On The Recent Assembly Polls

Harkishan Singh Surjeet

THE Congress party’s stunning defeat in recent assembly polls has come at a time when the BJP-NDA’s popularity seemed to be on the decline. The fact is that the BJP and other NDA constituents have suffered setbacks in 22 out of 28 assembly polls held since they assumed power at the centre more than five years ago. Nay, except in UP, Bihar, West Bengal, Tripura and a few other states, the Congress was the biggest gainer in these polls. 

This time too, similar predictions were made for the five states that went to the polls. While the BJP is not much of a force in Mizoram, the main contest in the other four states, viz Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi and Chhattisgarh, was between the Congress and BJP. Though all these were Congress ruled states, the opinion polls did not reflect any significant anti-incumbency factor. Only in Madhya Pradesh was the BJP said to be having a bit of hope; here too, the prediction was that the BJP might just scrape through, if at all. Though the exit polls conducted on the polling day indicated some upswing in BJP’s favour, nobody thought the Congress would suffer its worst defeat in recent years.

QUESTION TO BE ASKED

THE results have belied all such predictions. While the BJP camp was gloomy till the polling day, it is the Congress that is now licking its wounds. In Madhya Pradesh, the BJP has bagged 171 out of the 230 seats, i e only a fraction less than three fourth, much beyond the BJP’s own expectations. In Rajasthan, bagging 120 out of 200 seats, the BJP has for the first time got a majority on its own; earlier on two occasions it was able to form a government only with the help of smaller parties or by engineering defections. In Chhattisgarh, the BJP tally is 50 in a house of 90 while the Congress has to remain content with 37. It was only in Delhi that the Congress dodged the anti-incumbency factor, but here also the BJP was able to increase its seats from 14 to 20 in a house of 70.  

The question to be asked is: while the Congress was in an upbeat mood, what went wrong with it, to the extent that a large chunk of the electorate deserted it? If the BJP led NDA was on a downswing all these years, clearly the change in BJP’s fortunes was not because of any sudden popularity of the party or of the Vajpayee government’s policies. In fact, there is ground to believe that these policies are as unpopular today as they were in the last five years. The BJP leadership itself is not yet sure whether to get the Lok Sabha dissolved prematurely and go in for an early poll. Statements like “Lok Sabha polls will be held on time” (Advani) and “we will have a regular budget in February” (Jaswant Singh) only show the BJP leaders are not sure about getting popular acceptance for their policies. Despite their pleadings, even Chandrababu Naidu did not tie his fortunes with those of the BJP. Not waiting for the results of recent assembly polls, he got the Andhra assembly dissolved in the hope that he would be able to exploit the sympathy factor before it got dissipated.

Evidently, the BJP has won the three states not because of any solid performance of the Vajpayee regime but on a negative vote. The fault, in other words, lies with the Congress governments in these states. 

LACK OF DEMARCATION

A CLUE to the cause of the Congress rout can be found in the way Digvijay Singh ruled MP for ten years. Here the BJP made full use of his government’s miserable performance or of what has been called the BSP (bijli, sadak, pani) factor. In fact, the state government adopted an utterly callous attitude towards the problems facing the people, and this callousness got further accentuated after Diggi Raja came back to power in the elections five years ago. What to talk of creating new job opportunities, 33,000 temporary government employees were sacked here though they were in job for years together. This also shows how the Congress government failed to demarcate itself from the earlier state BJP governments or from the Vajpayee government at the centre.

To an extent, the same thing was seen in Chhattisgarh that went to the polls for the first time after it was carved out of MP. Even though the Congress chief minister, Ajit Jogi, adopted a positive stand on the issue of BALCO privatisation, one cannot say that this stand was based on principles. In fact, Jogi seems to have had no quarrel with the policy of privatisation as such; rather he will go down in history as a chief minister who even privatised the Shivnath river waters. The result was that peasants were deprived of irrigation facilities, and their miserable plight can well be imagined. This is one more instance of how the Congress governments failed to demarcate from the BJP’s. Moreover, there are reasons to believe that if the revelation about Dilip Singh Judev receiving bribery could not cut much ice with the people, it was because Jogi himself was not taken as any bit cleaner.

As for Rajasthan, it is true that chief minister Ashok Gehlot had a clean image. However, his stint has not been any remarkable. For instance, despite the repeated peasant agitations on the question of power, irrigation water and prices of agricultural produce, the government failed to rush any worthwhile relief to the people. True, the Vajpayee government did not provide adequate assistance to the state government for fighting the serious drought; rather the centre played dirty politics on the issue. But it is also undeniable that the state government could not explore alternative ways to fight the drought. Its act of only blaming the centre therefore failed to impact the public psyche. Then, some of its steps so much alienated the people that state government employees publicly declared their opposition to the Congress. It was in this atmosphere that the caste factor further broke the back of the party, with the Jats voting for the BJP en masse.

As for Delhi, though the Congress government escaped the nemesis that met its counterparts in other states, it was not because of any worthwhile record on its part. The privatisation of power distribution in Delhi not only benefited the Tatas and Ambanis; it also created a lot of problems for the people. The state government was also contemplating to privatise water supply and some other services, and appeared no different from the Vajpayee regime on this score. Yet it escaped the anti-incumbency effect largely because this effect worked against the central government. Because of its large-scale drive for demolition of jhuggi-jhopri clusters or the closure of factories and retrenchment of lakhs of workers, or the worsening law and order situation in the capital, the central government had already become unpopular among the voters who vehemently came out against the party leading it. Scams like that in the UTI and steps like reduction in the interest rates including in the PF scheme also alienated the middle classes who constitute a big chunk of the Delhi population. In fact, it was due to this thing that people forgot even issues like power and water privatisation and the resultant difficulties. To add to it, the construction of flyovers, etc, created a semblance of developmental activities in the city; the Sheila Dikshit government even got the credit for construction of metro lines.    

THE ISSUE OF COMMUNALISM

AFTER the results were out, BJP leaders began saying that this election was fought on the issues of development; even a section of the media put forth the theory that the BJP had put the contentious issues on the backburner and had benefited because of it. This is at the best only surface appearance.

Three points are noteworthy. First, feigning angry with the central government for not clearing the deck for temple construction in Ayodhya, VHP leaders had made public announcements that they would not campaign for the BJP in these elections. But the fact is that, all their protestations apart, they did campaign for the party. Secondly, in areas of Rajasthan and MP adjoining Gujarat, Narendra Modi did indulge in communal diatribes against the minorities. Lastly, in tribal belts in MP, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan --- and all these states have big tribal concentrations --- the RSS controlled Vanvasi Kalyan Sangh did try to pit the “Hindu” tribals against “Christian” tribals. Moreover, this polarisation drive was not without a measure of success. All these facts go to show that the Sangh Parivar has not put the Hindutva issues on the backburner.

Then there also remains the RSS statement, on the very day the results came out, that the real Hindutva plank has emerged victorious in these elections. One can definitely contest the veracity of this claim, but it does show on what line the RSS, the patriarch of the family, thinks.

In fact, if the BJP leaders say that people have voted it on developmental issues, it is by no means an innocent opinion. By saying that people have voted for it on developmental issues, they really seek to give the dubious impression that people have endorsed their anti-national LPG policies. This is in tune with their fond dreams in which they see a consensus on their LPG policies in all corners of the country. On the other hand, if they say that Hindutva is no longer an issue, they simply advise people to forget the black deeds of the Sangh Parivar --- that they must forget the Babri demolition, they must forget the massacre of Muslims in Gujarat, and so on. True, the recent victory has given them a chance to brag and pontificate on such issues, but have the people really forgotten the Parivar’s crimes? They will see it for themselves.

And if there remained any doubt about the Parivar’s real face, it was made once again explicit when both Uma Bharti and Vasundhara Raje turned their oath-taking ceremonies into saffronite jamborees.

One thing is certain. Like the Gujarat polls earlier, the Congress campaign in MP on the soft Hindutva plank failed to click, rather backfired. It is clear that the Congress cannot hope to beat the Sangh Parivar by aping the latter; this all the more sharply underlines the need for demarcation from the saffron brigade.

MISPLACED CONFIDENCE

BUT no demarcation is ever worthwhile if it is not based on principles and issues, which is where the Congress governments of MP and Chhattisgarh failed. But it is all the more telling that the Congress high command remained a mute spectator while its state level satraps went on doing what they liked. The level of degeneration in our body politic is now such that even the Congress chief ministers were mainly banking on defection game instead of providing good governance to the people. It was therefore not surprising that they failed to take advantage of even scams that are still fresh in public memory.

Thus the Congress governments’ failure to rush relief to the people and follow alternative policies, plus the party’s failure to fight on vital issues of national unity, can be said to be the main causes for its debacle. However, at the same time, the party also suffered because of its over-confident attitude that it is alone capable of taking the saffron brigade head on. There was a time when the Congress publicly said so from its Panchmarhi conclave and suffered in turn. The party then failed to realise that the age of coalition governments had started and that it would continue for some time at least, while the BJP promptly grasped this fact. Then, after a gap of about five years and after a lot of drubbing, the Congress learnt its lesson and proclaimed from its Shimla conclave a few months ago that is was ready for coalitions or understanding with like-minded parties. It was so far so good, but yet the party failed to translate this idea into corresponding electoral tactics. The result is obvious. According to a Time of India calculation, if the NCP and other parties had not eaten into the Congress votes, it could have secured 45 to 52 seats in Chhattisgarh in place of the 37 it got. Similarly, in MP it could not have formed a government but could definitely have brought the BJP down to 120. And in Rajasthan, the BJP could have been confined to 91 seats if only the Congress had adopted the tenets of coalition politics. In Delhi, the Congress lost at least four seats because other non-BJP parties ate into its votes. On their part, these smaller non-BJP parties concentrated more on harming the Congress than on defeating the communal BJP.

All these are weighty issues on which the very future of the Congress depends. Right now, despite the hectic two-day meeting of its working committee, the party has refrained from making any more or less clear evaluation of its performance and handed the job over to a committee. But whatever this committee finally says, it is undoubted than if the Congress persists with its present mode of functioning, is could only be facing more disasters.