Author: Surjit S Bhalla
Publication: www.electionnext.com
Date: May 20, 2004
URL: http://www.electionnext.com/election/libertyindia/news/read.asp?id=1452
Politicians seek mandates and add
a spin to the result. If policies are to be based on the "mandate", then
we need to know what the people demanded in Election 2004...
Three of the poorest states in the
country - Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and Rajasthan - voted for the NDA - the
party whose development model ostensibly was not for the poor. The two
richest cities in India, Mumbai and Delhi, voted for the alliance whose
development model is anti-urban and anti-rich!...
The simple point is that this election
was not about a mandate and most emphatically not about the economic reform
policies pursued by the NDA (and pursued by every government since the
Congress - and the likely new prime minister - initiated reform policies
in 1991). If the Left can recognise these differences, it should educate
us all about its "new" economic model.
If not reforms, nor Sonia Gandhi's
foreign origin, nor the BJP's performance, then what was this election
all about? It was about a doomed alliance in Tamil Nadu, stupid. Period.
For the icing, doomed anti-incumbency in Andhra Pradesh (AP) - doomed because
no one gets elected to a third term, except perhaps if you so mis- govern
as in Bihar...
this mandate is not for new anti-reform
policies, or even for old, in-the-name-of-the-poor policies.
Free power for all helps the rich
industrialists a lot more than poor farmers. The NDA won because of electoral
math in 1999 - the Congress won because of electoral math in 2004. Atal
Bihari Vajpayee ran a successful coalition government - it remains to be
seen whether the Congress can match, and Manmohan Singh can better, Vajpayee's
superlative performance.
What this election seems to be about
(and what every election in India, barring 1991, has been about) is the
emergence, nay dominance, of election math. Indian elections are about
coalition politics...
First, that the Congress has been
in a deep decline since 1989 - from 40 to 25 per cent of the national vote.
Second, that the BJP has more than
doubled its "initial" 1989 vote share of 11.4 per cent. Third, that the
joint vote-share has stayed solidly constant at 50 per cent, plus-minus
2 per cent; and that 2004 witnessed the low end of the range.
Fourth, that the vote-share of both
parties has stabilised around 25 per cent individually and their seats
at 150; each party, therefore, requires large coalitions, at least a quarter
of all MPs, or 123 seats. Fifth, these individual vote-shares are not in
any sense of the term a mandate, a vote by the people.
In 1991, the BJP polled 20 per cent
votes and garnered 120 seats. In 1998, it gained the same number of votes,
but a third more seats - 161. The Congress got 28 per cent of the popular
vote in 1999 and only 114 seats. Today, it has gained 2 per cent fewer
votes and 41 more seats!
These numbers confirm the reality
of the new India - or India almost 20 years old. The two major parties
have half - regional parties have the other half - of the national vote.
Dynasty does not matter, nor does
foreign origin - even if they did, their importance gets swamped by what
happens between bedfellows. Governance does not matter, nor does ideology.
What matters is coalition politics, and what side of the anti-incumbency
the major party finds itself.
If the 1999 election was correctly
not about swadeshi, this election is most manifestly not about economic
policies. What the NDA did was to continue with the reforms initiated by
the Congress a decade earlier, and followed by the United Front in 1996.
Vajpayee stayed for six years with 23 parties, the United Front stayed
for two years with considerably fewer.
The lesson for politicians is clear.
Unless the Congress+ accelerates economic reforms and delivers accelerating
growth via accelerating reforms, the coalition might be in trouble. That
is the importance of the necessary condition of survival - economic reforms
- and the sufficient condition of power - electoral math.
