Meaning Of The Verdict

By Prakash Karat

What is the meaning of this verdict? How is it to be interpreted? The first point to be noted is that while there has been a pro-Congress trend in some parts of the country, taken overall, there is no big shift in favour of the Congress. In terms of vote share, the Congress has got just about 2 per cent more than in 2004.

According to the Election Commission's figures, the Congress party has got 28.55 per cent of the vote. In 2004, it had got 26.53 per cent. The Congress made big gains in Kerala and Rajasthan and improved its position in Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra.

Its allies like the DMK in Tamil Nadu and the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal were also successful. That there was no wave or a strong all-India shift in favour of the Congress can be seen by the party losing ground in states like Orissa, Jharkhand, Assam, Gujarat, Chattisgarh and Karnataka to mention a few. Here the Congress vote share and seats have gone down compared to 2004. In Andhra Pradesh, while its seats increased, the vote share of the Congress has gone down.

Another feature is that while Congress gained 2 per cent, the BJP lost around 3 per cent. The loss of the BJP has gone to the Congress but the combined percentage of vote of both parties stands more or less as it was in 2004. In 2004, the two parties combined got 48.69 per cent of the vote and in 2009 it stands at over one per cent less at 47.35 per cent.

This is at a time when the Congress and the BJP fought more seats than in 2004. This is particularly significant since it shows no reversal in the long term decline of the two parties. The non-Congress, non-BJP parties continue to have more than 50 per cent share of the vote.

BJP Rejected
The second point to note in interpreting the verdict is the failure of the BJP and its political platform. The people have rejected the BJP's claim of providing good governance and defending national security. What they saw in the election campaign was the recurrence of communal rhetoric and the ingrained penchant for communalising all problems including terrorism.

Varun Gandhi's virulent hate speeches and the eulogising of Narendra Modi as the future leader symbolised this campaign. The failure to capitalise on a host of issues such as price rise, unemployment and the continuing agrarian distress by the major opposition party underlines the depth of the rejection of the BJP.

The only NDA partner to do well was the JD (U) in Bihar and that is not due to the BJP but the positive impact of the Nitish Kumar government and the care he took to demarcate himself from the communal platform of the BJP.

Another pointer to the rejection of the BJP comes from Orissa. The BJD, which broke from the BJP just two months before the election, won a spectacular victory getting 103 of the 145 seats in the assembly. In the 2004 assembly election, the BJD-BJP alliance won 93 seats. Thus, the BJD improved its performance after breaking with the BJP.

Reasons for Congress Success
The third point to understand the verdict is that despite the neo-liberal predilections of the Congress-led government, some of the measures adopted have had a positive impact on the people. These are the NREGA, which now extends to the entire country, the Tribal Forest Rights Act and the increase in the minimum support price for rice and wheat, the loan waiver scheme for farmers and some such measures, many of whom were brought under the pressure of the Left parties.

Despite the agrarian crisis, such measures provided some relief to the rural people. Along with this should be seen the measures taken by some of the state governments such as the Rs 2 per kg of rice scheme in Andhra Pradesh and the Re 1 per kg scheme in Tamilnadu and other social welfare measures.

In Orissa too, the Rs 2 per kg of rice bolstered the support for the Navin Patnaik government. At the same time, the fact that four years of high growth of the GDP did not lead to redistribution of resources and incomes and instead sharply increased economic inequalities did play a role in restricting the Congress's capacity to expand its popular base.

The Congress gained more support amongst the minorities who were keen to ensure that the BJP does not make a come back. The non-Congress, non-BJP parties were not seen as a viable alternative in most parts of the country and this accentuated the shift in minority support to the Congress.

The Congress party has also benefited from the concern of the people that the country should face unitedly the threat of terrorism and their fear that communalism can only aggravate the situation.

Setback for the Left
The CPI (M) and the Left have suffered a serious setback with the losses in West Bengal and Kerala. It was expected that the Left would get a lesser number of seats in these elections given the fact that in Kerala, the LDF had won an unprecedented 18 out of the 20 seats and the Congress got none in the 2004 elections.

In West Bengal too, the odds were heavier given the Trinamool Congress and Congress combining and all the anti-Communist forces launching a concerted attack against the CPI (M) and the Left Front. But the extent of the defeat in both these states has led to the CPI(M) getting only 16 seats, the lowest ever in the Lok Sabha.

This calls for a serious examination of the causes for these reverses. We have to conduct a self-critical review to ascertain what are the factors which are responsible for this poor performance.

Both national and state level factors have to be analysed. The electoral-tactical line formulated by the Party at the national level and the national political situation which influenced the Lok Sabha polls must be studied. Along with that, the specific state factors in both West Bengal and Kerala must also be taken into account.

The Politburo, in its meeting held on May 18, 2009, has initiated such a review which will be completed by the Central Committee in its meeting to be held in June. After identifying the reasons for the failure, the Party will have to take the necessary political and organisational measures to overcome the shortcomings and mistakes.

On this basis, the Party will strenuously work to regain the support of those sections of the people who were alienated from the Party and the Left-led fronts. Such a self-critical exercise will also pave the basis for the Party taking up the organisational tasks set out in the Party Congress to strengthen the Party and to expand its mass influence.

Third Front Alliance
In the discussions held in the Politburo, there was a preliminary review of the Party's effort to forge a non-Congress, non-BJP alliance and present it as an electoral alternative. The Central Committee, in its meeting held in Kochi in January 2009, had worked out the electoral-tactical line and given the direction that “the Left parties along with the secular parties should work together to make a non-Congress, non-BJP alternative realizable.”

The CPI(M) and the CPI had an electoral understanding with some of the non-Congress, non-BJP parties in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa and seat adjustments in Karnataka. On the basis of these state level understandings forged on the eve of the elections, we attempted to project them as a national level non-Congress, non-BJP alternative.

The defeat of the Left in West Bengal and Kerala and the failure of the alliance in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu to win a majority of the seats undermined any effective presence of the “Third Front” at the national level. It is evident that such a combination which had its relevance in the concerned states was not a credible and viable alternative at the national level. Further, the electoral combinations, which were forged state-wise, precluded any national policy platform being projected.

There have been two consequences of the projection of a Third Front. Firstly, the BJP-led NDA was adversely affected by the formation of a non-Congress secular combination. The BJP and the NDA's tally has come down since they were denied any significant ally in the states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa.

The second point to be noted is that the secular non-Congress combination has got 21 per cent of the vote and this shows the potential for building up a third alternative on the lines suggested by the CPI (M) in its Party Congress. That is, an alternative which is not merely an electoral alliance but a coming together of the parties and forces on a common platform through movements and struggles for alternative policies distinct from that of the Congress and the BJP.

Money Power
A disturbing feature of this Lok Sabha election was the use of money on a scale not seen before. States like Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka saw an unprecedented use of illegal money. The Madurai constituency in Tamil Nadu was the worst example of the brazen use of money.

In other states too, this trend has grown which is vitiating the democratic process. More and more tickets are being given to moneybags and parties are collecting huge sums of money to be deployed for bribing voters. This is a threat to the entire democratic process and is particularly inimical to the Left's interests which cannot indulge in such unscrupulous use of money power.

Congress Left In The Lurch

By Roger Alexander

The Left is back in fashion.

Even with Manmohan Singh who hated being a “bonded slave” of the comrades. He now "regrets" having parted ways with the Left.

And Rahul Gandhi, who wants “to keep communal forces at bay” with the very people he called "obsolete" just the other day.

And Sharad Pawar, who is shouting from the rooftops that “no government can be formed without the support of the Left.”

And Lalu Prasad and Ramvilas Paswan who get nostalgic about “past friendship”.

And Amar Singh now wants an “urgent meeting” with Prakash Karat.

And Kapil Sibal. And Jayanti Natrajan. And Prannoy Roy. And Rajdeep Sardesai. And Arnab Goswami...The list is long and interesting.

All insist the Left has "no choice" but to support the Congress. According to them, "politics is the art of the possible."

Indeed, so loud is the clamour to do business with the Left parties and their allies in the Third Front that one wonders what happened to Rahul Gandhi's brave words of taking the Congress back to the halcyon days of one-party rule.

So what gives?

It is evident that with the five-phase election now over, the Congress has got the heebie-jeebies. Gone is the bravado and swagger of the five past years. And as the day of reckoning on May 16 approaches, the ruling party is literally clutching at straws.

Nothing illustrates this better than Rahul Gandhi's craven overtures to J Jayalalithaa, Chandrababu Naidu, Nitish Kumar and, above all, to the Left Front even before the election process is complete.

The Congress, of course, is an old practitioner at chicanery, back-stabbing, underhand deals, and double-cross. Remember Manmohan Singh jauntily flashing the V-sign just before he faced the trust vote on June 22 last year? He could afford to be optimistic then, secure in the knowledge that with Amar Singh's help he had bought off enough MPs to save his government. But buying a billion votes is a different kettle of fish.

Rahul's plans to once again sneak him into 7, Race Course Road through the backdoor without having to face the electorate lie in tatters. Even self-professed allies have called his bluff.

For the Congress, the writing is on the wall. The maths is working like this: the Congress's dream of winning in Andhra and Tamil Nadu have evaporated; Sharad Pawar has shafted it in Maharashtra; Mamata Banerjee may not win more seats than the Left Front in West Bengal; Naveen Patnaik may hold his own in Orissa; and most importantly the BJP should retain its strength in the states it rules.

Rahul has no choice. He must turn poacher.

But alas, the only thing coming in the way of the Congress's political nirvana is the Left-led Third Front. Not only have the members of this front – the TRS and JD(S) notwithstanding - snubbed the Congress, other parties that are not formally part of the Third Front are also eyeing greener pastures in a non-Congress, non-BJP dispensation.

The fact of the matter is that after ten years and two coalition governments – NDA and UPA – the small parties are chary of being handmaidens of the two big parties. Not only do they have to scramble for crumbs thrown at them when it comes to cabinet berths, the big brothers also try to muscle into the political space they have carved for themselves in the provinces.

Chandrababu Naidu was the first to realise that the BJP was gaining at the TDP's expense in Andhra Pradesh during the Vajpayee years. Naveen Patnaik came to the same conclusion in Orissa recently. Deve Gowda is still to recoup after being taken for a ride by the saffron party. And Mayawati who has played footsie with the big two in the past has only scars to show for her dalliance.

On the UPA side of the fence, Lalu Prasad and Paswan realised late in the day that the Congress was keen on regaining Bihar for itself using their muscle. Mulayam Singh
Yadav did not yield an inch over sharing seats in Uttar Pradesh knowing full well he would be writing his own epitaph. And Mamata Banerjee was smart enough to offer only “unwinnable” seats in West Bengal and keep her options open.

So it is only natural that whoever forms the government, the small parties will hold the whiphand. And if they stick together and play their cards smartly, they can certainly take the country on a new track.

For this to happen the Left Front must emerge as the largest formation after the Congress and BJP to provide the glue to keep the smaller together in a tight bloc that can call the shots when it comes to forming the next government.

Roger And Out!

Third Time Lucky?

By Mahesh Rangarajan/DNA/May 11, 2009

The spectre of a Third Front government looms large over the political scene. Both the Congress and its premier rival, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), are struggling to cross the 150 line in the Lok Sabha. The hill is tough to climb for each party though for very different reasons.

Since 1996, it has been impossible for the BJP to aspire to power without brining a significant clutch of regional party's on board. And the Congress has found that for the most part, the key to power lies in befriending the Left parties.

There have been difficult moments in Jayalalithaa's parting with AB Vajpayee in 1999 and in the Left-Congress divide of August 2008. It is sign of the times that large parties are unwilling to foreclose options.

Both fear the return of a Third Front as it would provide a different kind of alternative. At the base of the endurance of such an idea is the simple fact that one of every two Indians does not vote for either the Congress or the BJP.

There have been two Third Front governments in history and both were short-lived. VP Singh lasted from December 1989 till December of the following year. The Deve Gowda and IK Gujral ministries together lasted only 21 months.

On the first occasion, it was the BJP that propped up and then toppled the government. On the latter occasions, Congress did the honours. It is therefore ingenuous for either party to say Third Front ministries are inherently unstable. The prime reason they broke up was to do with the choices of the larger national parties.

More serious is the idea that economic crisis necessarily follows in the wake of such governments. The balance of payments crisis of the summer of 1991 is laid at the doors of VP Singh and Chandrasekhar.

But the seeds of the crisis were laid in the Rajiv Gandhi era, which ended in December 1989. By then, the fiscal deficit of the Union and states combined stood at a hefty 10 per cent.

Similarly, it is often forgotten that the devaluation of the rupee and the painful adjustments that followed happened for the first time under a Congress government and that too one headed by none other than Indira Gandhi. In 1966, after three failed monsoons, India was in a fragile state and there was no option but to accept the bitter medicine prescribed by the US.

More serious is the charge that coalitions fare worse in the sphere of domestic economic policy. VP Singh waived farm loans for over Rs10,000 crore and a few months later announced implementation of the Mandal Commission recommendations for reserving jobs for the OBCs.

Yet, these were followed up in 2004-2009 by Manmohan Singh. The difference was that the farm loan waiver was now seven times as large. And those reservations were extended to higher educational institutions.

In effect, there are larger forces pushing for these changes and they operate even when the governments are headed by one large party or consist of a mosaic of parties. Obviously, it is not coalitions per se but the art and style of governance that matters the most.

The coalitions that have governed India did set down some significant milestones. VP Singh took steps to restore peace in Punjab. The United Front stood for a federalist principle in Indian politics and fell because it refused to give into the Congress bullying on the issue of the dismissal of the Karunanidhi government in Tamil Nadu.

It is indeed the case that coalition regimes have coincided with times of economic retreat. This was the case in 1979-80 when the economy shrunk by 5 per cent. There was similar turbulence though not of such degree in the start and the end of the 1990s.

But for the most part this was also due to larger economic trends at the global level. No one could have predicted the impact of the first Gulf War on oil prices in 1991. If this undid the positive record of the National Front, the United Front's dream budget of 1997 was undone by the Asian flu.

In any case there are major contrasts between 2009 and 1996; the last time such a formation had looked feasible. One is that regional parties have by now been stable partners in alliance governments. On one occasion, even the Union finance minister was from a regional party.

Second, the experience of such parties in administering complex and large economies has grown manifold. Leaders like N Chandrababu Naidu and J Jayalalithaa have run large states with significant overseas trade and large secondary and tertiary sector economies.

There are reasons galore to criticise a Third Front. Most crucially it lacks an arbiter in case differences arise. But the larger charges of economic mismanagement and political drift hardly stand up to serious scrutiny.

It may not be a blessing given India's myriad problems but a Third Front is a political possibility, not a spectre to give anyone sleepless nights. It might even enable more decentralisation in an over-centralised federal polity.

Who's Afraid Of The Third Front?

By Roger Alexander

Blessed are those who do not watch TV news channels or read newspapers, for they have missed nothing. Indeed, even as the month-long election process come to a close on May 13, newspaper readers and TV addicts alike remain clueless. This is not an election in which there will be winners and losers; this is a “game of numbers”, we are told.

The most important number – indeed the “magic number” - is 272. Any party that can can “cobble together” 272 MPs will form the next government. In other words, we are told the best cobbler will win.

So there's a catch, and it's called Catch 272.

No political party can claim it can win 272 seats on its own. Indeed, no pre-poll alliance can reach the magic number. So the media has gleefully job of the cobbler. And self-appointed pollsters/opinionators are busy dreaming up scenarios of post-poll tie-ups.

The easiest way to build castles in the air is to first knock the Third Front as a serious contender out of the picture. You see, if the Third Front is allowed to remain in the reckoning as a bloc, even if the Congress and BJP join hands they do not add up to 272 and therefore unable to form a national unity government, a concept that has fund favour with many commentators. You see, in this scenario the Left parties have no role to play; good riddance.

Rather than recognise the Third Front, our pollsters/opinionators are more comfortable with a category labelled “others”. In this discourse, it's easier to steer “flotsam and jetsam” towards one or the other “national party”.

The high falutin “analysis” from the likes of Prannoy Roy and Rajdeep Sardesai is that almost all regional parties will happily join either the Congress or the BJP and some, like Ram Vilas Paswan's LJP or the AIADMK can do business with both.

In this scenario, even the Congress and BJP would not be averse to ditching existing allies and align with their opponents to reach the magic number, we are told. This is not rank opportunism, for long the hallmark of the so-called national parties, but a legitimate democratic exercise to form a “viable and stable government”.

What we are not told is that these so-called national parties do not exist in large swathes of the country. The Congress has virtually disappeared from the Gangetic plains. Mulayam Singh Yadav was willing to give Sonia Gandhi just 17 seats of the 80 from UP. Lalu Prasad was willing to concede just three of the 40 in Bihar. And Mamata Banerjee has parted with 14 seats (most of them “unwinnable”) in West Bengal that elects 42 MPs.

In Tamil Nadu/Puducherry Karunanidhi has allotted just 16 seats to the Congress from the state's quota of 40 constituencies. In Maharashtra, once its bastion, the Congress is contesting just 25 of the 48 seats, the rest going to Sharad Pawar's NCP. Together, these states send 250 MPs, i.e. nearly half the Lok Sabha's strength. And this party and its cheerleaders in the media insist it is a national party.

Similarly, the BJP just does not exist in West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala. In Bihar it has to ride piggy-back on Nitish Kumar and in Maharashtra Bal Thackeray is its big brother. In Haryana its fate is decided via an alliance with Om Prakash Chautala and in Punjab, it has to be content with the crumbs that Prakash Singh Badal throws its way. Together, these states account for 256 seats, i.e. nearly half the Lok Sabha's strength. And given its emasculation in Uttar Pradesh, one wonders what kind of national stature is the media talking about.

If you look at vote share, the Congress and BJP respectively attract around 25 per cent of the votes nationally; and in this election both parties combined will win less than 50 per cent of the votes. Yet both fancy themselves as the natural party of governance. And the cheering media is determined to perpetuate the myth.

However, voters are not buying this argument. Voters, more than the media, are acutely aware that India is a complex and diverse country. They have different loyalties and identities that drive their aspirations and actions. They may not have enough to eat, but they know that they have a vote in a country where electoral democracy is deeply entrenched and difficult to dislodge.

Not surprisingly, regional parties have grown from strength to strength in the last two decades, making coalitions an indelible part of the national political discourse. Remember, since 1996, a motley bunch has ruled from New Delhi. The NDA was an amalgam of around two dozen parties and the UPA's survival was dependent on a similar number of allies. So why does the media scoff at a Third Front, which is also a potpourri in the same mould?

The most significant fact behind the rise of the Third Front as a serious challenger to the status quo the corporate media favours is that the bulk of people who have been adversely affected by neoliberal economic policies - workers and peasants, students and self-employed, those searching for jobs and those working at multiple jobs to make ends meet – are seriously looking for alternatives that can deliver.

The smaller regional parties have very different bases, perceptions, identities, ideals, political strategies and forms of organisation and mobilisation. Some of them have already been, or continue to be associated with fronts formed by one or the other of the two large parties. But the current evidence of the disintegration of these fronts is not without significance.

Among other things it indicates that the smaller parties recognise that the role and power of the larger parties is likely to be further constrained in the near term. Otherwise, the likes of Lalu Prasad, Ram Vilas Paswan, Naveen Patnaik and Mulayam Singh Yadav would not have cut themselves from loose from the apron strings of the big parties, especially at this juncture.

This is what the current election is all about. The electoral outcomes in the past decade reflect the political churning that is going on at a furious pace. It continues apace and it is likely that it will throw up newer and different combinations of parties in power (who would have thought that the Congress would dump its myopic Panchmarhi Resolution to always go it alone in the dustbin of history?).

Indeed, what we are witnessing is a work in progress. The Third Front is a sign of a national polity that is emerging out of an immensely complicated reality, in a process that has taken several other countries much longer - often as much as a century - to complete. But we Indians are an impatient lot. We want it here and now.

For the likes of Congress and BJP spokespersons and their drummer boys in the media, democracy is only a game of numbers. It’s not about real people and their real lives or real problems; it’s not about the future of India and her children. But alas, even the numbers do not stack up for either the Congress or the BJP.

By my reckoning, the Congress will be lucky to get more than 100 seats and the BJP will manage to win a few more since it can boast of a few strongholds like Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Gujarat whereas the Congress has none (yes Zero, unless you count the Andaman& Nicobar Islands where the party has only lost once since Independence).

I'm not making this up. Just over a month ago before the election process got underway (and before Lalu Prasad threw the Fourth Front bombshell) the then UPA was supposed to be winning 257 seats, well within striking distance of the magic 272 mark, with the BJP a distant second with with 210 seats and “others” with 76 seats. Game, set and match Congress, was the verdict.

In the last week of April, the figures were revised drastically. A headline in DNA, a Mumbai daily, said it all: “The 'Others' Are Back”! The breakup was: Congress+ 188, BJP+ 183, Others 172. Obviously, parties like the MNF, NPP, SDP, MIM, PMK, KC, ADMK, PRP, LCP, BNF, FPM, IFDP, JSS, JMM, PWP, PMK, TRS, UDGP will all be “kingmakers”.

And therein lies the rub.

Roger And Out