Author: Editorial
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: May 16, 2004
Some days ago during a discussion
on CNBC, Karan Thapar asked me, "Are you suggesting that the BJP has run
a perfect campaign?' This was in the context of my having defended the
party's decision to call an election a few months ahead of schedule.
In the aftermath of the NDA's stunning
and unexpected defeat, various self-styled pundits are volubly enumerating
the various reasons that apparently led to the BJP-led alliance's debacle.
Predictably, most of them are wide off the mark for they have been ascribing
this denouement to the most superficial factors. As the BJP begins the
process of introspection in order to draft a new strategy in light of the
voters' rebuff, it is important to first bury the various bogeys that have
surfaced and then examine the actual, probable causes for its upset defeat.
Poll timing:
Admittedly, Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee
could have easily waited for a few more months, insisting he would complete
his full five-year term and go for an election only in September. He could
thus have presented yet another people-friendly Budget and the Lok Sabha
need not have been dissolved before the monsoon session was over. Since
the party was in election mode having notched up some astonishing victories
in November last year, it would have given the BJP more time to prepare
the cadre, generate more resources and work systematically. Actually, it
did all three but still it did not work.
On the other hand, there were powerful
reasons for calling the election early. Had the Election Commission, which
has made a virtue of trying to avoid holding elections (Gujarat being a
classic instance) not played spoilsport, the hustings would have happened
in March. The Congress was totally unprepared at that time and still reeling
under the impact of its decimation in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh.
A March-April poll would have been ideal for the BJP and the party pressed
very hard for it. But an incompetent EC, citing reasons like non-completion
of the Urdu version of the voters' list in UP, kept delaying the process.
That it failed to put nearly one-third of the total electorate's names
in the voters' list even after taking aeons over roll revision, is another
matter.
Consider the alternative scenario.
Polls in September would have meant risking one more monsoon whose vagaries
are proverbial. As it is large parts of the country annually reel under
drought. Especially in the peninsular rain shadow areas like Northern Karnataka,
Telengana and Rayalaseema, Vidarbha and interior Tamil Nadu, rainfall is
decreasing every year raising the spectre of virtual desertification. Add
to that the usual woes of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. M-P has been undergoing
a severe power crisis ever since Chhattisgarh was carved out. Last year,
most parts of north and central India had bountiful rains resulting in
an upsurge in agricultural productivity and consequent farmer happiness.
A monsoon failure in the next couple of months would have wiped out the
positive impact of last year's rains, added to the power problem and created
all-round disenchantment.
Second, the Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan
and Chhattisgarh voters would have had time to assess the new BJP Governments
they had swept into power in 2003. Six months is too short a time to make
such an assessment, especially since the State BJP leaders credibly contented
that the imposition of the model code of conduct had hampered them from
undertaking people-friendly programmes. In other words, the terrifying
virus of anti-incumbency might have infected these States that together
account for 65 Lok Sabha seats. The BJP, incidentally, won 53 of these.
It can well be imagined what would have happened to the party's tally if
a bad monsoon and power crisis had hit these States before the electors
trudged to the polling booths. That the party managed to win just 14 seats
in Gujarat, conceding 12 to the Congress, reinforces the danger of courting
the anti-incumbency factor. Indeed, the BJP rightly assessed it had nothing
to lose from going into the elections five months before time. It had everything
to lose by delaying them.
India shining:
The much-maligned twin planks of
"Feel Good" and "India Shining" will haunt the BJP for years. The terms
became the butt of jokes with the Congress coining the negative slogan
'India Whining' to counter the BJP's positive campaign. On a TV show, Mr
Amar Singh claimed he was asked by some UP farmers, "Ganne ka gurh to suna
hai, yeh feel ka gurh kya hota hai? (We've heard of jaggery from sugarcane,
but what's this jaggery from feel?)
In retrospect, it must be admitted
that the BJP might have been better off without going for this high-pitched
publicity overdrive. It could have drawn a few lessons from a similar campaign
run by Rajiv Gandhi in 1989 (not to be confused with the infamous anti-Sikh
thrust of the Congress's 1984 publicity blitz). Defending his majority
in 1989, Rajiv Gandhi sought to project his Government's undoubted achievements
by highlighting on TV the cover of an Economist issue that spoke of India's
emergence as a regional superpower, complete with a blue-water navy. The
message of Rajiv's 1989 campaign and BJP's 2004 "India Shining" were broadly
similar. Both met the same fate.
I would, however, argue that while
India Shining may not have helped BJP pull additional votes, it did no
damage either. The fact is that the BJP was defending its record in office
on a development-oriented agenda. How do you highlight that without catchphrases?
This series of advertisements gave party workers important talking points.
Throughout his Bharat Uday Yatra and even subsequently, Mr LK Advani used
one statistic featured in the campaign to very good effect, pointing out
that during 45 years of Congress rule highways were built at the rate of
11 km per year while under the NDA, 11 km of highways were constructed
every day! There was no other way to showcase the NDA's achievements except
extol the quantum leap made by the country through macro-economic indices.
The NDA could not have picked on an emotional issue this time because that
would not have conformed to the country's mood. Even Ram Mandir was out,
not only because the Prime Minister would have nothing of it but also because
the BJP would have faced the uncomfortable question as to why it did nothing
about it during its six-year stint in office. So, maybe the overkill of
"India Shining" could have been avoided, but it was not, in principle,
a bad idea.
DMK-ditching:
It is being widely contended that
the BJP pushed DMK out of the NDA, enamoured by Ms Jayalalithaa's proto-Hindutva
noises. The fact, however, is that the DMK was always a reluctant partner
of the NDA which was compelled to ally with the ruling group at the Centre
only after the AIADMK ditched the 1998 Vajpayee Government on a whim. In
that sense, the DMK had only bought insurance by joining the NDA. It was,
therefore, sorely disappointed that the Central Government registered only
polite protests when Mr Karunanidhi was muddled out of bed past midnight
and dumped in jail by a Ms Jayalalithaa, out to avenge her imprisonment
at his hands earlier.
Meanwhile came POTA and the Dravidian
parties were again alarmed. It was after considerable persuasion that they
agreed to vote with the Government on the Act. Their nightmare turned to
reality when Ms Jayalalithaa promptly invoked it to send Mr Vaiko to jail
where he stayed for 17 months. Once again, the Dravidian parties concluded
that the insurance company failed to pay the expected compensation. In
other words, these parties were waiting for election time to near so as
to maximise ministerial benefits before ditching the BJP. They were working
to a plan and even if the BJP did not start admiring Ms Jayalalithaa's
Anti-Conversion Bill, support for Ayodhya, and strident attacks on the
Congress over the foreign origin of Ms Sonia Gandhi, the DMK-led group
would have exited the NDA anyway.
Foreigner-bashing:
Some analysts argue that the BJP's
focus on the foreign origin issue actually boomeranged; that people, in
fact, started sympathising with Ms Sonia Gandhi because of the "low level"
of the attack. There can be two opinions on the subject of decorum and
the kind of language used by campaigners at election time. Also, undoubtedly,
some BJP leaders may have crossed the borderline, carried away by crowd
adulation. Interestingly, however, I find that only those journalists who
have pathological hatred for Mr Narendra Modi are in the forefront of this
criticism, forgetting that even Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee, quite rightly,
called for a national debate on the subject.
For a large number of Indians, the
would-be Prime Minister's foreign origin is an important political and
emotional issue. The number of SMSs that criss-crossed the networks when
the baffling reality of the imminence of her anointment dawned on Friday
morning is testimony to their anxiety. The BJP could not have avoided raising
the issue. It didn't matter whether it garnered extra votes. Even at the
risk of offending some sensibilities (as our analysts claim it did), the
BJP had to reiterate the point. Or else its claim to being an ardently
nationalist party would have been questionable. With her assumption of
the nation's highest political office a certainty, the BJP will have to
raise the pitch of its campaign on this issue, not lower it. It is and
will remain one of the party's core issues for a long time to come.
What went wrong:
If the BJP did not significantly
falter on all these points that have been highlighted, where did it go
wrong? If indeed it was a perfect campaign why did the NDA lose when it
was assumed on March 20 (first day of polling) that the outcome was a mere
formality; that the elections were over the day they were announced bar
the shouting? How did it then manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of
certain victory?
To attempt to answer this profoundly
complex question, I would like to draw attention to the results of recent
Lok Sabha elections in just one State-Uttar Pradesh. In 1989, the BJP (in
seat adjustment with the Janata Dal and its allies) won just eight out
of the State's 85 constituencies. In 1991, the number jumped to an astonishing
51! After a marginal fall in 1996, the party romped home with 57 plus three
of its allies making a grand total of 60. In 1999, this fell to 29 costing
Kalyan Singh the Chief Minister's gaddi. This time it has dropped to a
pathetic 10.
The point is that the BJP's sudden
expansion in UP and Bihar was too dramatic. It was not based on a genuine
growth in the party's organisation. There was something cathartic about
the UP electorate's expression of faith in the party. This was quite unlike
the situation in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh where the RSS was well entrenched
since the 1960s, or even Gujarat where the party organisation, with the
help of RSS fronts like VHP and Bajrang Dal, spread to every village and
taluka during the 1970s. Because the party organisation in the populous
Hindi heartland States of UP and Bihar was weak, the BJP failed to sustain
its growth. It expanded here as a party of government not an organic party
of the people.
This is the BJP's story in many
other parts of the country. Unlike the Congress, the BJP has only johnnies-come-lately
as party activists in many States who are only part-time workers who have
no real touch with people at the grassroots. In some States, RSS front
organisations like the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram and Saraswati Shishu Mandir
have done commendable work to spread the Hindutva ideology. At election
time, the BJP can count on the base these bodies have created. The superficiality
of the party's support base in UP and Bihar can be seen from the fact that
it has won less than 20 seats from the two States that account for 120.
The real reason for the BJP's slippage
does not lie in the flawed alliances or allegedly wrong choice of issues.
If these impacted at all, it was only on the chattering, non-voting classes.
Incidentally, the greatest beneficiaries of the BJP's "Feel Good" economics
smugly sat at home on polling day probably watching movies on TV. They
are now commenting knowledgeably on the electoral outcome. On the other
hand, the rural voter who felt hurt and let down by the BJP workers' neglect
of their grievances, turned up to vote on caste lines because the party's
agenda hardly reached them and if it did, failed to enthuse.
This is a critical lacuna that the
BJP must overcome if it wants to become what Mr LK Advani calls the "natural
party of government". The 2004 shocker demonstrates that there is no short-cut
to power. The BJP must recognise that the Indian voter can be quite perverse
and obtuse at times. It is only through the erection of a party structure
that reaches every village and constant communion with the 70 per cent
that lives in the rural areas that the BJP can aspire to rule India for
a substantial period of time. A sine qua non for that is that its Gen-Next
leadership must step out of their urban confines, interact with the agriculturist
and above all listen to the people. Mao Tse-tung's dictum "Serve the people
to win their confidence" should become the BJP's mantra not just to win
the next election but also emerge as the stable right-of-centre pole of
Indian politics.
