They called him communal, divisive, an agent of death. But India’s voters embraced him as one would a twin brother and gave Narendra Modi the thumps up. Not once, not twice, but thrice! If someone like Bihar’s Nitish Kumar had believed that the parliamentary elections were a one-off wonder that his new-found alliance with Lalu Prasad was going to unravel, well, he better think again. For, Modi has got it all planned and his plan is working clockwork-like.
Modi did not enter the campaign trail for a handful of by-elections in mid-September. He had other more important things to do and so he left it to his second-in-command Amit Shah and those under him. The results were not encouraging. The Nitish-Lalu combine in Bihar and Mulayam Singh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh did handsomely, under the circumstance, and that lulled them and others in the opposition including the Congress Party, into believing the so-called “Modi wave” of the parliamentary elections was not going to sustain.
Then Modi launched into true campaign mode addressing as many as 24 rallies in Maharashtra and 10 in Haryana. (Rahul Gandhi’s tally was a meagre six and five, respectively). Even before Modi hit the campaign trail there was little doubt that change was in the air. And by the time he finished, only the margin of victory remained to be decided. Whatever short-term opponent Udhav Thackeray may say, the “Modi wave” was back and how!
If in Maharashtra the BJP more than doubled its tally from its 2009 showing (from 46 to 123), in Haryana it was a magical 4-to-47 leap that left even some of its own supporters dumbfounded. “The Second Wave,” said the Indian Express while the Times of India’s banner proclaimed: “Modi wave washes away Congress again.”
The victories, no doubt, will help Modi push forward with the economic and development agenda that he had promised to implement. The decontrolling of diesel prices and the ordinances on coal blocks allocations through ‘e-auctions’ are two steps in that direction. It can be safely assumed that more are in the works, and soon.
That the people of Maharashtra and Haryana have voted for change, like they and the rest of India did during the general elections, is a no-brainer. Anti-incumbency was already very much in evidence in both states. Add to it the promise of development, meaning more jobs and financial security, and the dots would stay connected. But there are a few other takeaways from these assembly elections which, without exaggeration, were epoch-making.
Perhaps the most notable - and laudable - development is the decline, and hopefully fall, of dynastic politics. The Congress at the national level is witnessing its severest test to the “shoemaker’s son can only be a shoemaker” maxim. Rahul Gandhi has managed to take the party to its lowest level in history and there seems to be nothing to stop him from taking it down still further considering how the party’s various spokespersons are trying to defend the indefensible, ie, there is nothing wrong with the Gandhi leadership and it was the BJP’s false propaganda that did the Congress in.
But dynastic politics has been quite alive in the states too, from the Karunanidhis of Tamil Nadu to the Abdullahs of Jammu and Kashmir. Haryana has been a front-runner in this field what with the three Lals - Devi, Bansi and Bhajan - leaving a long trail of successors for anything and everything that has got to do with power and pelf in the state.
The Chautalas, for instance, had brought in a fourth generation scion to keep the flag flying, so to say. Having won his seat in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament, from Hisar, Dushyant Chautala, the great grandson of Devi Lal, grandson of Om Prakash Chautala and son of Ajay Chautala, wanted to test the waters once again in the hope that if his Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) were to gain a majority of seats, a ministerial post with financial clout was his for the taking. But he had not reckoned with the “wave”. BJP candidate Prem Lata was an easy winner in Uchana Kalan. That his father and grandfather are both lodged in Delhi’s Tihar jail on charges of corruption had only helped increase the impact of the “wave.”
The Bishnois, heirs to the legacy of Bhajan Lal, had hoped to sneak in initially with the help of the BJP but when that failed they decided to go it alone. Their Haryana Janhit Congress (HJC) does not look like taking off anywhere. Though party chief Kuldeep Bishnoi won relatively handsomely from Adampur and helped his wife Renuka to victory from Hansi, his elder brother and former deputy chief minister Chander Mohan fell by the wayside in Nalwa. Worse, there is little hope for Kuldeep Bishnoi to grab a slice of the power pie as the BJP has more than what is needed to form the government on its own.
In Maharashtra too the family business of politics is facing rough weather. Though Ajit Pawar won with the highest margin in the state, his uncle Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party has been reduced to fourth position. Somewhat cheekily the NCP has gone ahead and offered to support the upcoming BJP government from the outside. “We are not asking for anything (in return),” party spokesman and senior leader Praful Patel was at pains to tell all TV anchors who interviewed him, but that in itself was giving the game away. The NCP will have a lot to answer for when inquiries into various scams move into top gear and unilaterally offering to help the BJP is one way of asking to spare the rod on its leaders, including Ajit Pawar and Patel himself.
For Pawar the chief motivation is power. If you can’t grab it, be close to it. It will help you in the long run.
The BJP, for its part, has been playing the waiting game if only to send a message to its former ally Shiv Sena that it has more than one option at its disposal. For political pundits who want the BJP to reject the NCP overture outright to maintain its anti-corruption image intact this may look like a dangerous game but Modi and Amit Shah know that public memory being proverbially short it is a risk worth taking so as to keep the Shiv Sena’s eventual ministerial berth demands in check. While the party has yet to decide, senior leader Lal Krishna Advani has, however, said the NCP offer was unacceptable.
In sheer vote/seat numbers, the anti-dynasty momentum has hurt Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) the most. The man who claimed to have the copyrights of everything that Bal Thackeray stood for has just a lone winner, S B Sonawane, to represent the party in the new state assembly. His cousin Udhav has done better with his Shiv Sena, raising his party’s tally from 44 in 2009 to 63 now but his hopes of leading the party to a majority on its own and becoming the chief minister would remain a dream for the present.
Another major positive takeaway from these two assembly elections is the marginalisation of religion and caste politics. For long democracy in India was compartmentalised into various sections on caste and communal lines. The Muslims tended to vote for other Muslims or for those who their chief clerics told them to vote. The Christians, mainly in Kerala and the North-East, got their guidance from the church while the Dalits, or lower caste Hindus, looked up to a few self-proclaimed messiahs. “Herd mentality” and “vote bank politics” were words often heard in political discussions. The latest poll results point to a new direction, a new beginning for democracy.
The Jats of Haryana have moved away from the Congress and the INLD and have voted for the BJP. Among the other minorities, the Muslims and the Dalits, especially the educated new generation from among them, have also leaned towards the BJP, although it lost all three seats in the Muslim dominated Mewat area of Haryana. But that, according to poll watchers, could be ascribed to the lack of literacy among the residents of Mewat, one of Haryana’s least developed areas. No wonder formations like the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Samajwadi Party, whose traditional support base comes from the Dalits and Muslims, respectively are not exactly keen to encourage education among these sections of the population. Similar changes are witnessed in Maharashtra too where “vote bank” politics of a different sort had been playing out over the years. The Shiv Sena and its offshoot, MNS, which had monopoly over the Marathi nationalist votes will have to come up with a more inclusive strategy if they are to remain relevant in future elections.
The BJP seems to have sensed this shift in the voting pattern and is preparing ground to reflect this new phenomenon in the ministry making in the two states. Traditional patterns would make way if, as expected, Manohar Lal Khattar and Devendra Fadnavis are appointed chief ministers of Haryana and Maharashtra respectively. Khattar, a non-Jat, is a Punjabi. Added qualification: like Modi he is a bachelor and an RSS favourite! If appointed, Fadnavis will become only the second Brahmin chief minister of Maharashtra, the first was Manohar Joshi (1995-1999).
A sterner test of this new dawn in Indian politics will come next year when Bihar, along with Jharkhand and, to some extent, Jammu and Kashmir goes to polls. Modi, who is already talking of 2019 general elections, is sure to have planned for Bihar and even for the ultimate test, Uttar Pradesh of 2017.a
