The recent Assembly polls have given the party time to learn crucial lessons. Voters have sent a strong message that they know how to halt the juggernaut if leaders do not listen to them
The results of the Assembly elections held in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Telangana and Mizoram must have sent jitters down the spine of the BJP leadership. The seniors had never expected this kind of a drubbing, thinking their schemes were indeed people-friendly when their implementation was skewed. In contrast, the outcome has also done a lot to rejuvenate the Congress and Opposition leaders, who are all now rallying behind the leadership of Congress president Rahul Gandhi. The BJP, however, has not been totally routed. It retains a fair share of the vote pie in spite of anti-incumbency in the three heartland States — Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. But for sure, the oft-repeated slogan of ‘a Congress-mukt Bharat’ was blown away like a hot balloon. With these results, the Opposition is going for the jugular now and smelling power for the 2019 parliamentary elections, notwithstanding the fact that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity remains intact.
The results have further proved that the Indian electorate does not bother about performance or rhetorical slogans and knows how to halt the juggernaut. They have also thrown a few lessons for both the ruling and Opposition parties. Let us examine the matter from the point of view of both the BJP and the Opposition. As an informed citizen, this writer has been observing the functioning of the Government in different fields in different States, has been writing on issues germane to the people, hailing good decisions and providing suggestions for improvements on several others.
Governance is not a cakewalk for any ruler, nor is feeling the pulse of the Indian mind in elections an easy task, as voters have time and again been pooh-poohing expert psychologists with disdain. Any hasty policy decision on well-intentioned goals and programmes has always backfired on the ruling regimes. People have a poor memory both for good deeds as well as bad. They tend to forget the good deeds fast enough and forgive quickly on bad experiences. Because of this, for quite some time, the Indian polity has become a sort of circus. Short-term perceptions rule the people’s minds and those who exploit them are victorious.
Taking a particular group or section of people for granted is wishful thinking. The ruling NDA had a lot of positives to offer to the country after it came to power, both internally (in several fields) as well as on external affairs. India’s prestige and position grew to a new height and esteem, globally. The Prime Minister’s demonetisation drive had yielded a few positives in due course, like busting black marketers in real estate, ghost business houses et al. This writer vividly remembers the poor people happily standing in long queues before the banks during demonetisation as they believed it was going to end black money and cause difficulty to the corrupt and the rich.
There has been a sustained increase in the number of Income Tax Returns (ITRs) filed in the last four financial years. As compared to 3.79 crore ITRs filed in 2013-14, the number of ITRs filed during 2017-18 was 6.84 crore, which is an increase of 80.5 per cent. The number of e-filings increased to 6.75 crore during the last fiscal. During 2017-18, the gross collections before refunds rose by 13 per cent to Rs 11.44 lakh crore. The quantum jump in tax base to a large extent was the result of demonetisation. The Government machinery, however, could not counter the allegations against it.
But the biggest voter loss (loss of vote base) for the BJP was the business community (the traditional BJP supporters for long) due to initial hiccups in the implementation of the Goods and Service Tax (GST). The introduction of GST was a revolutionary attempt but those who implemented it will never agree that they failed to read the people’s mind on this. The problem is that promises made before the reform got under way were never implemented. And later, when the Government tried to correct the mistakes, it was too late.
The mishandling of the agitation of the upper castes against reservation for promotions in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan had really made a difference to the BJP as the community voted for NOTA. In Madhya Pradesh, NOTA votes were exercised by 542,295 (6,43,144 voters) constituting about 1.4 per cent of the total votes. In Rajasthan, NOTA votes were to the tune of 467,781, constituting about 1.3 per cent of the total votes polled. Most people, who exercised NOTA, were anti-reservation supporters and former BJP supporters. The BJP got 41 per cent votes in Madhya Pradesh while the Congress got 40.9 per cent. The 1.4 per cent NOTA may have taken the BJP’s tally to well past 120 seats. Similarly, as against the Congress getting 39.3 per cent of votes compared to the BJP’s 38.8 per cent in Rajasthan, the NOTA vote would have crossed to 40 per cent for the BJP and the party could have scraped through. In Chhattisgarh though, the Congress really trounced the BJP by a margin of 10 per cent.
Yet another cause of the Congress’ win was the way the party got the support of farmers, who were facing several constraints notwithstanding the fact that Shivraj Singh Chouhan, during his chief ministerial tenure, increased the irrigated land from 7.5 lakh to 36 lakh hectares over the last 10 years. It was the disconnect in the programme with regard to production, marketing and incomes of farmers (including lopsided implementation of the Bhavantar scheme) that stoked the farmers’ anger.
Though the Union Government had taken a lot of steps for the farmers’ welfare, it had either not been marketed or executed well. Besides, the farmers’ income was still not commensurate with production costs. In Rajasthan, the State had done very good work in water harvesting but the programmes did not catch the imagination of the farmers. The outreach by the bureaucracy was also not visible on the ground.
Another cause of the BJP’s defeat is the mobilisation of opposition parties and the saffron party’s lack of containment of negative vibes in politics. The “Sampark for Samadhan” was a damp squib as those who were contacted were mainly urbanites. Genuine opinion makers’ attempts for course correction were ignored. For example, though Telugu Desam Party supremo Chandrababu Naidu’s own political situation is not so good in Andhra Pradesh, his alienation did fuel a movement against the BJP. Similarly, the party alienated several of its opinions-makers who during the last 15 years were in its favour. This writer knows one senior journalist and many more supporters who relentlessly attempted to take the BJP to a high pedestal as an acceptable national party with pan-Indian appeal among the intelligentsia but they were either ignored or sidelined.
Now, the Congress and the Opposition front must adopt a charter which is nationalistic and filled with a positive vision for a future India and away from confrontationist polity as the BJP is still a favourite for 2019. The Congress has to modernise its functioning and embrace a collective leadership, keep the Delhi crowd of bureaucrats at a distance and engage with experts to serve the nation. The people are fed up with poor governance and unnecessary logjams in Parliament. To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers and squabbling political leaders. The mandate of people is supreme. It should be seen as a lesson for all politicians, particularly in view of the coming Lok Sabha election in 2019.
(The writer is a Retired Civil Servant)
