Assembly lessons

The mainstream parties cannot take people for granted. Party preferences need not necessarily translate into votes

The Indian electorate has an uncanny knack for confounding political pundits and political parties alike. Monday8217;s election results have demolished conventional wisdom about elections. For instance, it was assumed that incumbents are always at a handicap: no matter how efficient an administration a government provides, it can never fulfill the rising aspirations of the voters. The follow-up of the assumption that performance does not count, is that the chief minister needs to play up an emotive issue if he or she wants to buck the anti-incumbency trend, as did Narendra Modi in Gujarat.

But in three out of the four states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Delhi the sitting chief ministers have been returned. Even in Rajasthan Vasundara Scindia has put up a surprisingly good show considering the handicaps she faced. In Delhi, Sheila Dikshit defied the conventional odds by securing a hat trick. Dikshit8217;s grand victory was not on the basis of oratory, charisma or caste-related equations, but a simple no- nonsense appeal to common sense. She felt Delhi8217;s voters could judge for themselves the changes for the better she had wrought in the capital. In Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan was dismissed by the national media as mousy and mediocre when compared with the fiery oratory and passionate outbursts of his predecessor, Uma Bharati. Nevertheless, while Chouhan won handily, the voters probably impressed by his earnestness and accessibility, Bharati failed to even win her own assembly seat. Raman Singh, in neighbouring Chhattisgarh, was considered more colourless and ineffective than his Congress rival, the smooth talking Ajit Jogi. But Jogi evokes such strong feelings that even his own state unit was divided over his projection

The most important lesson that both the Congress and the BJP would do well to learn from the results is that the mainstream parties cannot take people for granted. Party preferences need not necessarily translate into votes. Indira Gandhi8217;s voter appeal was such that people joked that even a lamppost could win if it stood on her party ticket. But in today8217;s scenario the Congress is misguided if it assumes the Gandhi family magic is enough to carry the day. In Madhya Pradesh, despite a surfeit of stalwarts to chose from 8212; Digvijay Singh, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Suresh Pachauri and Kamal Nath 8212; the Congress high command refused to declare its chief ministerial candidate. The party left the decision till after the results, ignoring the desire of the voters to know in advance which horse they would be backing. In Rajasthan, former CM Ashok Gehlot was more fortunate. Although he was not declared the official chief ministerial candidate, in the absence of any visible party rivals it was assumed that he was the Congress nominee.

The victory in Delhi was clearly that of Sheila Dikshit rather than that of the Congress, yet Dikshit was acutely conscious not to take the credit. The Congress8217;s peculiar brand of sycophancy decrees that no one else should attempt to steal the first family8217;s glory. After her last victory Dikshit had to wait ten anxious days before she was named CM, though her appointment should have been automatic. In fact, in the past the Congress leadership had gone out of its way to prop up Dikshit8217;s rivals simply so that she would not become too big for her boots.

The BJP, meanwhile, made the fatal error of underestimating the good sense of the Delhi electorate. It complacently assumed that after ten years of Congress rule, with inflation and terrorist attacks, Delhi was ripe for change no matter whom it chose to field against Dikshit. With Arun Jaitley refusing to be drawn into the state8217;s politics and no agreement over a name among the local heavyweights, the BJP brought the veteran Vijay Kumar Malhotra out of the woodwork, leading one wise crack in the party to comment that 8220;the medicine is past its expiry date.8221;

There is another issue on which the BJP, many political analysts and ironically even the Congress miscalculated. It was assumed that because the BJP made the most noises on terrorism and accused the central government of being soft on terror, the Mumbai terrorist attacks would automatically benefit the party. It did not pan out that way. The BJP did better in states which went to the polls before or just after the TV coverage of the terrorist rampage began 8212; Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh 8212; and worse in states like Delhi and Rajasthan where polling was held after the entire operation in Mumbai had taken place and the full extent of the carnage and incompetence of the authorities was exposed.

The BJP8217;s opportunistic advertisement in Delhi on polling day trying to cash in on the Mumbai attacks did not go down well with the electorate which obviously felt that terror is not an issue which should be exploited for votes. L K Advani staying away from the PM8217;s meeting with opposition parties did not send out the right signal. Clearly, it was felt that politicians need to put up a united front, at least on the issue of terror.

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