And the Cookie Crumbled: Elections in India 2004

As it always happens, it happened again - “in hind sight”. Even before the ink has dried on the printed exit poll results, the pundits are busy extricating themselves out of their predictions of a landslide BJP victory. There is the usual routine buzz about what could have gone wrong and where, the glorification of the will and anger of the people in the largest democracy and how one can never take them for granted, and finally the criticisms about policies and actions taken by the BJP in its tenure, long after we thought they were dead and buried.

What I am reading and listening to from the experts of politics and economics, industrialists and fund managers, vox populi and social scientists, psephologists and statisticians, I should have heard long before the elections and the so called “unexpected” results. What was so unexpected, I wonder. The fact that the pundits too got co-opted by the hype generated by BJP’s smart talking smug and savvy party leaders and their media machines is not a valid enough reason to excuse their myopia. Or I should just submit to the fact that the so called social observers themselves have a very limited and urban view of society!

To me the results are not unexpected. It’s just that one did not know one could place this amount of faith on democracy. The signs were quite clear as to why the cookie had to crumble. It’s just that one did not know exactly how.

Post Gujarat one was ashamed to be in a country which had the same elected government as the one that provoked and aided the carnage in the state. The ever compromising Prime Minister’s Delhi outcry against the massacre was quickly blown away by his Goa justification of the situation as the post Godhra backlash. Then to find our revolutionary poet PM fondly slap the back of the Hindutwa scion Modi and sharing the stage with him was repulsive to say the least. One wondered when the political verdict would come from the people. Stunned by the 2002 Gujarat results one seemed to lose faith in the fairness of democracy and said “this country probably deserves the government it gets if it can’t decipher the difference between nationalism and religious fascism”. The BJP forgot that no matter how hard it tried to portray the image of being the creators of the development agenda just before the elections, people remembered their core connections with Hindu fascism. But somewhere one was waiting for things to add up.

Inspite of our very isolated living in the metros where reading the newspaper happened over weekends to check what movies have hit the screens or which pub was showcasing a new DJ flown in from Crete, one did hear the angry rumblings of our agrarian brothers living in villages not more than 50 kms away from the city’s swankiest nightclubs. While one debated on whether BPO and Biotech IPOs will yield more than the IT stocks one could not avoid the daily reporting of thousands of suicides that happened among small farmers. No amount of press releases on cloud seeding took the fact away that as one was calculating the industry average of peers and comparing it with one’s own to feel either better or worse, people somewhere close by were very angry that basic amenities like water and electricity were hard to get. And there was no damage control. The parallel presence of utter dismay and amazing opportunity has always been a unique reality in India. And one is used to it. But not yet desensitized about it. What came to light during this phase was the BJP led NDA’s insistence of increasing the divide, unaware in their smugness that a chasm large enough would devour the very creator of that abyss. One was waiting for things to add up.

In the cities too one wondered where all the talk about reforms was going. While the Sensex climbed notches not everyone considered that the only measure of wellbeing. Friends who lost jobs and were finding it difficult to get new ones and inspite of the repeated reassurance of everything being hunky dory, one sensed not all was well. Then India Shining hit us unsuspecting victims of the media blitz. The smiling faces of farmers wearing gold chains talking on the mobile could not somehow erase the images of the suicide victims. Cheaper mobile phones did not seem to bring an end to the drought situation and the promised Golden quadrangle did not seem to justify the repeated price hike of electricity and fuel. Except the minute IT sector, there seemed to be no growth of opportunities in any other. The campaign and the NDA leaders’ smugness about the campaign and what it would do only predicted the fact that people would see the divide even more clearly. NDA failed to take account of another factor. The ones in their voting lists who found themselves on the feel good side of the divide cared very little about the polls and the ones that felt wronged were always the ones who make the difference during elections, the 70% of our rural agrarian population. Things were adding up.

While one often commented on how the PM had perfected the art of coalition one also pondered over why a party that was looking after its allies well could not handle the infighting. From the Gujarat feud between Kesubhai and Modi to the hankering for prominence and competition to be in the limelight between stalwarts of the BJP government like Sushma Swaraj, Jaswant Singh, Arun Jetley and Pramod Mahajan, the party stank of internal power plays.

The BJP in the beginning had given rise to a new breed of politicians as one thought. Smart, savvy, laptop tucked under arm, speaking a language the metros understood, they seemed to be managers more than politicians. One felt, finally Indian politics has come of age. Together with that, one got updates about how Promod Mahajan “worked out” in his multigym every morning and Arun Jetley stuck to healthy organic food. Our politicians were just becoming hip and happening. One would almost call them “dude”. But voila, as preparations began for elections, suddenly one felt that the makeup of pseudo chic ness was scraped off and one saw the ugliest face of vulgarity in thought and language. Whether it was about an opponent’s place of origin or accented Hindi, the group attacked their opponent and her children as a pack of wolves forgetting that even in Bollywood superstars have made decade old careers for themselves as the underdog! And especially if the underdog went about his or her work unflustered undeterred and making no attempt to give an eye for an eye. The BJP leaders with their unsavoury thoughts and crass language stunk of a sense of arrogance which surprised and then distanced the public. Things added up.

And so the cookie that had to crumble did. Somehow our ex PM looks so much more at peace with himself now. Probably because now he does not feel so compromised anymore. None of the top leaders are talking about where they think they went wrong. The nation is anxious post giving its new verdict. With the fund managers and investment guys sitting in their offices in Wall Street, the nation too is waiting to see what the changed new government will deliver, how much and how fast. It is clear that the country had not voted against reforms. It has just made itself heard that reforms have to be for the majority. And the needs of the majority do not stop at cheaper chips for cheaper mobile phones or inflated salaries for 0.01% of the population.

There is the anxiety of how the Congress government will manage the coalition, how the left will review the reforms, how taxation laws will change and how the stock market will respond to the ruling out of the disinvestment ministry. But with all the anxiety there is also hope. Hope that the people’s verdict will drive some sense into our political system and the people who manage it. About how not to take the electorate for granted, a lesson one thought they would have learnt in the last 52 years of governing the largest democracy in the world. About how end of the day hype is just hype and people will ask for results of what has been done. About how in a country like India playing with religious fanaticism can be more dangerous in the long haul, than it seems to be beneficial in the short term.

The new government should realise that it owes its victory to anti incumbency votes rather than pro congress ones. This is a chance given to the new leadership to see what they can do. If this government has to change that status they will have to live up to the promise they have made to the people and make them see the difference. The nation has voted for change and unless that vote fructifies into tangible results, the people would change their minds again.