Election 99: Winning Was the Easy Part

Mahesh Rangarajan, Economic Times

Now that the elections to the thirteenth Lok Sabha are over and the National Democratic Alliance is home and dry, it is increasingly clear that the real challenges lie ahead and not behind the combine. Mr. Vajpayee’s sheer experience and the network of seat-sharing arrangements locked the Congress and its partners out of the race in most states of the Union. For the third time in a row, the Bharatiya Janata Party has emerged as the single largest party in the House, But a closer look indicates that the very factors that propelled it to victory will give rise to problems of political management.

For one no one with less than 220 odd seats in tow has yet survived for more than two years in office. Even if mere endurance in government is not a problem, pulls and pressures from different quarters are. Our polity and certainly the well oiled campaign machinery of the ruling coalition give us the impression that the prime minister is the pivot of the political system. The fact is that compared to say, Indira Gandhi’s time the scope and power of the office have shrunk considerably. In the new polity whose contours are only beginning to take clear shape, the center of gravity has shifted away from the Union towards the states.

It is in this respect, a measure of the BJP’s far-sightedness, that it has factored the rise of regionalism into its own scheme of things. While the Congress still clings to the idea that one party can speak for all of India, its premier rival is close to the truth. But this admission of reality come with a political price, namely the wider horizons and increased appetite for power on the part of state-based parties. It is here that the trickiest and in a sense the most complex part of governance now lies. The Constitutional edifice and the share of revenues are heavily skewed in favor of the Center, but the direction of popular mandates is in the reverse direction. No major decision can now be taken without taking the states into confidence. The regional parties, especially those allied with the saffron combine are the real winners of the elections. They have increased their representation in the House as a whole as well as within the ruling alliance. In the last Lok Sabha, they accounted for 55-60 seats. In the new legislature they have nearly 80 seats between them.

There are, to be sure, significant overlaps of interest between the national party and its regional partners. But there is a second dimension to this relationship. Now that the elections are over , there will be bargains to be struck and deals to be closed; these are in themselves no bad things at all. They are the stuff and substance of politics, with multi-party rule bringing in a new level of transparency to the process. But underneath all this will be a struggle to decide who will set the agenda for India, who will be master of the house. Political formations like Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and Mr Chandrababu Naidu’s party have no time at all for Hindutva and its agenda. If brought back into the arena, Hundutva would destabilise their states.

Looking ahead, the very growth of Mr Vajpayee’s party is bound to open up a conflict with the regional political parties. Only one can grow and often at the other’s expense. This is starkly evident in the way in which the real winner of these elections, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh played hide and seek with the major party on the question of joining the government. Unlike the Janata Dal (United), which has a profusion of leaders and shifting base of support, the regional groups have a unified command structure and a share of power in their own state. They have not demolished the Congress in their home state in order to enthrone the BJP as the new all-India hegemon.

In fact what we are seeing is a race against time as the southern regional groups push for further liberalization of the economy, and more devolution of fiscal powers. In the long run, it will matter less who rules India and matter much more how they co-ordinate the affairs that concern all the states. This urge for federalization lies at the heart of the victory of the ruling alliance. It is the implicit acknowledgement that all Indians need to creatively work for a more equitable federal system.

There is however a spanner in the works in the very composition of the legislative wing of the major party. A disproportionate number of members come from Hindi-speaking India, especially from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Despite making major gains in the west, a region that leads in economic reforms, several key portfolios are still likely to be given to leaders from the Hindi belt. Even as the slide in the numbers of MPs fighting on the lotus symbol in UP has been halved, gains elsewhere have ensured that the Hindi belt retains primacy within the party. Within this region it is master of the alliance: as you go west, east or south, the sun of the allies shines much brighter.

Unfortunately for Indian politics, the main concerns of politically powerful men and women from Hindi speaking India have less to do with economics of the free market or the socialist variety and more to do with sum of castes and communities. This may be an overly sweeping statement and should be qualified to single out those from the Gangetic plain rather than the other less sparsely populated states, where the picture is more positive. But the turbulence in the two most populous states looks set to continue, posing a challenge easy to identify and difficult to address in the short term.

In the past, both after 1977 and 1989, the main fissures in the non-Congress forces that were voted to power came in the form of tensions between the Hindutva supporter and their socialist allies. As was the case last year, the latter are now pale shadows of their former selves. The real fulcrum of the system now lies in the regions that have been able to combine economic liberalization with a working social welfare system. It is here that the key to the success of the present alliance lies.

If the alliance stays true to the common agenda, the relationship will endure. But at some point of time, it will draw on the Sangh family, that the pace of change is being set by smaller, tightly knit forces that have a different vision of India, a loose confederation, not a tightly knit union. Until then expect a less bumpy ride.