In Delhi’s political circles they are mourning the demise of the Left. And it is not just the caricatured ones from ‘civil society’, JNU and NGOs that experience this sadness. It is perhaps equally true of the Congress and its government in the UPA. For the first five years of its perch in the cockpit of governance, the party and the alliance faced internal turbulence on every issue directed at it from its own friend cum critic, the Left parties. From market liberalization (insurance and retail), to the scope and breadth of NREGA (something many journalists were quick to cite as a reason for the 2009 Congress victory) to ultimately the decisive (and fatal) clash over the nuclear deal three summers ago. Neither the Left, nor the UPA has really recovered from that collision, despite a return to power that spoke as much for the vanquished as it did for the victor.

The Congress since then has been on an auto-pilot. The Prime Minister, having braved a confrontation that many thought him incapable of causing and having achieved what he believed to be a significant domestic and foreign policy victory, seems to have lost energy and drive. It appears as if the 2009 polls for him were the end of a race and not a pit stop that many observers assumed it to be. These days he resembles an unwilling sportsman, forced out of retirement (or in his case being forced against retirement) to lead a team where disinterest is the prevailing feeling. The Congress seems to have mistaken the period between 2009 to 2014 as one that simply requires the completion of the formality of staying in office. The real pie is the next election when Rahul Gandhi is expected to take over the reigns and a new era of posturing can begin. UPA II then is the foster child the parent is not too keen to engage with. It is a necessity to be borne but the imagination is hidden for better times expected to come ahead. That perhaps explains the indifference and apathy running through this government since its inception. The Prime Minister has been low key, but unlike his first term when this was an asset, in his second term where allegations of corruption have abounded and ministers have been speaking about everything except their work, this silence has conveyed helplessness to favorable and weakness to the less charitable of his supporters.

The problem with playing a waiting game is that two critical elements, time and circumstance, always remain out of control and can turn and twist causing discomforting pain to even the most numb of bodies. In a sense, the UPA’s problems are seeded in its first term when a blind eye was turned to dirty secrets that many thought would either never come out or were underestimated with respect to their potential impact. But both the Telecom scam and the shenanigans of the Commonwealth Games have put the ruling coalition on the mat from which it is still wriggling to escape. It has not helped that multiple public agitations, high profile in nature and media coverage, have never really allowed the government to shift the focus away from the misdeeds in the corridors of power.

To use corporate jargon, the ball has been dropped. And several times over. As evidence slowly crawled of irregularities in Telecom and CWG deals, standard bureaucratic responses were dished out. There was little attempt, in the face of political compulsions, to decisively act and grab the initiative from the opposition, which despite its own disarray has managed to find a voice that it lacked in the UPA’s first term. The result has been that both the government and the party have been made to defend on the backfoot, right from the disastrous announcement of Telengana in the winter of 2009.

Democracy demands governments to possess a thick skin, but also combine it with a large heart and a sense of magnanimity. While the right to free speech requires us individually to listen to a lot of things we would privately consider as trash, governments must not only put up but also accommodate with groups, persons and views that may seem unrealistic at best and churlish at worst. Given that outcomes in our system only appear after years of grind in the bureaucratic machine, intent becomes more important than immediate action. And this government has done every action to let the voter question its intent. When the well heeled and well off middle class agitates for a stronger anti-corruption law, they must be co-opted and not discredited. When a gimmicky godman ‘fasts’ a few hours of the day demanding the return of black money, death for the corrupt and courses in Hindi, there are certainly more deft ways of taking away his sting than by forcibly evicting him and his supporters from the middle of the national capital. Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev will not stand up in polls but the UPA has now given itself the tag of being a government against peaceful protests, howsoever whimsical and misdirected.

The arrogance of power can often lead one to believe that the reaction is temporary and will not affect electoral outcomes. But in a democracy as chaotic as ours, it is foolhardy to rest on such cushy assumptions. Shifting caste identities and a perceived stamp of corruption from Bofors decimated Rajiv Gandhi’s super majority in 1989. For the Congress to think that anti-corruption anger is a middle class drawing room phenomenon and that a disunited NDA along with a beaten Left present no challenge three years from now is to adopt hubris at par with the NDA’s India Shining posturing of 2004. The electorate threw a surprise out of nowhere then and it is perfectly capable of doing it a second time. The initiative has been lost, the momentum was never there and now along with scandal comes the tag of being insensitive and brash. The government stays in office, its electoral fortunes may point north in the coming days but is moral compass is pointing a firm south.

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Posted by Aftab Khanna, who on the gentle goading of Tony Sebastian, has finally decided to try and foresee things before they have happened

“The trouble with free elections is, you never know who is going to win” – Leonid Brezhnev

Comrade Brezhnev might well have spoken for all us sitting at our homes in front of television screens and twiddling our thumbs as the great Indian tamasha gets underway once again. Opinion polls have been banned this time around – thus sparing the politicians many an anxiety and depriving our pollsters of their moments under the arc lights. The election process, one cant help but feeling, is poorer for the same. It was fun seeing spokespersons of major political parties denying all the poll findings if they were against them and then crucifying the pollsters on counting day when results went in their favor. Conversely the party projected to win would end up being cheated by the pollsters and suffer a reverse at the hustings. The spokespersons would go on to deride the very same polls that they were trumpeting a few weeks back.
India is a strange democracy and stranger still are its elections. It’s a country where the Intelligence Bureau instead of gathering evidence of upcoming terror strikes (I am sorry for making them sound like a music concert, but that’s the regularity and seriousness they acquired under the UPA) actually goes out and collects intelligence against the political rivals of the incumbent. The IB is the oldest pollster in the country and perhaps has a higher accuracy rate than even the likes of Prannoy Roy and Yogendra Yadav. You would have heard the old cliché – Indian elections are notoriously difficult to predict. It got a shot in the arm in 2004 when all the opinion polls (and surprisingly even the exit polls) got their results completely wrong. The electorate is so fragmented and so diverse that to reach the correct prediction is to play a game of snakes and ladders on a thousand square field. Yet there are some who carry the burden of psephology (would you believe it, MS Word 2007 does not even have this word in its dictionary; pollsters rival only investment bankers these days when it comes to earning discredits) and enlighten us as to the fate that awaits us ahead.

Yours truly is not a bearer of this burden – simply a patient of swivel chair (that’s the one I sit on) analysis. Hence, as Sir Tony would agree, in an extraordinarily courageous display of pre-emption, he now goes ahead and puts his neck on the line and attempts to gaze into a very hazy crystal ball.

The Congress: The grand old party of India is losing allies as its vehicle chugs along the bumpy electoral road. Lalu Yadav may have been temporarily estranged (both him and Mulayam would come back to the UPA to demand their pound of flesh in a post poll scenario) but it is the loss of the PMK in Tamil Nadu that would perhaps hurt the party the most. It would struggle to retain its tally of 10 seats in the state and its alliance partner DMK seems to have already thrown in the towel. The party seems set to gain in Punjab and Kerala and would lose in Haryana, Bihar, Jharkhand, Assam and Tamil Nadu. Key to the Congress’ fortune would lie in the states of Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh (with the last two being bellwether states in my estimate). The party would need to rout the BJP in Rajasthan, retain more or less the same seats in Maharashtra and minimize its losses in Andhra to even entertain hopes of government formation. Anything under 140 seats and the Congress would be at the mercy of Mamta, Mulayam and, in scenario nothing short of a nightmare for them, perhaps Jayalalitha and the Left.
Projection – 135 to 148 seats

The BJP: The Bhartiya Jalopy Party would be hoping for a repeat of the fortunes of 2004, not of their own but of the Congress! The Congress went into the polls then with no one giving it a fig leaf’s chance and trumped all the analysts and pollsters. Unlike the Congress in 2004 however, the BJP has failed to stitch together coherent alliances and seems set to pay the penalty. Its loss of Naveen Patnaik would cost it in Orissa (though like Lalu, the BJD too would come back to its erstwhile ally if push comes to shove) and the party would suffer reverses in Rajasthan. It seems set to more or less even out gains in J&K, HP, Gujarat and Jharkhand with marginal losses in MP, Chattisgarh and Maharashtra. Key to its fortunes would be to achieve damage limitation in Rajasthan and hope that Nitish Kumar swings Bihar their way with at least 20+ seats. But it’s still a tough shot for the BJP to emerge at the same levels as 1999. It would need to surprise us all a bit – sweep Gujurat, Karnataka and MP massively, raise its tally in Maharashtra and most of all, grab at least 20 seats in UP. That seems asking for a bit too much from Mr.Advani. The party’s only route to power is thus to cobble up around 140 seats on its own, hope that Jaya sweeps Tamil Nadu, the TDP alliance sweeps Andhra, Naveen Patnaik takes Orissa handsomely and all of them return to the NDA fold – if Mr.Advani and Mr.Jaitley pull that off, then I for one at least wont grudge them their 5 years of power.
Projection – 120 to 135 seats

Third Front: Can the reincarnated ‘Teesra Morcha’ grab power from under the noses of the UPA and NDA? Despite all their media blitz and ‘shor’ this cabal of regional players (accept it, the Left is a regional player) faces some quite steep hurdles. The Left is all set to slide from the high of 59 to around mid 30s in the new Lok Sabha. Naveen Patnaik, if he chooses to go with the Third Front, may not deliver the same seats as last time (11 of 20), since he fights alone and faces anti-incumbency both at state and parliamentary level. Third Front’s door to power rests on several shaky hinges – Mayawati has to outperform in UP and come close to a tally of 50, TDP must win around 30 and agree to stay with the Front and Jayalalitha should also reach a tally of 30. With these numbers and around 35 seats of the Left, the Front would hit 140+; that’s a range at which both Lalu and Mulayam (sure to underperform and return with lower numbers) may decide to grab a bite at power and change camps. If Naveen Patnaik too takes the third turn, then with numbers in excess of 150, the Third Front dream can hope to face the dawn of realization. The Congress may then be called upon to support the front from a position of weakness and we can all happily return back to the days of 1996.
But will it happen?? Will Mulayam join a front with Maya? More importantly will Mayawati reach near that figure of 50 in UP? Will both the TDP and Jaya outperform? And will the Congress agree to bide time and prepare for 2014 and extend outside support?
Projection – 110 to 125 seats

So what are we looking at after the polls? Make no mistake, India might well face a long summer with political parties slugging it out in the lack of a clear mandate. Deals would be struck, sides will be changed and there will be plenty of entertainment on offer. One won’t be surprised if there is a complete deadlock for a few days and the new Prime Minister gets sworn in only around late June. Here’s how the scenarios may pan out –

Probable– Congress reaches around 140; Lalu and Mulayam, both emerge weaker but rejoin the UPA and a Third Front constituent joins in while a couple of existing and dispensable allies are ditched. The alliance scrapes through to 272.

Somewhat Likely – Congress on its own is around 125 - 130 but the Third Front, let down by Mayawati’s inability to effect a decisive sweep, is also not strong enough to stake an independent claim. In a grand reconciliation the Left decides to bury its differences and carries along a couple of its Third Front partners to the UPA, once again supporting from outside. In such a case, Manmohan Singh might have to end up paying for his anti-Left tirade of the last 12 months.

Slightly less likely – Mayawati trumps everyone, sweeps UP and establishes presence through wins in Punjab and MP. She commands the Third Front along with Jayalalitha who also decimates the DMK in Tamil Nadu. The Congress, stranded at around 120 is left with no option but to cede momentum to the ladies.

Less likely – The NDA sweeps Gujarat, MP, Bihar; improves marginally in UP and Maharashtra and minimizes losses in Rajasthan and Orissa. It reaches a tally close to 200; the Third Front breaks up, the AIADMK and TDP with around 30 seats each finally propel Mr.Advani to Race Course Road.

Of course, I could be massively wrong. The least likely scenario may well turn out to be the most likely after the votes are counted. Predictions in Indian polls, more than astrology, can go horribly off the mark. Hence, you are advised to add a pinch of salt to your popcorn, as you read the same. And in case you feel badly let down by this author when the results finally come out, you are welcome to return to this post and smash some eggs on its face.

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