twenty2yards

On an early summer day in the year 1526 a light, swift fighting force backed by about 15-20 pieces of field artillery faced a monolith of an army in the dusty fields of a tiny hamlet in North India. Underestimated, unknown but highly mobile with a well trained cavalry, Zahir al-din Muhammad Babar’s Mughal army routed the forces of Ibrahim Lodi, whose chief weapon on the battlefield was the elephant. Scared by blasts from the Babur’s artillery, the tuskers ran amok all over trampling the men of their own army and paving the way for the fall of the Delhi Sultanate. It would be the last time when the elephant would be used as a major fighting weapon in any action on the Indian sub-continent.

1526 is how far back you would have to go in Indian history to see when the ‘elephant’ suffered its last defeat in the field of battle. 2009 is when the elephant has suffered its first defeat in electoral politics. It would be fascinating to be a fly on the wall in Behenji Mayawati’s mind right now; to listen to the thoughts churning there, to behold the surprise. The BSP has been used to winning thus far, albeit at a very gradual pace. The grand majority in UP two years back heralded a new sunrise of the party. It was expected to move beyond its core constituency of Dalits and solidify a rainbow vote combination that also included the Muslim minority and the Upper castes – a combination that could propel Mayawati not just in UP but also in other states where such low hanging fruits existed. That she wanted to assert herself nationally was visible through the number of public meetings she addressed in different parts of the country. Mayawati was in Maharashtra, MP, Rajasthan, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh – all states with significant Dalit populations. She was the dark horse, the unannounced leader of the third front, the kingmaker of the new Lok Sabha, the woman who would decide India’s destiny, a woman whom the even the Economist found worthy of mention. (This author himself, thought she would at least get 30 seats in UP alone). Prominent political commentators predicted her hold over the proceedings to follow post elections.

Well now Mayawati and her elephants have been tripped by an electorate that hates nothing more than being taken for granted. Behenji lost her mandate for exactly the same reasons for which she had first won it. You cannot enrich yourself at the cost of your voters and simply assume they would follow you on empty promises of identity and protection. The Congress lost its vote bank in north India because for years it simply assumed that it would be followed blindly; that it possessed a hereditary right over the votes of the marginalized. Behenji too simply assumed that Dalits and Muslims of UP would stay solidly behind her and that by calling out the Dalit identity in other states she would cast her die for the dream national role. In the end, all those fancy statues and stone parks in Lucknow have come back to haunt her. She may cry all she wants about a conspiracy hatched by her rival parties but the reality is that she has been dumped for non-performance. As the editor of a prominent national daily said on counting day, India wants to vote for aspiration and not for settling scores. You would have a difficult time winning over people’s aspirations if your entire energy is spent in satiating your megalomania. Mayawati won 21 Lok Sabha seats, 2 more than last time and clocked a national vote share of 6.17% - to use a colloquial Hindi term, with these numbers, for Mayawati ‘abhi dilli bahut door hai’.  

Behenji’s vote share though is third behind the Congress which received 28% of the total votes and the BJP which tallied a disappointing 18%. Why a party that was a strong, natural alternative to the Congress a decade ago is now a full 10 percentage points and 85 seats behind the leader is a matter that both the bigwigs at Delhi and Nagpur must address through their frequent ‘chintan baithaks’. A strong right of the centre national alternative is needed for a Congress but a right wing fundamentalist alternative will get whipped election after election. While his rhetoric may have worked in the case of Varun Gandhi, the party itself managed only 10 seats in the state of UP – the same number that it had in 2004. In the riot torn Kandhamal constituency of Orissa, which was ‘perfectly baked’ as per the BJP’s model of winning elections on the back of polarized electorates, the party’s candidate lost by over a lakh of votes. He too will get much time to do ‘chintan’ in his jail cell where he currently sits.

Has the BJP learnt nothing from 2004? It had a host of issues and a lot of time to play its cards right six months back. Then it allowed two men to completely derail its campaign – Narendra Modi and Varun Gandhi. From standing outside the Oberoi when the encounter was still going on to using the ‘gudiya-budhiya’ rhetoric, Modi did much to divert the agenda away from development. The school bully image was at complete contrast to the quiet manner in which Rahul Gandhi went about his campaign – both Mayawati, who ridiculed him for sleeping in a Dalit’s home and Modi, who never stops taking potshots at the Gandhis, have been proved ineffectual. In Gujarat, which the saffron party was supposed to ‘sweep’, 8 candidates personally chosen by the Chief Minister lost. His gain from 2004 in the state is just one seat. The only state where the BJP did better than 2004 was Bihar – and even though he hugged Modi in far away Punjab, Nitish Kumar didn’t allow Modi to enter the state before all the votes were cast. Nitish has won as decisive a mandate as Modi ever has; then why the Modi model of rioting and development and not the Nitish Kumar, Shiela Dixit and Shivraj Chauhan model of good inclusive development should be the answer to India’s problems, is something that any supporter of this ‘Hitler with a beard’ is yet to explain to me.

 If anyone in the BJP is interested in paying attention, in the lack of that explanation lies their route back to power in Delhi.

Indian elections can often turn out to be an exercise in humility for its participants. The Left, which held a stronger veto over the previous government for four years, than even the one that Soviet Union held at the UN for forty years, now stands with its back to the wall and facing the unthinkable possibility of losing the next assembly election in Bengal. The many aspirant ‘Prime Ministers in waiting’ will now do just that – wait. Their despondency was summed up by Sharad Pawar who, first took his hat out of the ring, a day before the elections, and then was the first one on the day of results to concede that the Congress had the right to decide who would be the Prime Minister.

As far as the victor of this election is concerned, the Congress will do well to consider the hubris that led to the downfall of its rivals in the last two elections. It will face anti-incumbency and vote fatigue in different states after 5 years, the only insurance against which shall be performance. Its gamble to stand on its own feet in UP paid off and underscored the point that often in elections, winnability is simply about providing a fresh alternative to the voter.

As far as projections go, no one saw this ‘landsweep’ in favour of the Congress. Yours truly had stuck his neck out in March and predicted a tally of 148 seats for the party with Andhra, Rajasthan and Maharashtra being the bellwether states. He had also predicted of a long political summer of negotiations and side changes and deal striking with the most probable scenario being the return of the UPA with a little help from the Fourth Front and splinter groups of the Third Front.

Proved wrong. Period.

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