explaining 2009 verdict

themes

Economic & Political Weekly EPW september 26, 2009 vol xliv no 39 33

This article is based on many conversations with colleagues from the Lokniti Network and the interpretations contained in the various articles in this special issue. We are grateful to all our colleagues for this. We also wish to thank the Data Unit of the CSDS and especially Himanshu Bhattacharya, Kanchan Malhotra and Rahul Verma for help in preparing the tables and Banasmita Bora and Vanita Leah Falcao for help in digging out references from the media.

Yogendra Yadav ([email protected]) is with the Centre for Study of Developing Societies and is currently with Wissenschaftskolleg ZubBerlin and Suhas Palshikar ([email protected]) teaches political science at the Univesity of Pune.

Between Fortuna and Virtu: explaining the Congress’ Ambiguous Victory in 2009

Yogendra Yadav, Suhas Palshikar

Election 2009 saw a comprehensive triumph for the

United Progressive Alliance. But the initial impression of

an overwhelming mandate for the Congress needs to be

corrected. A close scrutiny of the outcome shows that

the Congress “victory” was ambiguous and owed a lot

to movements that were not of its making. Shifts in the

“third electoral system” worked against the politics of

identity and made the quality of government an issue.

The Bharatiya Janata Party’s inability to hold on to its

new social bloc resulted in a depolarisation that

benefited the Congress. The victory of the Congress also

came about because the voters had a mildly positive

image of its governance record and welfare measures.

Yet in the end this verdict was more about politics than

chance. A shrinking of the National Democratic Alliance,

a positive image of the upa government and its

leadership gave the ruling coalition a decisive lead

before the campaign formally began.

Political thinking in a small princely state of Italy in the 16th century is not the most obvious place to look for insights into political practice in the democratic republic of India in

the 21st century. Italian connection could mean various things in contemporary India, but it is unlikely that the reference would bring Machiavelli or his contemporaries to mind. Yet a central theme of “mirror-for-prince” literature in the civic humanist tra-dition of Florentine renaissance1 can throw light on some aspects of politics in contemporary India for which the professional under standing of politics does not have a fully developed l anguage. Or so we hope to argue in this article.

The fortuna-virtu duality can teach two simple yet profound lessons to students of contemporary politics. One, it serves to r emind us that much of the play of power takes place in condi-tions that are not of the making of or amenable to change by any-one, that a good deal of what happens in politics is given, predetermined or just accidental – fortuna. Two, this realisation does not make political action irrelevant; on the contrary it reminds us of the centrality of political skills, prowess and wisdom in m odern politics – virtu. Both these lessons are relevant for making sense of contemporary Indian politics, particularly for understanding the causes and consequences of the electoral verdict of 2009, which is the subject matter of the present essay.

Section 1 reviews some common but mistaken assumptions that underlie most readings of the causes and the consequences of the verdict. That demands clarity about what needs explain-ing in the first place. This is what Section 2 does by decomposing the outcome in terms of seats and votes at the national and the state levels. It suggests that the Congress Party’s victory was more ambiguous than it appears, that fortuna may have played a bigger role than has been acknowledged. Section 3 begins the explanatory search by looking at the systemic factors that shaped this electoral contestation. It argues that while the outcome of the election was not in any way predetermined by these systemic e lements, it may have been predisposed in favour of the Con-gress by a shift within the “third electoral system”. Section 4 analyses the evidence on voting preferences of social groups to suggest that a depolarisation of social cleavages may have shrunk the pool of support available to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). S ection 5 turns to the middle ground of political causality by f ocusing on three political elements that worked in favour of the Congress: coalition-making, governmental p erformance and the leadership. It concludes by focusing on the role of political tactics in terms of the campaign moves made by the major players and its fallout and argues that

themes

september 26, 2009 vol xliv no 39 EPW Economic & Political Weekly34

Discussion of the causes of the verdict suffered from a more acute deficit, if not paralysis. Among the major players, there was very little by way of a public exercise to understand and explain the political meaning of the electoral outcome. The Congress Party, which was no less surprised by the verdict than its rivals, did not seem interested in explaining the verdict, perhaps in the belief that the onus of explanation lies with the losers. The C ongress vic-tory was credited to the charm of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, the clean image of Manmohan Singh, historic acts by the United

table 1: summary Overview of the Outcome of Lok sabha election 2009 – seats Contested and Won, Overall Vote share and Vote share in seats Contested for major Parties and major AlliancesParty/Alliance Number of Seats Contested Number of Seats Won Overall Vote Share in Vote Share in Seats All Seats Contested

Lok Sabha Change from Lok Sabha Change from Lok Sabha Change from Lok Sabha Change from Election 2009 2004 Election 2009 2004 Election 2009 2004 Election 2009 2004 (in %) (in Percentage (in %) (in Percentage Points) Points)

UPA/Congress allies 528 -7 262 40 36.40 -0.13 37.4 2.8

Congress 440 27 206 61 28.56 2.13 35.8 1.2

JKNC 3 -3 3 1 0.12 -0.01 47.8 25.8

MUL 2 0 2 1 0.20 0.01 52.4 7.6

KCM 1 0 1 1 0.10 0.04 50.1 22.0

NCP 23 1 9 0 1.78 0.00 41.9 -3.6

DMK 22 6 18 2 1.83 0.02 44.9 -13.3

Trinamool Congress 27 4 19 17 3.19 1.13 47.6 16.8

JMM 5 -2 2 2 0.21 0.21 27.0 -3.9

RPI 2 0 0 0 0.12 0.12 34.4 22.8

VCK 2 1 1 0.18 0.18 44.0 44.0

IND(Congress) 1 -5 1 0 0.11 -0.06 49.2 29.7

NDA 511 -32 159 -30 24.11 -11.77 25.6 -10.3

BJP 432 68 116 -22 18.81 -3.35 23.4 -11.0

AGP -6 1 -1 0.43 -0.11 33.0 9.5

JD(U) 27 -6 20 12 1.42 -0.52 36.2 4.5

INLD 5 -15 0 0 0.31 -0.19 29.4 16.8

Shiv Sena 22 0 11 -1 1.51 -0.26 37.1 -7.1

NPF 1 1 0 0.20 0.02 70.0 -3.1

SDF 1 1 0 0.04 0.00 63.3 -6.5

RLD 7 -3 5 2 0.43 -0.18 37.8 4.0

Akali Dal 10 0 4 -4 0.96 0.06 43.4 0.0

Left 177 65 24 -36 7.61 -0.32 22.5 -15.2

CPI 56 23 4 -5 1.43 0.11 14.3 -8.6

CPI(M) 82 13 16 -27 5.33 -0.33 31.9 -10.4

FBL 21 18 2 -1 0.32 -0.02 8.8 -39.5

RSP 16 12 2 -1 0.38 -0.05 12.6 -33.9

KEC 1 0 0 -1 0.08 -0.01 42.5 -6.0

IND (Left) 1 0 0 -1 0.07 -0.01 39.4 -9.6

BSP 500 65 21 2 6.17 0.84 6.6 -0.1

SP 193 44 23 -13 3.43 -0.89 10.0 -0.3

TDP 30 -3 6 1 2.51 -0.53 34.3 -8.5

AIADMK 23 -10 9 9 1.67 -0.52 39.1 3.5

RJD 44 -16 4 -20 1.27 -1.14 19.2 -26.5

BJD 18 6 14 3 1.59 0.29 43.8 -7.4

PRAP 40 0 0 1.58 1.58 16.5 16.5

Independents 3,827 8 6 5.41 1.59

Others 2,178 13 6 8.25 2.14 For puposes of comparison with 2004, this table uses alliances as they existed in 2004. In 2004 UPA includes Indian National Congress, TRS, RJD, LNJS, Nationalist Congress Party, Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, Jammu and Kashmir Democratic Party, MUL, KCM, JDS, Republican Party of India, Republican Party of India (Athvale), Peoples Republican Party, DMK, Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, PMK, PDS, ARC, INC(CPI), IND(Cong). NDA includes: BJP, TDP, JD(U), SHS, IFDP, BJD, SAD, AIADMK, TRMC, MNF, SDF, NPF, IND(BJP).In calculating the vote share of an alliance only those seats have been counted where the parities had alliance. In 2009 the JD(U) contested 55 seats but there was alliance with BJP only in 27 seats. Votes for other seats are included under JDU votes but not included in alliance figure. Source: CSDS data unit, computed on the basis of constituency-wise results downloaded from the Election Commission web site. Since the Commission has not yet released the official Statistical Report, the figures here are still subject to final verification.

c ontrary to much media speculation, this is not where the e lection was won or lost.

1 Interpretations: What the Commentators missed

Reactions to the outcome of the Lok Sabha elections of 2009 have been marked by an interpretative deficit. This deficit is surpris-ing, for this verdict has many firsts to its credit: the first time in the last 25 years that a government that had completed its full term got re-elected, Manmohan Singh became the first prime minister since Nehru to have been rein-stalled after completing one full term and it was the first time since coalition govern-ments became the order of the day that the equations within the ruling coalition changed. Such a verdict is bound to invite a clash of i nterpretations.

Much of the political commentary after the elections was f ocused on the consequences rather than the causes of the verdict. As in the case of the 2004 elections, the initial reactions to the outcome of election 2009 were marked by a sense of relief. In 2004, this sense was caused by the somewhat unexpected defeat of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) – that the BJP was now driven out of power. This time around, the relief among the commenta-tors was on account of the somewhat unex-pected return of the Congress with less of a dependence on allies; a dislike of coalition politics caused some jubilation post-2009. So much so, that one BJP leader wrote that this outcome was the second best (first being the NDA victory) that he could hope for (Shourie 2009). Unsurprisingly, there was a temptation to read this consequence into the voters’ mind. Another BJP leader discerned a “desire of the Indian voter to ensure a politically stable gov-ernment free from obstructions and road-blocks” (Jaitley 2009). Overall, most observ-ers and commentators chose to celebrate what they saw as the coming of the bi-party politi-cal competition. Coupled with the relief over the issue of a restricted role of the regional parties and leaders, there was also widespread expectation that the economic growth and re-form process would now continue uninter-rupted (Desai 2009; Varshney 2009). There were some dissenting voices that this outcome was neither caused by the urge for bipolarity nor did it represent a shift towards bipolarity (Palshikar 2009; Rangarajan 2009; Yadav 2009). On b alance, much of the discussion on the consequences of the v erdict underplayed the political processes that went into the making of the verdict and its implications for political action.

themes


Progressive Alliance (UPA) government and smart strategic manoeuvres by the Congress. The flip side of the same explana-tion was the blame placed on the BJP leadership, the desertion by partners of the NDA, the follies of the Third and the Fourth Fronts, the failed tactics of the BJP spin doctors, the poor cam-paign management and interventions by Narendra Modi and Varun Gandhi and so on (Sardesai 2009; Vyas 2009; Subrahma-niam 2009; Chishti 2009). In the vocabulary used in this article, these are virtu-based explanations: the Congress won because it displayed some political/governmental skills, or because its o pponents displayed a complete absence of the same skills. Interestingly, the range of political skills implicit in these expla-nations is rather narrow: winning elections is about image-building of leaders, spin-doctoring of election issues, smart political communication, effective choice of candidates and robust management of the campaign.

These commentaries can be contrasted with fortuna-based ex-planations, something the opposition fell back upon. Writing in Organiser, M V Kamath (2009) reflected the mood within the BJP when he said that the elections represent “tectonic change” but that “Congress should consider itself just lucky to have come to power for no sound discernible reason”. The expectation that the BJP would engage in a serious post-mortem of the results soon faded away as the blame game began within the party. Articles in Organiser blaming the media and “opinion makers” only reflected the larger intellectual crisis within the BJP (see Bhattacharya 2009 and Bisaria 2009). The Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)) tried to deflect the attention from its internal difficulties by arguing that the idea of the Third Front did not win the confi-dence of the voters. That would not explain the outcomes in West Bengal and Kerala. The CPI(M)’s politburo resolution promised a self-critical look at the outcomes but nowhere came close to actu-ally examining why the left lost. With problems on their hand in both the key states, the left did not come up with any substantial a nalysis of the results.

Some serious soul searching was done in the pages of the EPW by left intellectuals like Prabhat Patnaik, A[shok] M[itra], and Deepankar Basu who argued that the problem of the left lay in its adoption of the neoliberal economic policy. Conceding that the left did not have an alternative model of economic development, Pat-naik (2009: 9) argued that the urban middle class that benefited from the neoliberal policies was not available for mobilisation as part of the larger anti-capitalist politics. AM warned that the CPI(M) may lose power in West Bengal sooner than later and raised the issue of centralism without democracy (2009: 11). Deepankar Basu too mentions the costs of the “doublespeak and hypocrisy” of the left (2009:12) and brought out the governance failure of the left government in West Bengal as in the implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). While these reflections have some value in enhancing our understanding of what ails left politics in India, they do not quite address the larger question of why the Congress came back to power by pursuing the policies that the left governments are accused of copying. We must therefore fall back upon a fortuna-based explanation. It should be noted that the notion of fortuna implicit in these readings is lim-ited to sheer chance or to the Congress Party’s good fortune of

vote-seats exaggeration (Kohli 2009). The idea that the Congress may have benefited from larger historical processes that are not of its making is not explored in the available interpretations.

This paper (and other articles in this issue of the EPW in general) constitutes an attempt to meet this interpretative deficit. It tries to avoid the tendency to reach consequences into causes by adopting the path of evidence-based reasoning. Yet this paper does not fol-low the straight and narrow path of hypothesis testing in empirical political science. It draws heavily upon a reading of contemporary history, yet it is not a piece of archival research. While maintaining a distinction between expectation and explanation, it does not shy away from spelling out the course of action available for all the major political formations. Yet this is not intended as an ideologi-cal tract for a “modern prince”. This essay strives to be an exercise in political judgment.

2 electoral Arithmetic: how Votes Got exaggerated into seats

A good deal of the difficulty in explaining the 2009 outcome is not that the explanatory variables are hidden from our analytical vision but that we do not quite know what needs to be explained in the first place and, accordingly, we have little agreement on what kind of explanation we are looking for. Let us begin by fix-ing this end by specifying what exactly needs to be explained. This is done here in two steps. First, we connect the verdict in terms of the seats to vote share. This elementary step takes away some of the dramatic appearance of Verdict 2009 and leaves us with much less to explain than has been assumed. The second step involves looking at the state level dispersal of votes and swings. As in the case of most other national elections of the present era, the state-level disaggregation shows the national outcome to be a sum total of many different and often contradic-tory verdicts. At the same time, unlike 2004, it suggests that this election cannot be reduced entirely to the state-level outcomes, that there is a national residue that needs to be explained.

seats and Votes

A reading of the final outcome in terms of popular vote share is a useful corrective to the dominant impression that election 2009 contained a decisive verdict and a dramatic break from the recent past. Table 1 (p 34) presents the data on seats and votes for all the major parties and fronts in 2009 and compares these to their per-formance in 2004. Clearly, the UPA’s spectacular victory was not so spectacular in terms of the popular vote share. Compared to the combined performance of the UPA of 2004 (which included the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Lok Janshakti Party (LJP), Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK), Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) and People’s Democratic Party (PDP) but did not include the Trinamool Congress (TMC), Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK) and National Conference), the UPA added 40 seats to its kitty without adding anything to its vote share. If anything, its combined vote

This special issue of EPW on the “National Election Study 2009” was organised and put together by Suhas Palshikar, Yogendra Yadav and the network of researchers in Lokniti.

themes


share registered a marginal decline of 0.13 percentage points. The UPA’s gains came entirely from the Congress which added 61 seats to its tally of 2004 and managed to win more than 200 seats for the first time since 1991. Yet this major gain was based on a very small swing of a little over 2 percentage points since the last elections. Part of this gain was a function of the Congress contesting 27 more seats this time. The Congress Party’s share of votes per seat con-tested registered a very modest increase of 1.2 percentage points. The combined tally of the Congress allies fell from 77 seats to just 56 this time and their combined vote share dropped by 2 percent-age points. This was largely a function of the Congress shedding its erstwhile allies, especially the RJD and the LJP. Most of the existing

allies retained their vote share; the TMC brought in a significant chunk of votes. In overall terms, there is very little dramatic shift in the popular support for the Congress and its allies.

Similarly, a sharp decline in the seats for the left and a poor show for the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) is not directly reflected in their vote share. The left lost as many as 36 seats to record one of its worst performances in parliamentary elections, but the drop in its nationwide vote share was only 0.3 percentage points. That could be misleading, for the vote share was boosted by the left contesting 65 more seats this time. Its share of votes in the states where it matters fell by nearly 6 percentage points. Con-trary to popular impression of a major setback, the BSP actually continued an onward march in terms of its share of popular votes, largely because it contested as many as 500 seats this time. With 6.17% of the n ational vote share, the party has now overtaken the CPI(M) to become the third largest party in the country.

The real story in terms of votes is not so much that of dra-matic gains for the Congress and its allies but the dramatic de-cline of the NDA. Compared to the NDA of 2004 (which included the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), TMC, All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) and the Biju Janata Dal (BJD)among others), the popular base of the NDA shrunk this time by nearly 12 percentage points. The loss in its seats was less dra-matic: the NDA’s tally went down by 30 seats, from 189 to 159. The BJP accounted for much of the losses of seats, but for a small share of the decline in vote shares. It lost 22 seats and dropped 3.4 points in vote share. The BJP’s remaining allies did not lose much of their popular votes; the major losses in vote share oc-curred because some of the major allies moved out of the NDA. If we look at the 2009 vote share of all the NDA partners as they

table 2: Vote share for major National Parties, Left and the Regional Parties in Lok sabha elections (1984 to 2009)

Parties 1984 1989 1991 1996 1998 1999 2004 2009

Congress 48.0 39.5 36.6 28.8 25.8 28.3 26.5 28.6

BJP 7.4 11.4 20.1 20.3 25.6 23.8 22.2 18.8

Left 9.3 10.2 9.7 9.1 7.8 7.6 7.9 7.5

BSP 0.0 2.1 1.8 4.0 4.7 4.2 5.3 6.2

JD NA 17.8 11.8 8.1 NA NA NA NA

Regional parties 11.2 9.7 9.6 18.5 29.8 30.9 31.3 28.4(1) The Janata Dal did not exist in 1984. From 1998, both the JD(S) and JD(U) are treated as regional party.(2) Regional parties may or may not be a part of any major alliance in the national elections. Regional parties here include: NCP, TMC, SP, SMT, RJD, BJD, MUL, Shiv Sena, RPI, SAD, SAD(Mann), JKNC, PWP, DMK, AIADMK, TMC(M), PMK, MDMK, KEC, INLD, RLD, AGP, MGP, TDP, TRS, LJP, JMM, Haryana Janhit Congress, JVM, PRP, MNS, Assam United Democratic Front, Social Democratic Front, Apna Dal, All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, Kerala Congress (Mani), BPF and LSP.Source: Computed by CSDS data unit on the basis of official returns.

existed in 2004, the decline in the NDA vote share would have been 4.5 points. In 2004, despite what was perceived to be a major defeat for the NDA, there was a wafer-thin difference of just 0.65 points that separated the vote share of the UPA and the NDA. This time the gap has grown to over 12 percentage points.

Table 2 enables us to read the outcome of 2009 in a larger con-text. The trend of vote share for major parties and formations since 1984 guards us against over-reading into the results of 2009. The Congress has staged a slight recovery from last time and its dismal performance in 1998, but its vote share is still at the same level that it fell to ever since 1996. The party is nowhere close to its vote share in the Lok Sabha elections of 1989 or 1991, not to mention 1984. The BJP’s vote share is on a downward slope; this was the third consecutive election in which the BJP shed a significant share of the total votes. Its current level is lower than what it achieved in its take-off election of 1991. The left is stagnant in its popular base, but has not suffered a steep fall. The BSP is still on the rise and has added about a percentage point in the last two general elections.

This long-term trend also helps to correct the widespread im-pression that in this election, the balance shifted from the regional parties and in favour of the national parties. The combined tally of the Congress and the BJP may have gone up from 283 in the last election to 322 seats this time (not very different incidentally from what their combined tally was in 1998), but their combined vote share has actually come down by 1.2 percentage points. If we add the CPI(M) and the BSP to the definition, the national parties have lost 15 seats and have declined by 0.7 percentage points in the vote share compared to the last election. Similarly, the combined vote share of all the regional parties in the country put together shows a fair degree of stability since they reached a new level since the Lok Sabha elections in 1998. This time, the combined vote share dropped by about 3 percentage points. This was largely due to the splinters of the Janata family – Janata Dal (United) (JDU), Janata Dal (Secular) (JDS), RJD and Samajwadi Party (SP) – losing votes, mainly outside the state where their support is focused. Apart from these four, the combined vote share of other regional parties has remained u nchanged.

shifting multiplier

In other words, the famous vagaries of the first-past-the-post (FPTP) system made this election outcome appear more dramatic than it actually was. Table 3 (p 37) gives numeric expression to this intui-tion by presenting the seats-vote multiplier for major parties and alliances for the last three Lok Sabha elections, ever since the Con-gress started marking attempts to put together a counter- coalition. It shows that the dramatic rise in the fortunes of the Congress is in large measure a function of the seat-vote multiplier tilting in its fa-vour in the last two elections. With a multiplier of 0.74 in 1999, the Congress and its allies were at the receiving end of the distributive injustice inherent in the FPTP. By 2004 the Congress got just about a fair share and its allies did a little better. In this election, the mul-tiplier swung further in favour of the Congress and its allies. For every 1% of its share in p opular votes, the Congress and its allies got more than 1.3% of the seats. Put more sharply, in 1999 the Congress got just over four Lok Sabha seats for a 1% of votes, in 2009 it got more than seven seats. While the Congress Party’s rise

themes


table 3: seats-Votes multiplier for major Parties and their Allies (1999-2009)

Lok Sabha Election

1999 2004 2009

Congress 0.74 1.01 1.31

Congress allies 0.74 1.12 1.34

BJP 1.41 1.15 1.11

BJP allies 1.37 0.97 1.22

BSP 0.62 0.66 0.63

Left 1.01 1.40 0.58Seats-votes Multiplier is the ratio of the proportion of seats won by a party to the proportion of votes won by it. M (multiplier) = ps1/pv1 where ps1 is the seats won by a Party1 as proportion of the total seats and pv1 is the proportion of valid votes secured by Party 1.Source: Computed by CSDS data unit from official returns.

is in many ways a function of the seats-votes disproportionality, the BJP’s downfall is not. The BJP has not suffered much on this count and the decline in its seats is due to a decline in its popular support. The party enjoyed an exceptionally favourable multiplier of over 1.4 in 1999. Since then the multiplier for the BJP and its allies has come down, but on b alance the NDA is still a beneficiary of the seats-votes disproportionality. The fortunes of the left have swung from an exceptionally fa-vourable multiplier in 2004 to an exception-ally unfavourable one in this election. The BSP c ontinues to be at the receiving end of the seats-votes disproportionality and has got less than two-thirds of the seats that it deserves on the basis of its vote share.

To be sure, mathematical measures like the multiplier or the swing do not offer a substan-tive explanation. They only help us under-stand what needs to be explained. Besides, a rise or fall in the multiplier is not just a coinci-dence and cannot be explained away as a fluke. In the FPTP system, a party gains from seats-votes disproportionality if it crosses the threshold of viability and can overtake its principal opponent more or less uniformly across a group of constituencies. In the Lok Sabha elections the defining unit for the operation of multiplier is the state. The BJP enjoyed a very high multiplier when it emerged on top and won most of the seats in a number of key states in the north and west. This time the Congress and its allies nearly swept some of the key states like Delhi, Haryana, Kerala, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh on the basis of a more modest lead in vote share. While parties cannot freely deploy their votes as and where they would want to and cannot control the multiplier, there is an element of political strategy involved here.

Dispersal across states

A shift in the multiplier is directly linked to what happens in the state, for a higher multiplier often means an ability to cross the threshold of victory in several key states. By this logic, the real ac-tion was confined to some key states. The BJP’s losses were spread across the country, though not evenly. Except Bihar and Karnataka, the BJP and its allies suffered a loss of votes in every major state. The Congress Party’s overall gains were not that well spread. The party’s real gains came from a moderate swing in its favour in Ker-ala, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh. The gains in West Bengal came mainly from the new ally, the TMC. Its gains in Bihar did not yield much seats, while the ad-ditional seats in Orissa came despite a loss of votes. The UPA also managed to cut its losses in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Assam and Haryana by keeping the swing against it to a minimum. While it is difficult to speak about a uniform swing in the success of the Congress, it is important to note that there was something of a nation-wide trend in its favour. While it did not improve upon its performance of 2004 everywhere, the fact remains that the Congress did better than expected almost e verywhere.

The key to the Congress performance lies in the party’s success in direct contests against the BJP and the Left. An analysis of the verdict by classifying states by the nature of the contest tells the real story in

this regard. In the 115 seats where it was a direct Congress vs BJP contest, the Congress gained 3.1 percentage points and the BJP lost 5.3 percentage points, both figures above their national averages. These states also accounted for the biggest addition to the Congress kitty of seats: the Congress gained 26 seats here while the BJP lost 26. The setback for the left in Kerala and West Bengal resulted in di-

rect gains for the UPA. The UPA-Left contest saw a steep 9.8 percentage point swing for the Congress and its allies at the expense of 5.8 percentage points for the Left. The UPA gained 34 seats here, all but one at the expense of the Left. The action in the remaining types of states – UPA versus NDA, UPA versus some other party and a multipolar contest – did not result in a major shift in votes and seats. One could say that these two sectoral verdicts – the Con-gress Party’s triumph against the BJP and the retreat of the left – more or less fully a ccount for the verdict of 2009.

The disaggregation of the verdict thus far helps us see why the Congress victory in 2009 was more ambiguous than it appeared. A combination of three elements gave the Congress a decisive edge in this Lok Sabha election. One, there was a modest increase in the proportion of votes for the Congress accompanied by a bigger drop in the share of popular votes for the BJP. Two, the loss of allies for the BJP resulted in a widening of the gap between the UPA and the NDA. Three, the rise in Congress votes was distributed in such a way as to yield a disproportionately large share of seats in some key states where it was pitted against the BJP or against the Left. An interpretation of the 2009 verdict needs to offer an account of one or more of these components. The second and the third com-ponents can be understood without reference to the political be-haviour of the citizens and patterns of public opinion. The third is a matter of deciphering the alliance arithmetic while the fourth is a subject of the political geography of elections. But the first two components, a modest rise in Congress vote and more than corre-sponding decline in the vote share of the BJP, require further speci-fication before these can be explained.

3 historical Context: Where the system Favoured the Congress

Initial reactions to the electoral verdict suggested as if this was a system defining election or what may be called a “critical election”, for it decisively reversed the decline of the Congress in the post-1989 era. A more careful look confirms some dissenting voices which saw this election as one that was process shaped and defined by the system rather than one that redefined the system (Kohli 2009; Palshikar 2009). There were subtle changes in the system which worked to the advantage of the Congress in this election, but these changes did not fundamentally alter the system.

This system has been described and analysed as the “third elec-toral system” (Yadav 1999) in a formulation that built upon a ques-tioning of the dominant ways of reading the party system (Yadav 1996), relationship of caste and politics (Sheth 1999) and the role of regional parties (Palshikar 2003a). A recent reformulation of the system suggested that while its systemic attributes have persisted,

themes


the transformative potential often ascribed to the “third electoral system” is almost exhausted (Yadav and Palshikar 2009a: 400).

The outcome of elections 2009 fits in with this story of changes in the third electoral system. While the outcome still reflects many of the features of the third electoral system, we may be witnessing the second phase of that electoral system – without the t rans formative dimension, but still continuing the uncertainties associated with the project of building fluid, fresh, contingent alliances of social forces. As the essay in this issue by Sanjay Kumar on electoral participation shows, the transformative p otential has indeed stagnated; but an-other feature of the third electoral system that continues even now is the large number of political players in the filed of electoral com-petition as is seen from Table 4. These developments allow us to distinguish the more enduring attributes of the system from its tran-sient consequences. Although the third electoral system was triggered by the decline of the Congress, the structure of political competition inaugurated by it need not work against the Congress.

C onversely, the rise of the BJP to power and of the post-Mandal par-ties to prominence was not a necessary feature of this system, but one of the contingent outcomes of the working of this system in its early phase. Election 2004 showed that the system need not work against the Congress; Election 2009 showed that the system could actually work for the Congress in some ways.

This election also indicated a shift in the logic of the social churn-ing in the third electoral system. While caste or community contin-ues to be the primary building bloc of political affiliation at the micro level, the politics of building a macro political coalition based on these blocs has suffered a setback. In this sense the politics of social identity has hit a point of saturation, thus opening the possibility of other kinds of mobilisation. This saturation is evident from the road blocks hit by the RJD, SP, PMK, and even the BSP. Parties like these which depend on one single caste – different of course, in each case – for the bulk of their votes have discovered that there is little scope for any accretion to their pool. They have also discovered that sec-ondary alliances built by them – with Muslims in the case of RJD and SP and with brahmins in the case of BSP – prove short-lived. To be sure, this does not mean that caste or community does not matter for voting any more. Nor does it mean that all sections of society have reached a point of saturation in their political mobilisation: huge constituencies of lower Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and “Maha Dalits” remained outside the catchment area of the “caste based” parties in the 1990s and still await mobilisation based on their interests. Yet the limits of the politics of identity – that was v isible

table 4: Number of Legislative and effective Political Parties (1996-2009)

Category Lok Sabha 2009 2004 1999 1998 1996

Only one seat 13 12 13 12 9

Two seats 5 4 5 3 1

More than three but less than 10 8 13 9 16 7

More than ten but less than 20 6 5 5 5 7

More than 20 seats 4 5 6 3 4

Total number of parties in parliament 36 39 38 39 28

Effective number of parties (seats) 5.0 6.5 5.9 5.3 5.8

Effective number of parties (votes) 7.7 7.6 6.7 6.9 7.1(1) All figures are for number of political parties in the relevant category.(2) Effective number of political parties has been calculated as per the formula devised by M Laakso and R Taagepera: N = 1/ ∑ pi2 where N denotes the effective number of parties and pi denotes the ith party's fraction of the seats.Source: CSDS data unit, computed from official returns

even in 2004 but was clouded by interpretative shrillness – may un-ravel political mechanisms that we may not foresee at this stage.

Finally, the very high level of electoral volatility and at one stage a habitual anti-incumbency has started declining, to make way for a more nuanced judgment on the incumbent governments. As elec-tions lose the plebiscitary character, as they cease to seek a “man-date” on any specific issues and also as the emotive element in elec-tions get restricted to only formal party rhetoric, the normalcy of party political competition ushers in the issue of what governments actually do. Here again, the interpretative e xcesses and exagger-ated transformative expectations of the late 1990s blinded us to this development but it was there ever since 2002-03. The BJP was the first to instinctively grasp this when in its drive to expand its narrow social base and escape the H indutva trap, the party started talking about the economy and governance in the run-up to the 2004 elections. Evidence from the elections in the past decade indi-cates a clear shift: the blind anti- incumbency of the previous dec-ade has been tempered and v oters are ready to vote the same gov-ernment to power. The NDA failed to take advantage of this shift in 2004 despite an overall positive rating of the Vajpayee government by the people. The trend was too weak then, and the logic of state-level governance and the BJP’s social and economic exclusivism proved overwhelming. During the past five years, as many incum-bent state governments returned to power, this factor of govern-mental p erformance grew stronger. However, this factor could have no more than a limited play in the national elections, for the voters were using these elections to express their opinion on the state government as much as on the national government.

The Congress was in a position to benefit from these long-term shifts. The end of non-Congressism expanded the range of political support open to the Congress. The limits to the politics of s ocial iden-tity opened up spaces for cross-sectional mobilisation and thus helped the Congress in states like Uttar Pradesh and B ihar where the com-petitive politics of identities had reached a dead end. The shift towards governance also worked to the a dvantage of the Congress, especially among those voters whose vote was determined by an as-sessment of the central government. Like its predecessor, the UPA gov-ernment in the last five years was assessed positively by the voters and a majority of the people wanted to give it another chance. It needs to be noted that all these factors represent a limited change and the Congress came nowhere close to realising the full potential offered by these shifts. In principle there is no reason why these changes should work only for the Congress. And, needless to say, the Congress Party was in no way responsible for bringing about these big shifts. This is where fortuna comes into play: the Congress hap-pened to be the net beneficiary of changes it did not bring about. In the last instance, these changes gave the Congress a better play within the third electoral system than it has enjoyed in the last two decades. The future implication of these shifts remains an open question. Perhaps this election lies at the cusp – a moment that can go back to the third electoral system yet again or can move farther from it.

4 sociology of Politics: Why Depolarisation Went against the BJP

One way of beginning to understand the movement of votes to-wards the Congress and away from the NDA is to break it down by

themes


social groups. An understanding of who moved away from the BJP and its allies, and who shifted towards the Congress is not an explanation by itself but it is a necessary step towards developing an explanation for Verdict 2009. It gives us a better fix on what kind of movement we seek to explain and a hint of where we should look for causal mechanisms. For this we need to turn to the data gathered by the National Election Study (NES), the only continuous time-series of data on voting behaviour of the Indian electorate.

A reading of the data from NES 2009 has to be situated in the larger context of the changes in the last decade or more. Writing on the verdict of 2004, Yogendra Yadav summarised the picture of the social profile of voting behaviour that emerged from NES 2004:

The BJP secured more votes among the upper caste, upper class, edu-cated votes, men and within urban areas than among their less privi-leged counterpart in each of these categories in the 2004 elections. The BJP’s allies did not quite share the same profile and thus served to supplement the party’s core ‘social bloc’. The UPA did not quite succeed in creating a counter social bloc of the underprivileged, though on bal-ance its votes drew more from this section. The underprivileged votes remained fragmented between the Congress, its allies, the Left, the BSP, and other regional formations. Yet given that the underprivileged constituted a much bigger vote pool than the social bloc of the privi-leged, even an imperfect mobilisation of the underprivileged was s ufficient to counter the NDA. Eventually the upa managed to catch up with the NDA not because the underprivileged swung decisively from NDA to UPA but because the NDA failed to hold its core social constituency in a state of high mobilisation and began losing more where it had a lot to lose: among men, upper castes, upper and lower middle classes, educated voters, and in urban areas (Yadav 2009: 36, emphasis added).

Gender, Age, Locality and Class

The data from NES 2009 suggest a continuity of the changes that were noticed in 2004. Compared to data for 2004, the sharp g ender gap between UPA and NDA has reduced. The UPA led the NDA by 13.7 points among women and by 11.2 points among men; the gender gap of nearly three points was exactly what it was in 2004, substantially lower than the 9 point gap that was recorded in 1999. Like the last time, the BJP did a little better among men this time and the Congress a little better among women. The change in the gender pattern during 2004-2009 was very small compared to the major shift that took place during 1999-2004 (see Rajeshwari Deshpande 2004 and also her piece in this issue, for a nuanced analysis of that shift), but the direction of change is

the same as in the earlier period: the BJP lost a shade more among men and correspondingly the Congress gained a shade more among men. At least at the national level, the gender division is much less salient now than it was a decade ago, but much of this depolarisation had taken place by 2004 itself.

As for age, this has never been a significant cleavage in Indian elections and it did not become one in 2009. The rise of new p arties has often been reflected in a surge of support for those parties in the younger age cohort at that time, which tends to fade away after a few elections. A fairly modest effect of this kind was discernible in the 1990s as the BJP rose to power and some newer parties like the BSP and the SP made their presence felt. In the case of the BJP, the age cohort effect has been accompanied by a small generational effect as well, as it continued to enjoy slightly higher support among the voters below 25. Unlike in E urope, the left in India has not enjoyed a higher vote among the younger generation, at least not since the 1990s. Election 2009 did not witness much of a change in this established pattern, e xcept that here too the slope has become flatter than before. The BJP s ecured just one percentage point higher support among the youth this time and suffered heavier losses in this category than any other age group. The UPA-NDA gap was a little over three points lower among the youth, just as it was in 2004. The only reason to take note of this factor in this election is to counter the widespread impression that somehow Rahul Gandhi’s campaign had swung the youth vote for the Congress. In fact, the Congress s ecured a shade lower than its average vote among the youth; compared to 2004 the UPA’s vote share among the youth went down by a fraction.

The urban-rural cleavage was considerably narrowed this time, again continuing the trend witnessed in 2004. Between 1999 and 2004 the significant advantage that the NDA enjoyed among urban voters was neutralised. The NDA, especially the BJP, still did better among urban voters than it did among the rural voters, but compared to its performance in 1999 the NDA suffered the heaviest losses among the urban voters. Table 5 shows that the same trend continued in 2009. This time, thanks to new allies like the TMC who command a significant urban base, the UPA overtook the NDA in urban areas as well; in fact its lead over its main rival in urban areas was higher than in the villages. Once again, the BJP and its allies lost heavily among the urbanites, much more than their losses among the villagers. While the UPA

table 5: All-India Vote for major Political Formations by Locality – Lok sabha election 2009 and Change since Lok sabha election 2004Locality UPA-NDA Congress Congress Allies BJP BJP Allies Left BSP Others N

Gap Vote Share Change from Vote Share Change from Vote Share Change from Vote Share Change from Vote Share Change from Vote Share Change from Vote Share Change from 2009 2004 2009 2004 2009 2004 2009 2004 2009 2004 2009 2004 2009 2004

All Rural 10.4 29 3 6 -4 19 -2 5 -9 8 0 7 -1 26 10 21,007

All Urban 17.2 29 0 12 4 19 -7 5 -7 6 -3 5 2 25 12 4,518

Metros 7.6 30 -5 9 6 26 -6 5 -2 4 -4 4 -1 23 12 1,213

Towns 18.8 29 1 13 4 17 -8 5 -8 6 -3 5 2 25 12 6,929

All 12.2 29 3 8 -2 19 -3 5 -9 8 0 6 1 26 11 291,49(1) Data for vote share is in per cent of the respondents falling in the category mentioned in the respective row. Change in vote share and UPA-NDA gap is expressed in percentage points. A negative sign for vote change indicates loss of votes in 2009 elections compared to vote share of the party/political formation in that category in 2004. UPA-NDA gap indicates the percentage point lead for the Congress and its allies over the BJP and its allies in the respective category in 2009; a negative sign indicates the lead for NDA. All the figures have been rounded off (cut-off 0.5%) and hence the vote shares may not add up to 100 and the vote change or UPA-NDA gap figures may not cancel each other. (2) For Congress and BJP their allies of 2009 have been compared with their allies of 2004. If a party (e g, Trinamool Congress) has shifted alliances, it is counted as BJP ally in 2004 and as Congress ally in 2009. “Others” include all other parties and independents.(3) Metros refer to those cities (urban settlements) whose population is at least one million or above; All other cities/towns other than those classified as metros are clubbed here as towns.Source: National Election Study 2009, dataset weighted by actual vote share. N for each category reported in the table. Comparisons with 2004 are based on National Election Study, Dataset weighted by actual vote share. N = 22551.

themes


table 7: All-India Vote for major Political Formations by economic Class – Lok sabha election 2009 and Change since Lok sabha election 2004 Class UPA-NDA Congress Congress Allies BJP BJP Allies Left BSP Others N

Gap Vote Change Vote Change Vote Change Vote Change Vote Change Vote Change Vote Change Share from Share from Share from Share from Share from Share from Share from 2009 2004 2009 2004 2009 2004 2009 2004 2009 2004 2009 2004 2009 2004

Rich 7.5 30 5 7 1 23 -7 7 -5 4 -4 5 2 24 8 4,165

Middle 11.3 29 -1 8 0 21 -8 5 -8 6 -1 5 3 27 15 7,900

Lower 12.8 30 4 6 -4 18 -4 5 -9 7 0 6 2 29 12 8,650

Poor 15.8 27 2 9 -1 15 -5 5 -9 11 3 8 1 24 7 5,275

Very poor 13.7 25 -2 11 0 16 -2 6 -9 14 5 9 2 19 6 3,161

All 12.2 29 3 8 -2 19 -3 5 -9 8 0 6 1 26 11 29,151(1) Data for vote share is in per cent of the respondents falling in the category mentioned in the respective row. Change in vote share and UPA-NDA Gap is expressed in percentage points. A negative sign for vote change indicates loss of votes in 2009 elections compared to vote share of the party/political formation in that category in 2004. UPA-NDA gap indicates the percentage point lead for the Congress and its allies over the BJP and its allies in the respective category in 2009; a negative sign indicates the lead for NDA. All the figures have been rounded off (cut-off 0.5%) and hence the vote shares may not add up to 100 and the vote change or UPA-NDA gap figures may not cancel each other. (2) For Congress and BJP their allies of 2009 have been compared with their allies of 2004. If a party (e g, Trinamool Congress) has shifted alliances, it is counted as BJP ally in 2004 and as Congress ally in 2009. “Others” include all other parties and independents.(3) The class scheme used here takes into account two elements of material wealth – durable household assets and monthly household income. Rich were those who had either a car/jeep/tractor or colour TV, scooter, telephone, fridge and LPG (rural) or whose monthly household income was above Rs 20,000. Middle class respondents were those who had any three out of four assets such as telephone, colour TV, scooter/motor cycle and fridge in their households or whose monthly household income was above Rs 5,000 and up to Rs 20,000. Lower class respondents were those who had any three out of four assets such as B/W TV, electric fan, bicycle and LPG in their households or whose monthly household income was above Rs 2,000 and up to Rs 5,000. Poor were those who had any two out of three household assets such as electric fan, bicycle and LPG or whose monthly household income was above Rs 1,000 and up to Rs 2,000. Very poor were those who had none of the given assets in their household and whose monthly household income was upto Rs 1,000 or less.Source: National Election Study 2009, Dataset weighted by actual vote share. N for each category reported in the table. Comparisons with 2004 are based on National Election Study, Dataset weighted by actual vote share. N = 22,557.

could not benefit from the NDA’s losses in the villages, it did gain substantially in urban areas. This dual movement has produced brought about a major transformation in the political geography of the country: the urban-rural cleavage has all but ceased to matter. For the first time, the Congress and the BJP’s vote shares in urban India were no different than in rural India. Table 6

presents another estimate of votes by locality by analysing the official results by the urban-rural character of a constituency. A lthough this method offers a slightly different estimate (both the estimates need not match for they measure two slightly dif-ferent variables) for vote shares of the Congress and BJP in urban and rural areas, there is a striking similarity in the overall con-clusions: the UPA secured a higher lead among the urban voters than among rural voters, but compared to 2004 the UPA gained more in rural areas than in the urban. This reinforces the point about depolarisation.

Table 7 uses income-assets based stratification to analyse the voting pattern of economic classes. In overall terms, class contin-ues to matter, for the UPA’s lead over the NDA widens as one goes down the class ladder. Both in urban and rural India, the UPA en-joyed the highest lead among manual workers. But it matters much less than before: the range of the UPA-NDA gap among vari-ous classes is much narrower this time than in was in 2004, which was narrower than in 1999. By 2004 there was not much class slope in the vote for Congress, but the Congress allies like the RJD and the LJP brought in strong support from among the

poor. With their departure from the UPA, the alliance has a flat class profile. If anything, Congress draws more than average s upport from among the top and less than average from among the poorest of the poor. It secured lesser votes from rural agri-cultural workers’ families than from among farmers. If class continues to matter, it is because the BJP continues to draw more

votes from the better off sections and the left and the BSP draw more from among the poor. Here too, there is greater flattening than in the past. As in 2004, the BJP lost most heavily among the well to do; the Congress Party’s biggest gains came from that class. In occupational terms, the BJP lost most heavily among its traditional strongholds of urban professionals, traders and skilled workers.

Caste and Community

Finally, let us turn to the caste-community pattern of voting in Table 8 (p 41). We must begin by noting that what we present here are meta-aggregations at the national level. We have argued else-where (Yadav and Palshikar 2009b) that the effective level for the formation and operation of social cleavages is state level politics. So the analysis here suffers from artificial aggregations and is only broadly indicative of the fine grained changes that have been dis-cussed by various authors in their state level analyses elsewhere in this issue of the journal.. A quick glance at the table shows that even at this level of aggregative reporting, caste- community cleav-ages make more difference than most other d ivisions that we have

table 6: turnout, seats and Votes in 2009 Compared to 2004 by Urban, semi-Urban or Rural Nature of the ConstituencyLocality Total UPA- Ch Congress Congress Allies BJP BJP Allies Left BSP Seats NDA 2004 Won Ch Vote Ch Won Ch Vote Ch Won Ch Vote Ch Won Ch Vote Ch Won Ch Vote Ch Won Ch Vote Ch Gap 2004 2004 2004 2004 2004 2004 2004 2004 2004 2004 2004 2004

Rural 342 10.5 -0.5 116 37 26.9 3.0 31 16 7.2 2.3 66 -18 17.7 -3.9 35 14 5.9 -0.8 20 -16 8.2 -0.1 16 0 7.0 0.8

Semi urban 144 15.3 1.6 67 21 31.7 0.7 14 4 7.6 0.4 32 -9 19.1 -2.1 7 -3 4.9 -1.6 2 -14 6.0 -0.9 5 2 5.4 0.5

Urban 57 14.1 -0.2 23 3 29.8 0.8 11 5 12.2 1.5 18 5 24.8 -3.4 1 -3 3.1 -2.4 2 -6 8.5 -0.3 0 0 3.4 1.6

Total 543 12.31 0.1 206 61 28.6 2.1 56 25 7.8 1.6 116 -22 18.8 -3.4 43 8 5.3 -1.2 24 -36 7.6 -0.3 21 2 6.2 0.8(1) Urban constituency is defined as a constituency where 75% or more electors fall in urban areas, less than 25% have been classified as rural, the rest are semi-urban. Classification done for post-delimitation constituencies based on the figures for Census 2001.(2) Comparison with pre-delimitation constituencies of 2004 has been done by a matching of the new and old constituencies by the CSDS Data Unit. In most of the states fresh delimitation has meant that it is not possible to fit the old Lok Sabha constituencies perfectly to the new ones. The approach adopted here for using the old data for a group of new constituencies involves breaking down the results of Lok Sabha elections into assembly segments and then geographically matching each segment to the new Lok Sabha constituency. This involves some approximation, since in many cases areas falling in an old assembly segment now belong to two different parliamentary constituencies. Assam and Jharkhand did not require this exercise since these states did not have the new delimitation.Source: CSDS data unit, as in Table 1. Classification of seats done by CSDS data unit.

themes


table 8: All-India Vote for major Political Formations by Caste/Community – Lok sabha election 2009 and Change since Lok sabha election 2004Caste/Community UPA-NDA Congress Congress Allies BJP BJP allies Left BSP Others N

Gap Vote Change Vote Change Vote Change Vote Change Vote Change Vote Change Vote Change Share from Share from Share from Share from Share from Share from Share from 2009 2004 2009 2004 2009 2004 2009 2004 2009 2004 2009 2004 2009 2004

Upper castes -10.7 26 4 7 5 38 -4 6 -5 10 0 3 2 12 0 3,793

Peasant proprietors 15.1 25 1 13 -1 15 -11 9 -13 3 0 2 1 33 21 2,085

OBCs 24 0 7 -5 22 -1 6 -11 5 -1 3 0 34 18 10,025

Upper OBC 4.3 22 -2 9 -3 22 0 5 -13 2 -1 3 0 37 18 6,464

Lower OBC 1.5 27 3 4 -8 22 -2 7 -9 9 0 4 0 27 15 3,560

Dalit 18.7 27 1 7 -1 12 -1 3 -8 11 1 21 -1 20 10 4,447

Adivasi 21.7 39 3 8 2 23 -5 3 -2 7 0 1 0 19 2 2,139

Muslim 41.8 38 2 9 -5 4 -3 2 -2 12 3 6 3 29 2 3,678

Christian 36.9 38 -1 9 -5 6 0 4 -11 11 0 1 0 32 17 872

Sikh -2.6 41 16 2 1 10 -8 36 7 2 -6 3 -2 7 -7 623

Others 13.1 26 3 10 4 21 -12 5 -9 12 -1 9 5 21 11 1,494

All 12.2 29 3 8 -2 19 -3 5 -9 8 0 6 1 26 11 29,155(1) Data for vote share is in per cent of the respondents falling in the category mentioned in the respective row. Change in vote share and UPA-NDA Gap is expressed in percentage points. A negative signs for vote change indicate loss of votes in 2009 elections compared to vote share of the party/political formation in that category in 2004. UPA-NDA gap indicates the percentage point lead for the Congress and its allies over the BJP and its allies in the respective category in 2009; a negative sign indicates the lead for NDA. All the figures have been rounded off (cut-off 0.5%) and hence the vote shares may not add up to 100 and the vote change or UPA-NDA gap figures may not cancel each other. (2) For Congress and BJP their allies of 2009 have been compared with their allies of 2004. If a party (e g, Trinamool Congress) has shifted alliances, it is counted as BJP ally in 2004 and as Congress ally in 2009. “Others” include all other parties and independents.(3) Upper castes are those who occupy the upper-most rung of social hierarchy (e g, brahmin, rajput, etc). Peasant proprietors also belong to upper stratum of social hierarchy but they are landowning groups within the upper castes fold. OBCs are neither upper castes nor ex-untouchables yet they occupy relatively lower rungs of socio-economic hierarchy in relation to upper castes and they are thus seen as middle castes. Upper OBCs are those who are basically medium/small peasants and are relatively well off compared to lower OBCs who are primarily not peasant group within OBCs. Dalits are ex-untouchables, facing social segregation and do occupy the lowest rung of social hierarchy. Adivasis are aboriginal people who face geographical isolation and primarily live in forest areas or on hilly terrain. Muslims, Christians and Sikhs are the followers of Islam, Christianity and Sikhism, respectively. Upper castes, Peasant proprietors, OBCs and Dalits relate to Hindus only. Those belonging to Muslim, Christian and Sikh but reported themselves as dalit or adivasi were identified by their respective religion and not by their reported caste/tribe.Source: National Election Study 2009, Dataset weighted by actual vote share. N for each category reported in the table. Comparisons with 2004 are based on National Election Study, Dataset weighted by actual vote share. N = 22,559.

discussed so far. At the same time, a c omparison with 2004 indi-cates a trend towards depolarisation. By and large various parties have done relatively worse in their “vote banks” and have done relatively better among other social groups.

The changing voting pattern of the upper caste Hindus is a case in point. This was the only social group in our categorisation in 2009 where the NDA had a substantial lead over the UPA. But this information hides a vital change. In 1999, the BJP on its own se-cured nearly half of the upper caste votes all over the country. In 2004 and now, again in 2009, it lost more heavily among this group than elsewhere. In both these elections the Congress Party’s gains among this group were higher than its average gains. The BJP’s loss of some of its major regional allies has cost it dearly in terms of its support among the (non-OBC) peasant proprietor communities and among the (largely peasant) upper OBCs. A lthough this has not resulted in any significant gains to the UPA, the losses for the NDA have resulted in a major shift of pattern in 2004 and the UPA now has a clear lead among the peasant proprietors. As for the up-per OBCs, the UPA too has suffered losses as a result of losing pow-erful allies like RJD, but it is still marginally ahead of the NDA. A similar picture obtains of the lower (largely service and artisan) OBCs where the BJP has lost more than the Congress. The BJP’s own losses here are still lower than average in this group that moved to it in the wake of Ram Janmabhoomi mobilisation, but the process of demobilisation has begun here. In 2004, the NDA had secured a lead over the UPA among all these “caste Hindu” groups; this time the UPA has taken a lead in all these groups save the upper caste, and the NDA has suffered more serious setbacks here.

In 2004, the UPA had saved the day by taking a big lead among non-caste Hindu communities. This time too, the UPA has retained an edge here, but there are no signs of further consolidation. This is in tune with the earlier analysis of the dalit voting patterns (Palshikar 2007) and the note on dalit vote in this issue by Rahul

Verma reiterates the same point. If the UPA enjoys a big lead over the NDA among the dalits it is only because the BJP has a poor base to start with. Otherwise the Congress has continued the trend of a consistent decline in its support base among d alits. Interestingly, the BSP too did not gain in its share of votes among dalits.

The Congress has gained more than its average among the a divasis, but that is primarily a correction of the major losses the Congress suffered in this group in 2004. The Congress’ share of adivasi vote remains still lower than what it had in 1999 and as Divya Vaid shows in her piece in this issue, there is a certain skew in the adivasi support enjoyed by the Congress.

The Christian vote has also moved away from polarisation: while the UPA continues to maintain a big lead over the NDA, in the last two elections the UPA’s level of support among the Chris-tian voters has fallen. Among the Sikhs, depolarisation takes the opposite route: the Congress has improved its dismal share of votes among the Sikhs in 2004 and in a big way in 2009 so as to catch up with the BJP-Akali combine.

In the case of the Muslims, it might seem that there is greater polarisation as the NDA’s meagre share has fallen further. Yet there is no polarisation of votes in favour of the Congress. As San-jeer Alam argues in his article, the depolarisation of the Muslim vote took different directions in different states of the country. The presumed monopoly of the Muslim vote in different parts of the country (for the SP in UP, for the RJD in Bihar, for the left in West Bengal and for the Congress in Assam and many other states) was challenged in different states by different formations. The net outcome at the national level, contrary to popular specu-lation about the grand return of the Muslims to the Congress, is a m odest 2 percentage point increase in the Congress’ share of Muslim votes, lower than its overall gains. The UPA as a whole lost about 4 percentage points among the Muslims largely as a result of dissociating from the RJD.

themes


table 9: Number of seats ‘effectively’ Contested by Congress, BJP and their Allies, Lok sabha elections (1999-2009)

Number of Lok Sabha Seats Effectively Contested

Lok Sabha Election 1999 2004 2009

Congress 352 325 362

Congress allies 73 108 88

Congress + allies 425 433 450

BJP 313 302 248

BJP allies 180 166 73

BJP + allies 493 468 321A party is defined to have “effectively” contested a seat if it has finished either the winner or the runner-up or has obtained at least 20% of the votes polled in a constituency. The basic idea is that the party should have had at least a fair chance of winning that seat.Source: Computed by CSDS data unit from official returns.

Thus, the shift that was discernible in 2004 appears to have been completed in 2009. The NDA’s famous victory in 1999 represented the height of the BJP’s success in creating a “new so-cial bloc”. The core of this bloc comprised voters from the upper end of the social pyramid, a coalition of the privileged, which al-lowed the party to draw heavily from this smaller pool of poten-tial voters. This section had acquired an enlarged ambition in the post-liberalisation period and discovered a new voice through the media. The Ram Janmabhoomi movement enabled the party to staple on to its core a section of the underprivileged, like lower OBCs and adivasis who were in search of political identity. The third component was the supplement brought in by the allies that comprised the peasant proprietor communities and the peasant OBCs. A residue of non-Congressism coupled with the format of political competition in different states made such a grand alli-ance possible. The making of this bloc was perhaps a historical accident that happened without much design. The BJP made use of an opportunity that presented itself of connecting to certain social groups that were available for ad hoc mobilisation. The party happened to preside over a period of uncertainty and flux for many social groups.

It required a high degree of mobilisation and polarisation to sustain this social bloc. Keeping the loyalty of the socially and politically mobile middle classes was always going to be a chal-lenge (Palshikar: 2003b). It required ingenuous politics to convert ad hoc acquisitions of the underprivileged into an enduring political bloc. And it required statesman-like leadership to sus-tain a coalition with allies who drew upon a very different social base that often included the Muslims. In retrospect it seems that the BJP simply could not rise up to this challenge. The story since 1999 is that of depolarisation of this bloc: the core bloc of the priv-ileged has started drifting away from the BJP to the Congress, de-mobilisation appears to have set in for the social groups that had been stapled and the supplementary groups have simply walked away with the allies. To be sure, this is not a post-Vajpayee devel-opment. This depolarisation had started before 2004 and has moved substantially since and affected the outcome of the 2009. Since this period of demobilisation of the BJP’s new social bloc happens to coincide with the exhaustion of the post-Mandal par-ties, much of the political dividends of this process has accrued to the Congress. As in the case of a shift within the third electoral system, the Congress happens to be the beneficiary of something that it cannot take much credit for. This cannot be described as pure luck, but would still fall under the domain of fortuna.

5 strategy and tactics: how the UPA Did Not Get everything Right

The discussion in Sections 3 and 4 suggests that between 2004 and 2009, the competitive system had altered to the advantage of the Congress and the social basis of politics had shifted to the disadvantage of the BJP. These shifts were very gradual and did not by themselves assure the Congress and its allies of a victory. But they did offer an unusual opportunity to a ruling party, an opportunity not of its making, to build on this advantage and manufacture the kind of majority no party had secured since 1984. It is not clear if the Congress leadership fully grasped this

opportunity intellectually, let alone politically. For Machiavelli, understanding his fortuna well was an essential part of the virtu that a prince must possess. In the end the Congress made partial use of this extraordinary opportunity and could sail through in the absence of any imaginative move by the opposition.

The Congress Party’s success was not because it engineered the shift in the system. As we have already discussed, these changes were not of the making of the Congress or any other po-litical formation. If anything, the BJP had more to contribute to its misfortune, by missing the historic opportunity to consolidate its new social bloc. Nor did the Congress succeed because of its superiority in the field of campaign management; spin doctoring, candidate selection and grassroot level campaigning. As we shall discuss below, these were weak points rather than strengths of the Congress. The Congress’ strength lay in the middle range of p olitical developments – in the space between transformative politics on the one hand and day to day politicking on the other – over the past five years. The Congress leadership skilfully used the opportunities offered by economic growth and revenue buoy-ancy by deploying the symbolism of the aam adami and by de-signing some potentially far reaching welfare pol-icies that signified a de-parture from the domi-nant economic policy discourse of the last dec-ade and a half, even if it did not manage to ensure that the benefits of these programmes reached the targeted beneficiaries. Coinciding with the emerging sensitivity to issues of governance, the party ensured a moder-ately positive though not spectacular record of its government at the centre, at least a record that compared favourably in the mir-ror of public opinion with that of the NDA. Finally, the Congress managed to retain the edge in the leadership race that it suddenly acquired after the retirement of Vajpayee and Sonia Gandhi’s r efusal to take up the post of the prime minister.

While it would be a mistake to read a grand political design behind this success in the middle range of political action, it may not be correct to read these as a series of coincidences either. Something of an intuitive political understanding appears to have guided a series of small but vital decisions by the Congress leaders from 2004 to 2009: a correct reading of the effects of economic reforms and the deployment of the aam adami language in 2004, aseries of pro-people legislative and policy initiatives (the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, the Right to I nformation Act, the Forest Act, and so on), deft handling of the terrorist attack issue that did not disappoint the middle class; S onia Gandhi’s decision not to become the prime minister, the consistent refusal of Rahul Gandhi to get involved in government and coalition management that was different from what the NDA did. Something of this contributed to the eventual and limited

themes


table 10: Net effect of Changes in Alliances for UPA and NDA (2004-09)

UPA NDA

Seats Votes (%) Seats Votes (%)

New allies added in 2009 23 3.5 6 1.2

Old allies of 2004 dropped 7 3.3 48 9.0

Net gain/loss +16 0.2 -40 -7.8All figures of loss and gain of votes are in percentage points. New and old allies refer to pre-poll allies. UPA’s new allies in 2009 include: JKNC, VCK and TMC; old allies dropped include RJD, LJP, MDMK, PMK, JKPDP, TRS and Arunachal Congress. NDA’s new allies in 2009 were AGP, INLD and RLD. Old allies dropped include TDP, AIADMK, BJD and TMC.Source: CSDS data unit, computed from official results.

success of the Congress. At any rate this is the only element of the verdict that the Congress can take some credit for.

shifting Alliances

Alliances were not as vital to the eventual outcome of this election as they were to the election in 2004, but as K K Kailash argues in this collection, the presence or absence of alliances made a differ-ence to a greater number of constituencies than we imagine.

Tables 9 (p 42) and 10 present the final impact of shifting alliances on the outcome of this election. The Congress’ loss of allies in 2009 meant that the number of effective seats contested (seats where the

party finished winner, runner-up or secured one-fifth or more votes) by the allies of the Congress came down from 108 to 88 this time, but the Congress made up by contesting more effective seats on its own. The Congress Party’s new allies brought in as many votes as were polled by those who were no longer with the Congress this time. So, in terms of votes the UPA remained un affected by the changes in its composition. The spectacular p erformance of the new ally TMC and the dismal show by the RJD-LJP combine meant that the UPA actually posted a net gain of 16 seats by shifting its allies.

The NDA was the real loser in this respect with the departure of the four big allies, viz, TDP, TMC, AIADMK and the BJD. Table 9 shows how the NDA has been shrinking from its peak in 1999. The BJP and its allies effectively contested only 321 seats this time, compared to 493 in 1999 and 468 in 2004. Much of the decline came because the number of seats effectively contested by the al-lies dropped from 166 in 2004 to merely 73 this time. A smaller pool also meant a loss of votes and seats, even though the BJP managed to attract some smaller allies like the Asom Gan Parishad (AGP), Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) and the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD). Changes in the composition of the NDA meant a net loss of 42 seats and nearly 8 percentage points of national votes. To be sure, an effective alliance alone would not have changed the for-tunes of the BJP. Even if we compare the vote shares of the allies who constituted the NDA in 2009 and compare these to their votes in 2004, there is a substantial fall of 4. 5 percentage points. But if the BJP had managed to retain the NDA of 2004, the gap between the UPA and the NDA would have been much narrower.

Governance Record

In one respect, the evidence on public opinion on the record of the UPA government is unambiguous. Table 11 shows that the UPA government was rated positively by the electorate: the ratio be-tween those who were satisfied and those who were not is 3:1. More people wanted this government to get another chance than those who did not. It is also clear that in this respect this govern-ment fared better than the NDA government headed by Vajpayee,

which was a generally popular government (Table 12). The clinch-ing evidence comes from the question that asked r espondents to compare the NDA and the UPA government: the verdict was 1.56: 1 in favour of the UPA.

What is less clear is people’s reasons to be positively disposed towards the UPA government. K C Suri’s meticulous analysis, in this issue collection, of the impact of the economy on this election clearly establishes that the positive assessment of the UPA gov-ernment has a stronger association with peoples’ assessment of the changes in household economic conditions and to a lesser ex-tent with that of the country’s economy than with the conven-tional socio-demographic variables. He also establishes a connec-tion between voting for UPA and the positive assessment of the household economy. That is to be expected for a government which presided over a period of the national economy when the growth rate was very high for the first four years. But it is still not clear what the mechanism of this evaluation was in a country where a majority of the population remains outside the direct benefits of growth in the organised sector.

One possible connect could be the flagship schemes of the UPA which sought to target the aam admi. Table 13 (p 44) presents the findings of NES 2009 for the level of awareness and extent of ben-efits among the targeted group. It is clear that more people had heard of at least three of these schemes – the National Rural Em-ployment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), farm loan waiver and the

table 11: Popular Assessment of the UPA Central Government and Its Comparison with NDA Government (2004-09)

Ratio of Satisfaction Ratio of Preference for UPA Ratio of Desire to Give Central with Central Government Government Over NDA Government Another Chance

Post-poll 2004 2.04 NA 1.60

January 2006 3.81 1.42 NA

August 2006 3.09 1.46 1.54

January 2007 3.81 1.54 1.20

August 2007 2.86 1.18 1.11

January 2009 3.14 1.43 1.50

Post-poll 2009 3.10 1.56 1.20Ratio of satisfaction is the percentage of the respondents saying that they were”satisfied” or “very satisfied” with the working of the central government divided by percentage of those who said they were “dissatisfied” or “very dissatisfied”. The ratio of the preference for UPA government over NDA government is the percentage of those who said they find the current UPA government better than the previous UPA government. Ratio of desire to give central government another chance is the percentage of those who wanted to give the existing central government another chance divided by those who were against this. Figures for 2004 are for then NDA government. NA stands for Not Available as the relevant question was not asked in that round of survey. Source: The data for Post-Poll 2004 and 2009 is from National Election Study (NES) 2004 and 2009. The rest of the data is from the different rounds of the nationwide CNN-IBN State of the Nation Survey conducted by CSDS.

table 12: Popular Assessment of Performance of Incumbent Central Government: UPA and NDA ComparedThose Who Say… Post-Poll Survey 2004 Post-Poll Survey 2009

Positive Negative Positive Negative Response Response Response Response

Satisfied with the performance of the incumbent (NDA/UPA) central government 57 28 64 21

The incumbent (NDA/UPA) central government should get another chance 48 30 54 46All figures in percentages. Positive response for the first question is “Satisfied” and the negative response is “Dissatisfied”; the rest are DK. In the second question, the positive and negative responses are simply “Yes” and “No”. In 2004 there was an option of DK which accounts for the remaining responses.Questions: “What is your opinion about the performance of the Congress-led UPA government/BJP-led NDA government during the last five years – would you say that you are satisfied or dissatisfied with it?” “Should the Congress-led UPA government/Vajpayee-led NDA government at the centre get another chance?”Source: National Election Study 2004, N = 27,189; National Election Study 2009, weighted data set, N = 36,314.

themes


mid-day meal scheme – than is usually the case with governmen-tal schemes. The proportion of beneficiaries was much smaller, thought not insubstantial, and would have no doubt c ontributed to the general goodwill for the government. But the evidence also shows that schemes like the NREGS were very poorly targeted –

the poorest of the poor and the agricultural l abour benefited less from the scheme than others in rural India – and may not have helped as much as they could have.

The final question that still remains to be answered is whether evaluation of the government recorded in post-poll surveys is an independent assessment of the voters or simply a rationalisation of the way they voted. In other words: do people vote the party whose government they liked, or do they say they like the gov-ernment whose party they have voted for? In the absence of greater research on this question it is not easy to assign any causal weight to the governance factor.

Leadership Rating

Given the media’s usual tendency to reduce a process to an event and an event to an individual, much of the election coverage and post-mortem by the media has been centred on the question of the leadership of the Congress and the BJP. But it is not clear if the media’s focus reflected popular attention. When asked to give reasons for why they voted the way they did for a party, only 30% of the respondents mentioned leadership.

Table 14 reports long-term trends in popular rating of the vari-ous prime ministerial contenders, ascertained through identical open-ended questions through a series of surveys. It brings out a basic shift in popular perception of the leaders after the retire-ment of Atal Behari Vajpayee. His fading away from public life created a vacuum that no BJP leader could fill. Unlike Vajpayee, whose popularity was much above that of his party, Advani’s rat-ing was merely 14 points at the end of the campaign. As a result the cumulative PM rating for all the BJP leaders has experienced a sharp decline, from being just below 40% to just above 20%. The vacuum left by Vajpayee’s withdrawal has been filled by Congress trinity of Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh and now Rahul Gandhi. The combined popularity of all the Congress leaders has stayed around or above 40 points since 2006. Rahul Gandhi’s popularity increased in the run-up to the election, but largely because loyal Congress supporters shifted from Sonia to him; as yet there is no evidence of his bringing fresh support to the Congress basket.

A direct comparison between Manmohan Singh, L K Advani and Mayawati, the three leading contenders for the PM’s position this time, allows us to make a clear analysis. In a direct face-off, Manmohan Singh finished about 10 points ahead of Advani. Mayawati was way behind, but well above her party’s level of popular support. While leadership does not appear to have been the driving force in this election, to the extent to which it mat-tered, it worked for the Congress. For the first time in the post Rajiv Gandhi era, the Congress had a credible looking set of lead-ers, not quite charismatic but non-sectarian, non-controversial and not identified with any region of the country.

Campaign effect?

Since the media tends to focus on politics during the election campaign, it tends to assume that political choices get formed during this period. Hence a great deal of emphasis in the elec-toral post-mortem on what went wrong with the BJP during its campaign. Going by the media coverage of this election, it was a very keen contest right from the beginning till the very end. J ournalistic estimates that did not use any survey inputs thought the contest projected an outcome that was too close to call. Once the ban on exit polls came into being, it removed the possibility

table 14: Leader most Preferred to Be the Pm (1996-2009)

Manmohan Singh Sonia Gandhi Rahul Gandhi All from Atal Behari L K Advani Narendra Modi All from BJP Mayawati Mulayam Sharad Pawar Lalu Prasad N Congress Vajpayee Singh Yadav Yadav

1996 - - - 16 20 1 - 21 - - - - 9,616

1998 0 16 - 19 28 1 - 29 - 3 2 2 8,133

1999 0 26 - 26 37 0 1 37 1 2 2 1 9,436

2004 1 26 1 28 38 0 0 39 3 2 1 1 27,118

January 2006 9 24 1 37 20 2 1 23 3 2 1 1 15,137

August 2006 12 27 2 44 18 2 1 22 3 2 1 1 14,671

January 2007 11 28 2 45 19 2 1 24 3 3 1 2 15,327

September 2007 12 22 3 39 20 3 2 27 4 2 1 1 18,750

January 2009 12 20 6 42 9 10 3 24 5 3 1 2 14,798

May 2009 17 15 6 41 3 14 2 22 5 2 2 1 36,283(1) All figures in per cent of all the respondents. The rows for each year do not add up to 100 for names of other leaders, leaders who were not in our code book, do not know and no opinion on PM choice has also been considered as an opinion in preparation of this table. (-) Refers that these names were not there in our code book that year. (2) Category “all from Congress” and “all from BJP” also include the party leaders mentioned in the table and all others not separately mentioned in the table. In NES 1996, P V Narashima Rao was preferred for the top post by 16% respondents and another 6% each chose V P Singh and H D Deve Gowda. In NES 1998, I K Gujral was preferred for the top post by 4% respondents and another 2% preferred Jyoti Basu. In NES 1999, Jyoti Basu was preferred for the top post by 4% respondents.(3) Question wording: After this election who would you prefer as the next prime minister of India? The question on PM choice in all surveys has been an open ended question with strict instruction against supplying any name. Source: Data for 1996, 1998, 1999, 2004 and May 2009 is from the National Election Studies Survey and 2006 and 2007 is from State of the Nation Surveys.

table 13: Awareness and Benefit of UPA Flagship schemes among the target Groups (2009)

In % Heard Heard Have N and But Not Not Benefited Benefited Heard

Indira Gandhi Old Age Pension Scheme 27 24 50 176

NREGS Rural poor 31 38 31 1,643

Rural very poor 29 32 39 1,786

Farm loan waiver 25 41 34 2,275

Mid-day meal scheme 41 33 26 6,346

National Health Insurance Scheme 14 30 56 7,157All figures in per cent of the relevant target group of each scheme. For Indira Gandhi Old Age Pension Scheme the sample is all those who are above 65 years of age and belong to the “poor” and the “very poor” category. For NREGS the relevant categories are those who belong to the rural poor and rural very poor. For farm loan waiver all those who belong to agriculture related activities. For mid-day meal scheme the relevant category is all those who are married, widowed, divorced or deserted with children in their family. For National Health Insurance Scheme the relevant category is all respondents.Source: NES 2009, N mentioned against each category.

themes


of any correctives to this popular impression till some exit polls and the findings of the NES were released after the last round of elections. Thus, when the final result showed a huge lead for the Congress and a near majority for the UPA, it was natural to a ssume that something dramatic had taken place in the last stage of the elections to give the Congress this kind of an edge.

A careful sifting through three independent sources of evidence does not, however, support this impression. The first source of in-formation is the six monthly political barometer, the State of the Nation Survey (SONS), that the CSDS carried out in collaboration with CNN-IBN. Table 15 reports the unadjusted data gathered by all the rounds of SONS between 2006 and 2009. All these rounds were reported in the media with adjustment for reporting bias and as per the then composition of the NDA.2 But if we were to retro-spectively use the definition of the UPA and the NDA as they existed in 2009 to understand the trend of political preferences, it is clear that the UPA had established a huge lead over the NDA by 2006.

The second piece of evidence comes from an analysis of the various phases of elections presented in Table 16. A first look at the table might suggest as if the UPA gained substantially in the last two rounds of polling. When the results of each of these states are disaggregated by the phases of polling, we do not find the same pattern holding. There is reason to think that the UPA doing well in the last two phases was more a function of the states or regions that were scheduled to vote towards the end rather than a function of the passage of campaign time.

Finally, a more direct evidence for the effect of campaign can be had by the voters’ self-reported timing of the voting decision. Table 17 presents the analysis of voting preference by self- reported timing of voting decisions. Though somewhat unreliable as a source of information about when voters make up their mind, this is a useful tool to examine the effect of campaign among the voters. The survey evidence, however, shows that far from losing,

the NDA may have actually gained through the campaign. The UPA enjoyed a bigger lead among those who reported making up their mind before the campaign began than among those who made up their mind during the campaign.

tactical Choices

To say that election did not change its course during the campaign is not to say that issues did not matter. As Praveen Rai’s paper a rgues, some of the issues did matter with the people. But the o pposition did not succeed in focusing the election on any of the issues that could be potentially embarrassing to the government. The only thing for which one can give credit to the government is its management of the fallout of Mumbai attack. The government’s response drew positive response from even the NDA voters and thus did not become an issue. Finally, to say that the UPA main-tained its lead in the final phase is not to imply that the UPA made the best choices during the election. Indeed, media coverage be-fore and during the campaign was full of reports on internal sabo-tage, factional fights, poor selection of candidates and a lacklustre campaign by the Congress and its allies.3 On b alance there were fewer reports of the same from the BJP camp. All this has been conveniently forgotten after the election results were known.

Lenin introduced a vital distinction between strategy and t actics in politics. Strategy was the higher domain of analysing social classes and identifying class allies and enemies, so as to chart out the approach to revolutionary action. Tactics was the specific ap-plication of this strategy to concrete situations, events and organi-sations. Something of this distinction is relevant to understanding what was right and wrong for major players in this election. On balance, the Congress did get its political strategy about right even though its political tactics were often off the mark or not in sync with its own strategic objectives. This combination of good plan-ning and poor execution on the ground meant that the Congress could not do full justice to the opportunity that presented itself.

The BJP, on the other hand, did not get its tactics as horribly wrong as it is made out to be now; on balance its campaign tactics were smarter than those of the Congress. Yet its basic political strat-egy was not in line with the shifting structure of opportunities that history presented it with. The same could be said about the left and the BSP. With the partial exception of Kerala, the CPI(M) did not get its tactics wrong. The real problem lay in its overall political strat-egy of aligning the establishment that it presided over with the revolutionary objectives that it espoused. The BSP had all the tac-tics but virtually no strategy for retaining and expanding its newly found non-dalit voters and to take itself b eyond UP. In this context, the Congress leadership’s capacity to ensure that the party was not

table 15: trends of Voting Preference for major Parties (2004-09)

Congress Congress Allies BJP BJP Allies Left BSP

Lok Sabha 2004 26.4 10.1 22.2 13.7 8.0 5.3

SONS January 2006 37.0 3.5 23.1 4.3 6.7 5.7

SONS August 2006 41.3 3.0 23.7 3.1 7.0 5.1

SONS January 2007 38.0 3.8 22.9 4.4 6.6 4.9

SONS September 2007 35.7 3.8 23.2 5.2 7.9 4.9

SONS January 2009 38.2 3.4 25.5 4.0 6.3 4.7

Lok Sabha 2009 28.6 7.8 18.8 5.3 7.6 6.2 The definitions of the Congress and BJP allies are as per the final picture of alliances in the 2009 elections.Source: Figures for 2004 and 2009 are of the final official outcome of election. Figures from 2006 to 2009 are from State of the Nation Surveys.

table 16: swing for UPA in select states by Phases of elections (2004-09)

Swing for UPA Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3 Phase 4 Phase 5

All India 3.6 -0.4 3.0 6.9 7.2

Uttar Pradesh -1.7 7.7 12.7 2.2 10.3

Bihar 1.5 8.4 3.9 5.9 -

Maharashtra 4.3 -1.4 -11.9

West Bengal 6.0 10.8 14.0“Swing for UPA” here stands for percentage points change in the share of valid votes for Congress and its allies in 2009. Wherever the alliances are different in 2004, we have taken the 2009 alliance definition for strict comparison. If we take UPA in 2004 to mean Congress and it is the then allies, the “swing” for different phases is: -1.5 for phase 1, -8.4 for phase 2, -0.9 for phase 3, 9.9 for phase 4 and 5.6 for phase 5. Phases of elections here refer to constituencies that went to polls in the given phase in 2009.Source: Computed by CSDS data unit on the basis of simulated results for 2004 on the new post-delimitation boundaries.

table 17: timing of Voting Decision of UPA Voters by Phase of Polling time for Deciding Whom to Vote for by Vote UPA NDA Left Others N

All 36.4 24.1 7.6 31.9 29,153

Before campaign started 40 21 9 30 11,159

During campaign 33 26 9 32 7,348

A day or two before voting 33 27 4 36 3,857

On the day of voting 35 28 4 33 4,151

Cannot say 37 24 6 33 2,638Source: National Election Study – 2009; Weighted Data Set, N mentioned against each row.Question: When did you finally make up your mind about whom to vote?

themes


fundamentally misaligned with the opportunity space available to it and a couple of correct tactical decisions turned out to be more of a virtu than it would in any other time.

Concluding Observations

In the first flush of analytical excitement Meghnad Desai (2009) claimed: “The 2009 election results are a milestone and will shape the politics of India for the next generation”. While it is too early to rule out such a possibility, the reading offered in this essay makes this a much less plausible possibility. If the Congress were to use this historic opportunity and if others were to miss it altogether, then this could well be a transformative moment in Indian politics. If that happens, in retrospect the verdict of 2009 would surely look like a milestone that marked the end of the third electoral system. On the other hand, if the BJP or more than one of the parties con-tending for the third or fourth space grasp the challenge of expan-sion, the Congress victory could prove to be a short-lived electoral fluke, leaving the party with a lot of l eisure to reflect upon the chances missed. At this stage, both these possibilities appear un-likely. Neither the Congress nor the leading opposition parties have

shown the capacity to learn from this verdict. On the one hand, the rise of the third electoral s ystem has multiplied the arenas of politi-cal competition; raised the complexity of democratic politics; and increased manifold the demands on the skills of political leaders. On the other hand, a generational transition in politics and the ab-sence of ideological renewal have led to a shrinkage of political imagination and d eterioration in the quality of political judgment. This historical paradox creates conditions for a closure of political possibilities or at least a narrowing of possibilities of politics as the most d ynamic force of social transformation that India witnessed in the 20th century.

For Machiavelli, a republican by conviction, a difficult situation like this called for a prince. For Antonio Gramsci, one of the most creative modern interpreters of Machiavelli, the prince was not a person but an allegory, a myth, a fantasy that served to r emind us of the power of “collective will” (Gramsci 1971). G ramsci used the symbol of the “modern prince” to disguise a reference to a revolu-tionary political party, but it could well be interpreted as a plea to reinvigorate politics “as an autonomous activity”, to reinforce p olitical judgment and to rediscover the role of virtu in politics.4

Notes

1 This article draws upon a reading of this tradition in general and Machiavelli in particular offered by Quentin Skinner and J G A Pocock. Arguing against the prevailing ahistorical reading of Machiavelli’s texts, they presented him as a r epublican thinker who belonged to the civic h umanist tradition.

2 The data was reported on CNN-IBN and various print partners. Table 22.8 in Yadav and Palshikar (2009) records the vote shares for various rounds of SONS as reported in the media. The figures re-ported here are different as it uses the final alli-ance definitions of UPA and NDA as they existed in 2009; the various rounds of SONS assumed that the alliances of 2004 may hold. The SONS figures were also adjusted by various techniques to account for the over-reporting for the ruling party. The reported data for the final round of SONS (January 2009) were 36.6% for UPA and 29.4 for NDA. If we take into account the switch of TMC from NDA to UPA and the decision of the BJD to leave NDA (both of these took place after the final round of SONS), the difference between UPA and NDA was about the same as in the fi nal result.

3 For example, see the following reports: “Troubles-pots May Spell Trouble for Congress”, Times of I ndia (16 April 2009), “Few Shining Stars Mean Campaign Blues for Congress”, The Indian Express (24 April 2009), “Bhitarghat ke karan Congress ka Bhajpa ke ghadh mein sendh lagana muskil”, Jansatta (28 April 2009), “Bagi Dagi Neta ki W apsi karne mein juti Congress wa Bhajpa”, Jansatta (8 April 2009), “Infighting and Polls: Congress Fights Twin Battle in Haryana”, The Hindu (11 April 2009), “Hiccups Still in Congress- NCP Alliance in Maharashtra”, The Hindu (22 March 2009), “Andhra Cong Split Down the Middle” (23 March 2009), The Indian Express.

4 Again, it is beyond the scope of this essay to enter into an interpretative dispute about reading Gramsci. But the suggestion made here is not very implausible and draws upon Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks.

References

AM (2009): “The State of the CPI(M) in West Bengal”, Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 44, No 30, 25 July, pp 8-13.

Basu, Deepankar (2009): “The Left and the 15th Lok Sabha Elections”, Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 44, No 22, 30 May, pp 10-14.

Bhattacharya, Arya K (2009): “BJP Ideology Has Not Failed: An Analysis of Congress Win in 2009”, O rganiser, 21 June, http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=296&page=35 (accessed 4 Septem-ber 2009).

Bisaria, Subhash (2009): “BJP Lost Because of Hostile Media”, Organiser, 21 June, http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=296&page=29 (accessed 4 Sep-tember 2009).

Chishti, Seema (2009): “The Verdict”, The Indian Express, 22 May.

Desai, Meghnad (2009): “An Idea: A Left-Cong M erger”, The Indian Express, 31 May.

Deshpande, Rajeshwari (2004): “How Gendered Was Women’s Participation in 2004?”, Economic & P olitical Weekly, Vol 39, No 51, 18 December, pp 5431-36.

Gramsci, Antonio (1971): “The Modern Prince” from Selections from the Prison Notebooks; Translated: Quintin Hoare (New York: International Publish-er); Online Version: Antonio Gramsci Internet A rchive (marxists.org) 2000, http://www2.cddc.vt.edu/marxists/archive/gramsci/editions/spn/modern_prince/ch01.htm

Jaitley, Arun (2009): “Triumph of the Moderate”, The Indian Express, 27 May.

Kamath, M V (2009): “Congress Win a Fluke or Real?”, Organiser, 7 June, http://www.organiser.org/dy-namic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=294&page=13 (accessed 4 September 2009).

Kohli, Atul (2009): “What Are You Calling a ‘Historic Mandate’?”, The Indian Express, 19 May.

Palshikar, Suhas (2003a): “The Regional Parties and Democracy: Romantic Rendezvous or Localised Legitimation?” in Ajay K Mehra, D D Khanna and Gert W Kueck (ed.), 2003, Political Parties and Party Systems (New Delhi: Sage), pp 306-35.

– (2003b): “Politics of India’s Middle Classes” in I mtiaz Ahmad and Helmut Reifeld (ed.), 2003, Middle Class Values in India and Western Europe (New Delhi: Social Science Press), pp 171-93.

– (2007): “Dalit Politics in the Nineties: Electoral Politics and Predicament before an Underprivi-leged Community”, Indian Journal of Social Work, Vol 68, No 1, January, pp 101-29.

– (2009): “Tentative Emergence of a New and Ten-tative Coalition?”, Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 44, No 21, 23 May, pp 8-10.

Patnaik, Prabhat (2009): “Reflections on the Left”, Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 44, No 28, 11 July, pp 8-10.

Pocock, J G A (1975): The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic R epublican Tradition, Princeton University Press.

Polit Bureau Statement On Lok Sabha Polls (2009): People’s Democracy, Vol XXXIII (20), 24 May, http://pd.cpim.org/2009/0524_pd/05242009_1.html (accessed on 9 September 2009).

Rangarajan, Mahesh (2009): “Regional Politics Shuf-fled, Dealt Again”, Asian Age, 20 May.

Sardesai, Rajdeep (2009): “Manmohan Singh: A Natu-ral Born Leader”, Hindustan Times, 17 May.

Skinner, Quentin (1978): The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Volume I: The Renaissance Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sheth, D L (1999): “Secularisation of Caste and Making of New Middle Class”, Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 34, No 35, 21-28 August, pp 2502-10.

Shourie, Arun (2009): “New Beginnings?”, The Indian Express, 15 June.

Subramaniam, Vidya (2009): “The Coming of Age of Rahul”, The Hindu, 17 May.

Varshney, Ashutosh (2009): “India Returns to the Grand Old Party”, Financial Times, 16 May.

Vyas, Neena (2009): “Behind the BJP’s Defeat: All Noise and Negativity”, The Hindu, 21 May 21.

Yadav, Yogendra (1996): “Reconfiguration in Indian Politics: State Assembly Elections 1993-95”, Eco-nomic & Political Weekly, Vol 31, Nos 2 and 3, 13-20 January, pp 95-104.

– (1999): “India’s Third Electoral System: 1989-99”, Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 34, Nos 34 and 35, 21-28 August , pp 2393-99.

– (2009): “Making Sense of the Verdict”, The Hindu, 18 May.

– (2009): “The Elusive Mandate of 2004: An Over-view” in Shastri Sandeep, K C Suri and Yogendra Yadav (ed.), Electoral Politics in Indian States (New Delhi: OUP), pp 1-45.

Yadav, Yogendra and Suhas Palshikar (2009a): “Re-visiting ‘Third Electoral System’: Mapping Elec-toral Trends in India, 2004-09” in Shastri et al (2009), op cit, pp 393-429.

– (2009b): “Ten Theses on State Politics in India” in Shastri et al (2009), op cit, pp 46-63.

explaining 2009 verdict

Documents