Who will be India's next prime
minister? By Siddharth Srivastava
NEW DELHI - While it appears it is going to be
John Kerry versus incumbent President George W Bush in
the upcoming United States presidential election, here
in India the questions surrounding who will be the next
prime minister are still swirling. While the specter of
current Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee looms large,
in the end, anybody from the vast pantheon of political
leaders could make a lunge to head the government.
India goes to the polls beginning this April.
Pitted against one another are the ruling Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP) with its "feel good factor" slogan
and the Congress with its newly coined "failed good
factor" - a slight against the government. With either
party unlikely to form a majority on their own, there
are a host of regional satraps and others with
followings among various castes and communities, who
fancy their chance as well.
Just a couple months
ago, after the huge success of the South Asian
Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit, the
BJP, led by Vajpayee, seemed to be far ahead of the main
opposition party, the Congress, led by Italian-born
Sonia Gandhi. The Congress appeared to be getting
nothing right, with a defeat in the state elections, an
organizational structure in disarray and a leader who
paled in comparison to the Vajpayee persona.
The
successes of the BJP-led government, meanwhile, were
widely publicized by a series of state-sponsored
"Shining India" advertisements that hailed a booming
economy with all the three sectors of services,
manufacturing and agriculture doing well; comfortable
foreign exchange reserves; a robust stock exchange; a
growing information technology and business process
outsourcing industry; and the emergence of India as an
economic and military powerhouse (with nuclear tests)
under the BJP.
Post SAARC, with the government
deciding to call early elections - originally due in
October - in April-May, political pundits and
psephologists have gone about the task of deconstructing
the Indian election scenario, a task that is turning out
to be more and more complex. Vajpayee may be a statesman
in the mould of India's first prime minister Jawaharlal
Nehru, but the dynamics of the myriad castes, religions,
minorities and regional aspirations in this vast nation,
have left the field completely open.
The Shining
India blitzkrieg also has been blunted by a report from
the Food and Agriculture Organization on the state of
food insecurity in the world in 2003 which stated that
over a fifth of India's population still suffers from
chronic hunger. This is far removed from the rhetoric of
a Shining India where a feel good factor is pervasive.
Now, arguments and counter-arguments are flying
thick and fast. Though Vajpayee is being projected as
the BJP's prime ministerial candidate, there are some
who say that a hands-down victory for the BJP could
actually mean that Vajpayee will not become prime
minister. This is because if the BJP doesn't have to
rely on allies to form a coalition government, the Sangh
Parivar (the BJP and its affiliate Hindu fundamentalist
parties) cadres would prefer Deputy Prime Minister L K
Advani, known as a hawk and a hardliner, to head the
government. The Sangh Parivar is committed to pursuing
its agenda of a uniform civil code, abrogation of
Article 370, which bestows a special status to the state
of Jammu and Kashmir, and the highly contentious issue
of temple movement at Ayodhya. These pet subjects have
been on the backburner courtesy of Vajpayee's consensus
politics, and it is only if the allies come into the
picture, which would happen if the BJP does not do well,
that Vajpayee could be prime minister.
Though
Vajpayee's position will likely remain secure, the
scenario is very different in the opposition. Given the
pressures of forming tie-ups in order to stand any
reasonable chance of forming a government, Sonia Gandhi
has already declared that she is not the prime
ministerial candidate. Observers say that this is an
astute move to blunt the larger than life persona of
Vajpayee that can overshadow any opponent. Sonia,
however, can very well change her mind once the initial
election results are declared.
Until now, Sonia
has led the charge against the BJP, saying that the
government must be made to pay for the failed good
factor. And again, there is no certainty that Sonia will
indeed be the prime minister if Congress wins. There are
enough whispers within the party about her acceptability
given her foreign origins and there are plenty of
regional satraps like Sharad Pawar from Maharashtra or
Mulayam Singh Yadav from Uttar Pradesh who espouse prime
ministerial aspirations. In the past decade, India has
seen unlikely candidates, such as P V Narasimha Rao,
Deve Gowda and I K Gujral, go on to become prime
ministers given the nature of coalition politics in
India. Talks have reportedly broken down between dalit
leader Mayawati (who goes by one name) and Gandhi over a
possible pre-electoral tie-up, as the former wants to be
projected as a future prime minister.
According
to observers, the Indian polity has seen the emergence
of two vast political spaces. The supporters of the BJP
- occupied by the middle class who have benefited by the
party's economic policies, and the upper-caste Hindus
who vote for the BJP given its Hindutva leanings toward
a majority Hindu rule. The upper caste and the middle
classes form the affluent sections of Indian society,
which gives the BJP the label of the party of the rich.
The other space consists of the poor, backward castes,
Muslims, dalits and other minority groups such as
Christians. These groups collectively form the majority
in India and number over 600 million in a population of
1 billion. It is this constituency, which traditionally
belonged to the Congress party, that has been lured by
regional parties over the past decade and that has seen
the Congress lose out to the BJP. The Congress is trying
hard to make a comeback among them, with Sonia Gandhi
actively trying to lead the way. Gandhi's whirlwind
tours of various constituencies and her personal
interacting with voters, has the BJP feeling a case of
the jitters. Advani, meanwhile, is embarking on his own
month-long rath yatra (caravan) across the
country.
The complexity of the ground situation
is best exemplified by the largest state of Uttar
Pradesh that returns 85 seats to the Indian Parliament
and on which the fortunes of future political arithmetic
largely depend. Here, the battle is being fought between
the national parties - the BJP and the Congress - as
well as regional outfits. The Samajwadi Party (SP), with
its base among backward castes and Muslims, and the
Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), with its dalit support, are
also in the mix. (Both the Congress and the BJP have
been actively trying to woo the two regional outfits.)
The problem is that the leader of SP, Mulayam Singh
Yadav, and the BSP, Mayawati, have been at loggerheads.
Wooing one means antagonizing the other. At the same
time, the absence of any tie-up means that the votes get
split, with the field left open to any possible winner.
Going by developments over the last month, the
Congress seems to be getting its act together by
aligning itself with regional partners in Maharashtra,
Tamil Nadu, Jammu and Kashmir, Bihar and Pondicherry.
Any arrangement with Mayawati and Singh does not seem to
have worked out. The BJP has made peace with the
volatile Jayalalithaa, the chief minister of Tamil Nadu,
who leads the political party All India Anna Dravida
Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK). Kalyan Singh, former BJP
chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, who was ousted from the
party after a public spat with Vajpayee, is back in the
fold. Singh enjoys considerable support among the lower
castes in Uttar Pradesh. The states of Madhya Pradesh,
Rajasthan and Gujarat will see a one-to-one contest
between the Congress and the BJP.
All of this
make for an extremely complex situation - forget
Vajpayee or Sonia, there is even talk that Mayawati or
Jayalalithaa could actually make a grab for the prime
ministerial position. Then there are the Gowdas, Pawars
and Singhs waiting in the sidelines - faces that could
dominate Indian polity. It is simply not as simple as
Kerry versus Bush.
Siddharth
Srivastava is a New-Delhi based journalist
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