an additional challenge in the form of alliances, especially the Sanajwadi PartyBahujan Samaj Party alliance in UP.
The Modi-Shah machine’s effort will be to defend its gains in this belt, and it believes the surge in nationalist sentiment post the air strikes will benefit them most precisely in the heartland. The Opposition’s effort will be to limit the BJP to the bare minimum here. This will either take the form of sharp bipolar contests in which the Congress is the principal challenger, or triangular contests in which the BJP will face a regional force with Congress playing a supplementary role.
If the game in the heartland for the BJP will be defence, in the east and south it will be expansion. The BJP has invested remarkable energy in West Bengal and Odisha in particular. The Opposition is more enthused here, however, for it believes that the BJP has not been able to make enough inroads independently in West Bengal or Odisha to take on the Trinamool or the Biju Janata Dal; it has weakened its chances in the north-east by pushing the Citizenship Bill; and it has minimal presence across all southern states except Karnataka where a Congress-Janata Dal (Secular) alliance will take them on.
It would be foolhardy to make any predictions based on these regional variations at the moment. But beyond the outcome, Indian elections are a remarkable exercise in allowing society to have a voice in shaping who runs the state. Both the campaign and the polling over two months will once again be a tribute to the foresight of the Constitution’s founding fathers, as India charts the path for the next five years.