Monday October 26, 2009

No reason to do the victory dance

INDIA DIARY By COOMI KAPOOR

There were surprises galore in the recent provincial elections and political parties’ actual performance in government might have become irrelevant to the outcome.

INSCRUTABLE are the ways of the Indian voter.

Just when the ruling United Progressive Alliance of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was expecting to receive a shot in the arm from provincial elections, the actual outcome left it rather dissatisfied.

Though managing to retain power in all three states which went to the polls in mid-October, the Congress Party failed to improve its performance despite a badly fragmented Opposition.

Defying all predictions, the Opposition was far from being humiliated. In other words, voters in the assembly polls gave all political parties a lot to think about.

Of the three states, the result in Arunachal Pradesh in the northeast was a foregone conclusion. Invariably, the voters in the small northeastern border state tend to go with the ruling party at the centre.

This time, too, the verdict was one-sided, in favour of the ruling Congress Party. Indeed, Arunachal Pradesh barely registers on the antennae of most Indians.

Sending but only two members to the 542-strong Lok Sabha, it seems so far away, physically and mentally, to the vast majority of Indians that the only time it figures in the national consciousness is when its status as part of India is disputed by neighbouring China.

It was the outcome in Maharashtra which held much significance. Here, the outgoing coalition of the Congress Party and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) of Union Food and Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar was seeking to retain power.

The alliance managed to pip the rival Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) alliance, thus earning the right to rule Maharashtra for another five-year term.

Once the leader in factory output, with its capital Mumbai serving as the commercial hub of the country, Maharashtra had fallen behind in all economic indices in recent years.

More than 40,000 farmers had committed suicide in the last two decades due to drought, crop failures, debt burden and other such problems.

Manufacturing was on the decline. There was record unemployment, especially among blue-collar workers due to the closure of textile mills in Mumbai and the conversion of mill lands into lucrative residential and commercial complexes.

Even the civic infrastructure in Mumbai was near breaking-point. Worse, the much-vaunted cosmopolitan culture of Mumbai was under severe attack from politicians of all hues, and not just from the votaries of the “Maharashtra-for-Maharashtrians” movement of the breakaway Shiv Sena faction.

In competitive electoral politics, every political formation had openly championed the narrow, chauvinistic sentiment, threatening to curb the presence of non-Maharashtrians in all spheres of economic activity.

Yet, the ruling Congress-NCP coalition managed to retain power because of the sharp divisions in Opposition ranks.

The fight for succession in the Shiv Sena family between Uddhav, the son of founder-president Balasaheb Thackeray, and the latter’s nephew, Raj Thackeray, had caused a vertical split in the Opposition camp.

Raj’s rival outfit, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, not only cut into the votes of the Sena-BJP combine in a number of constituencies but surprisingly won a handful of seats of its own.

So, while the Congress-NCP would retain power by default, the actual winner in Maharashtra was the rabid regionalist Raj. In his very first assembly election, his party managed to win a sizable number of seats.

Raj’s exceedingly good performance is a cause of concern for liberal, cosmopolitan sections unless, having established a toehold in state politics, he moderates his stand.

A bigger surprise for the ruling Congress Party was the outcome in Haryana. Here, outgoing Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda was widely expected to enjoy a cakewalk due to disunity among the anti-Congress groups.

Yet, the result shocked the Congress Party. The main Opposition group in the state, Indian National Lok Dal of former chief minister Om Prakash Chauthala, surprised itself by winning more than 31 seats in a House of 90.

Now, even as Hooda with 39 seats is certain to form the government with the help of footloose legislators, the fear of instability will haunt the state, especially with the traditionally fickle loyalties of most Haryana politicians.

The broader message of the 2009 assembly poll lies in the complete disarray in Opposition ranks.

The main Opposition group, BJP, is in the throes of a leadership crisis. Riven by dissensions, the party has yet to recover from its defeat in the May parliamentary poll.

While admittedly there is considerable Opposition space in the polity, it is notable that no party at the centre or in the state has ever won a majority with 50% or more of the votes polled — several regional players have sought to fill it. A far more disturbing lesson is that actual performance in government may have become irrelevant to the electoral outcome. By all accounts, the Hooda government in Haryana did a fairly good job in the last five years.

Yet, the party failed to win a clear majority. The fragmented Opposition nonetheless put up a grand show, with Chauthala doing exceedingly well against all odds.

On the other hand, the Congress-NCP government in Maharashtra made a hash of things but still managed to pip the Opposition in the first-past-the-post electoral system to retain power. Yes, Opposition disunity helped the Congress-NCP. But then the discerning voter, as the ultimate arbiter in any democracy, is supposed to rise above factors of caste, class, identity, and so on to plump for the best available option. Or maybe it is the least bad among the alternatives on offer which eventually gets the nod from voters. Either way, results of the assembly elections have given no single formation a reason to do a victory jig.

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Monday October 26, 2009

No reason to do the victory dance

INDIA DIARY By COOMI KAPOOR

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