Indian voters defy predictions
By Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - The Congress party’s surprisingly good showing in India's state
assembly elections has not only given the party a boost ahead of general
elections next spring, but also provides useful pointers for political parties
charting their strategies for the upcoming showdown. Voters have sent out a
clear signal that they are not impressed by parties hoping to derive the
maximum political mileage from terrorist attacks.
The Congress, which heads the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA)
government, went into the assembly elections on the back foot, having to defend
its rather poor performance in tackling terrorism and controlling fuel and
commodity prices. However, it
was able to hold on to Delhi for the third time in a row, wrest control of
Rajasthan in northwestern India from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and come
to power with an impressive two-thirds majority in the northeastern state of
Mizoram, after a decade in the political wilderness there.
The BJP retained control over Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh in central India,
while the results for the Indian-administered state of Jammu and Kashmir, which
has completed four rounds of voting and has another three to go, will be known
at the end of December. No date has been set for the national polls, but they
must be held by May, when the current government’s term expires.
The assembly elections are important for several reasons. They have been
described as the "semi-final" ahead of the general elections, and the results
will help parties determine their electoral platforms for the big vote.
Congress' results are a reversal of its electoral fortunes in recent years.
Since it came to power in May 2004, Congress has lost 16 out of 25 assembly
elections. It has not won a single large state since 2005; and the few
victories it has managed were in small states such as Goa and Puducherry.
That jinx has now been broken, and what seemed like a terminal slide for the
Congress has been arrested. The victories in the polls will give it much needed
confidence ahead of the general elections. And allies that might have been
thinking of abandoning it ahead of the national vote for its poor electoral
performance could now decide to stick with the party.
More importantly, the election results show the BJP’s harping on about the
terror issue and its cynical exploitation of public alarm over the November 26
terrorist attacks in Mumbai did not work.
Of the states which went to the polls recently, only Chhattisgarh had finished
voting before the attacks on Mumbai. Madhya Pradesh voted on November 27 and
Delhi two days later. Polling in Mizoram and Rajasthan was held on December 2
and 4, respectively.
India has been hit by a nationwide wave of terrorist attacks in recent months,
and the BJP has often accused the government of being "soft on terrorism". This
campaign turned shriller following the Mumbai attacks, after which the BJP
issued a blood-red, front-page advertisement in the Hindustan Times, an English
daily with a very large readership, ahead of the Delhi polls reading: "Brutal
Terror Strikes at Will. Weak Government Unwilling and Incapable. Fight Terror.
Vote BJP." It also put up hoardings in cities and sent out text messages to
hundreds of thousands of voters, blaming the Congress for the attacks.
At a time when public anger with the government’s repeated failure to protect
ordinary civilians from terrorism has assumed serious proportions, it was
widely believed that the terrorist attacks, especially the ones in Mumbai,
would favor the BJP. Analysts predicted and politicians felt voters would
succumb to the BJP's fear-mongering.
Both Delhi and Rajasthani have suffered brutal terrorist attacks, and although
they have a sizeable population sympathetic to the BJP’s Hindutva (Hindu
supremacist) ideology, the BJP’s tough talk on terrorism did not pay off
electorally. Its divisive campaign, while likely to have struck a chord in
many, did not get it the number of votes it needed to win Delhi.
The BJP is not the first party to have used terrorist attacks and the fear they
generate to win elections. In 1984, when prime minister Indira Gandhi was
gunned down by Sikh terrorists, the Congress launched a virulent election
campaign that portrayed Sikhs in general as terrorists. Advertisements and
hoardings spoke of the threat they posed to national security. “Your neighbor
could be a terrorist," said advertisements, which had pictures of turbaned
Sikhs. The campaign worked. The Congress won with a landslide majority.
More recently, the Republicans and US President George W Bush played on
American fears of terrorist attacks in the 2004 presidential election. That
campaign worked too and Bush was elected for a second term.
But the Indian voters, often dismissed as illiterate and ill-informed, did not
allow the BJP’s campaign to determine their electoral choices.The election
result indicates that voters are unwilling to pin the blame for India’s
vulnerability to terrorism on one party alone and that they are uneasy with
politicizing terrorism.
The issue of credible governance was more important for voters. In Madhya
Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Delhi voters returned incumbent governments to power,
the BJP in the first two, where welfare programs for farmers and women played a
role in keeping voters on its side, and the Congress in Delhi. In Rajasthan and
Mizoram, voters endorsed the opposition Congress over incumbents.
What are the lessons that parties can draw from the polls? For the BJP, the
election results should serve as a reminder that its divisive politics will not
work. As for the Congress, there is a danger that it could draw the wrong
lessons from the verdict and go back to its lethargic approach to tacking
terrorism. But it needs to see the writing on the wall. Voters are not
unconcerned about terrorism, but they also expect good governance, which
includes responding adequately to development issues as well as internal
security needs.
The semi-final contest is effectively a draw between India's two main parties,
the Congress and the BJP, with voters putting both parties on notice. The party
that draws the right lessons from the "semi-final" will hold the advantage
going into the general election.
However, both parties will have to tread cautiously in drawing lessons from the
assembly elections, as the factors influencing them in general elections are
quite different, as previous elections have indicated. The assembly elections
provide pointers that politicians and analysts will pounce on to make grand
predictions for the general election, but past elections show the need for
caution. Six months is a long time in politics and the mood of voters can
change dramatically.
India is too large a country and too complex a democracy for politicians and
analysts to make easy predictions. What the election underscores yet again is
that both would do well to approach the Indian voter with more humility.
Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in
Bangalore.
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