The general belief that the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party is facing an ignominious defeat in the Assembly elections in Punjab and it is the Aam Aadmi Party that seems to be in pole position has opened up space for speculation about new political alliances. This has acquired piquancy now that most knowledgeable observers hold that the BJP is facing a similar rout in western Uttar Pradesh, which went to polls on February 11 as part of the ongoing seven-phase Assembly elections in the state. (We will have to wait for the results on March 11).
In the 2014 general elections, the BJP had won over 42% of the vote in Uttar Pradesh and 71 of its 80 Lok Sabha seats (its ally, the Apna Dal, had picked up two more), leaving just seven seats that are the family fiefdoms of the Yadavs of the Samajwadi Party and the Gandhis. But it was in western Uttar Pradesh that it fared really spectacularly. Here, the party had won 18 of the 22 seats by polling more than all the other parties together.
In the months before the elections, there were bloody communal riots in Muzzafarnagar and surrounding areas in the epicentre of the Jat heartland that left over 60 people dead and displaced over 50,000. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh whipped this into a frenzy that gave the BJP 52% of the popular vote. Narendra Modi, who was then the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, led the charge here, making sneaky references to the relative prosperity of some in the Muslim community and calling it a “pink revolution” – code for cow slaughter. The blood-soaked green fields yielded a bountiful saffron harvest. If the BJP loses its primacy here now, its experiment with its not very covert sectarian politics is over. Its chances in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections are then seriously imperiled.
Rising new force
The Congress is in retreat everywhere in the country. If it gets more MLA seats now, it will be because it clung to Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav’s coattails. There is now no Indian state where the Congress has primacy. In the big states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, it is a coattail party. The Aam Aadmi Party is muscling into some regions just as it did in Delhi and Goa at the expense of the Congress.
Shortly after the Aam Aadmi Party’s victory in the Delhi elections in 2015, I had written that this was more a result of a Congress wipeout than any precipitate decline of the BJP base. My comment had attracted the ire of many Aam Aadmi Party trolls. (Their tribe is increasing.)
But let the numbers do the talking. The Aam Aadmi Party’s popular vote went up from 29.5% in 2013 – when, contesting its first election, it formed the government in Delhi, only to resign 49 days later over its inability to bring in an anti-corruption Jan Lokpal Bill – to 54.3% in 2015, when it returned to power with 67 seats in the 70-strong Assembly. The comparative figures for the BJP were 34% to 32.7%, a decline of a mere 1.3%. The Congress, on the other hand, declined from 24.6% in 2013 to 9.7% in 2015. Others such as the Bahujan Samaj Party, Janata Dal (United) and independents crashed from 11.9% to 3.3%. Clearly, the Aam Aadmi Party took away space from the Congress and the so-called secular opposition. The message is clear.
The Aam Aadmi Party is now poised to expand into other states. Gujarat is next in its sights. It is going straight for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s jugular. It is this kind of daring that endears the party to the youth. I am veering around to the view that the main challenge to the Congress now is not from the BJP, despite its exhortations of a Congress-mukt Bharat, but the Aam Aadmi Party that is rapidly positioning itself as the party to go to in many supposed Congress strongholds.
Opposition politics
For decades, opposition politics in India centered on finding an alternative to the Congress. This activity consisted mainly of forging improbable, impossible and often even unholy alliances. After 1991, anti-Congressism was no longer a binding force. The post-VP Singh era of cobbled up alliances with the Congress as part of it did not inspire too much confidence either. The BJP expanded into the subsequent unrelenting anti-Congress space. It still holds this space. Ironically, the parties that were once united by Ram Manohar Lohia’s battle cry against parivarvaad (dynasty politics) have now become Parivar-dominated parties.
In states like Odisha, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, regional parties have reduced the Congress to a rump, though from time to time they team up with the Congress tagging on as their junior partner. These state elections will definitely see the Congress getting more seats than it has in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh. But it will not mean any long-term gains for it. In the latter state, it will be entirely thanks to the Samajwadi Party, and in Punjab, it will have to hold off the now apparently relentless Aam Aadmi Party expansion.
The other non-BJP and Congress parties are now squeezing what is left with the Congress, that is, states where it is either the dominant or next leading party. Soon it seems like it will only be in Madhya Pradesh that the BJP, which is currently in power there, and the Congress will face each other as the two dominant parties. This is rather ironic considering that LK Advani, who strategised the BJP’s rise to power, would from time to time loudly contemplate a two-party democracy in India, and that this would be ideal for India. He never wanted a Congress-mukt Bharat. He saw the emergence of a Right-of-Centre and Left-of-Centre contested polity as the ideal. But this is, alas, not going to happen. What we are going to get seems to be a contested polity between an ultranationalist Right Wing and the formation of populist regional forces.
Ironically enough, it is the Aam Aadmi Party that has given hope of new politics and political style. Will it be able to regain its idealism and hold its course? India now has 120 million voters in the18-23 age group. By 2019, another 130 million would have joined this phalanx. Truly, the future belongs to the youth. Over 60% of India lives below a universally accepted poverty standard. India’s poverty line is a starvation line. Almost the entire youth cohort now is educated, having benefitted from the huge expansion of the education system. Their aspirations and popular aspirations have changed. To grow, the Aam Aadmi Party has to uncompromisingly nurture this and build on this. It has so far done this fairly well in Delhi despite the ganging up of the BJP establishment and the establishment media against it. But can it replicate it nationwide?
But Narendra Modi unites the opposition, like Indira Gandhi once did. That time, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh joined it against the Congress. Now, the Congress is with it against the BJP. The temptations for the Aam Aadmi Party to team up against the BJP are many. But the moment it gets sucked into the caste permutations of the Bahujan Samaj Party, Samajwadi Party, Rashtriya Janata Dal and Janata Dal (United), and gets drawn into their coalitional politics, it will become just another political party. Another ayaram, gayaram party.