RAJESH SINGH breaks down the politics at play in five States that go to polls in February-March — Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa, and Manipur — and how the results will be critical in shaping the contours of power at various levels in India
March 11 will be an important date in Indian politics, certainly among the most important in 2017. Results of five State Assembly elections will be known on that day. And these are not politically insignificant States but are critical to shaping the contours of power at various levels.
The questions that the results will settle, or at least indicate to settle, are: Is the Congress finally on the path to revivalIJ Is the Bharatiya Janata Party marching towards retaining power at the Centre, come May 2019IJ Has Akhilesh Yadav’s gamble of challenging seniors in the Samajwadi Party, including his uncle and father, to take charge of the organisation, been worth the effortIJ Will the Bahujan Samaj Party, wiped out in the 2014 lok Sabha election, be able to make a comebackIJ Will Arvind Kejriwal’s dream of forming his party’s Government outside of Delhi be realisedIJ And will the Shiromani Akali Dal be able to overcome the anti-incumbency of 10 uninterrupted years of ruleIJ
Each State has its own list of issues that will be exploited by the contestants, but there is one common factor at play: Demonetisation. In a sense, the elections are a referendum on the November 8, 2016, announcement of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which within hours rendered 86 per cent of the currency in circulation redundant. It has had a massive impact on the economy, and whether it be critics of the move or supporters, all agree that it was a hugely disruptive decision. The BJP and its allies have, of course, gone to town hard-selling demonetisation as being done to tackle black money and corruption. They have projected the decision as pro-poor and anti-black market — a theme that seems to have bonded with the common man. On the other hand, opponents have latched on to the inconvenience people faced for close to two months, being unable to draw their own money from banks in quantities they needed, and having had to stand in serpentine queues at banks to surrender the demonetised currency. The Opposition (barring notable exceptions) has projected the entire decision as eyewash by the Government since, according to it, the real culprits have escaped the noose.
Despite its looming presence in election campaigns, demonetisation will not be the sole or even the single biggest deciding factor. In Uttar Pradesh, voters will take into account the virtual division in the Samajwadi Party. The Muslim voters are being wooed aggressively by Mayawati who is telling them not to trust a divided Samajwadi Party to halt the march of the BJP. It’s been a time-tested ploy of the ‘seculars’ to frighten the Muslim community with such scary tales. On its part, the Samajwadi Party has tied up with the Congress in the hope of retaining its minority vote bank. This is strange because the Congress ceased to be a darling of the Muslim voters decades ago. Ironically, it was the Samajwadi Party which had run away with the minority votes the Congress had cultivated for decades. The BJP, like the BSP, is hoping to cash in on the internecine quarrels within the ruling Yadav clan. While Mulayam Singh Yadav and Shivpal Yadav appear to have reconciled to the reality of Akhilesh calling the shots in the party, the sense of disquiet that exists lower down among the cadres will not go away. It could possibly lead to sabotages at various levels, which would help opponents, including the BJP.
The BJP is also working hard at cobbling together the non-Yadav OBC votes into a composite whole. This would not be a new combination for the ruling party at the Centre; in the 2014 lok Sabha election, the segment voted largely for the party, no doubt motivated by Narendra Modi’s promise of change for the better and his masculine image. But State elections are a different matter and need a better fine-tuning of caste equations. The party has many OBC leaders in its fold. If there is one ‘negative’, it’s that the BJP does not have a chief ministerial face while both the Samajwadi Party-Congress combine and the Bahujan Samaj Party are not hamstrung by such an absence. However, if the voters are disgusted with the ongoings in the Samajwadi Party and want a change without having a desire to go back to Mayawati, they will vote for the BJP, regardless of the latter being without a chief ministerial candidate.
The Congress has no realistic chance of making a comeback in the country’s politically most crucial State. By tying up with the Samajwadi Party, it has formalised its position as a bit player, one which is competent at best to ride piggyback on a stronger regional outfit. The Samajwadi Party has been generous enough to offer it more than 100 seats, but can the Congress take advantage of this magnanimityIJ If it fails, it won’t take long for Akhilesh to discard the alliance. On the other hand, if a miracle were to happen and the Congress performed even as well as it did in the Bihar Assembly poll, it can legitimately celebrate — and attribute the victory to Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Vadra!
If the challenge for the BJP is to return to power in Uttar Pradesh after having spent 14 years in exile, a similar task awaits the Congress in Punjab, where it has been out of power for 10 years. Few political commentators had expected the Shiromani Akali Dal-BJP combine to be triumphant in 2012. It had rarely happened in Punjab that voters returned a ruling party or combine to power; they alternated. Reposing trust in this tradition, the Congress was mighty confident that it would dislodge the Parkash Singh Badal-led regime. But much to its shock and to the pleasant surprise of the Akali-BJP, the voters decided to give the ruling dispensation one more successive term.
Will the Badals be third-time luckyIJ It’s going to be a tough task, made tougher with the entry of the Aam Aadmi Party in the fray and a resurgent Congress led in Punjab by Captain Amarinder Singh. The Congress must be hoping that the break in tradition in 2012 was an aberration and that it will trump both the Akali-BJP and the AAP. But, if Arvind Kejriwal’s party is able to do well, it may well split the anti-ruling-party votes and leave the Badals laughing all the way to the polling booth. If that were to happen, the Congress would be down in the dumps, because Punjab is one State where it hopes to win. A defeat would also mean a loss of face for Captain Amarinder Singh, who has had his way after he virtually threatened to walk out of the party because he was being sidelined and his opponents within the Congress had landed cushy party positions.
As for the AAP, if it fails in Punjab, it can say goodbye to its hopes of expanding beyond Delhi, at least for the time being. All its four lok Sabha seats in 2014 had come from Punjab, and it has some amount of goodwill there, partly due to the anti-incumbency at play and partly because the Congress is seen as a party that has already been tried. The novelty factor is working for now in favour of the AAP. However, the mess it has created over the months, including its failed amateurish attempt to get Navjot Singh Sidhu in its fold and the controversies some of its Punjab leaders have landed in, could put paid to its chances. Since the AAP stands no chance in any of the other four States that vote, a loss in Punjab will be a setback that the party will not easily be able to overcome.
Unlike in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab, where the contest for both the national parties is triangular, in Uttarakhand, the two will be face to face, without a third party threatening to spoil the game. The Harish Rawat Government is battling several handicaps, including resentment among the people over a messed up relief and rehabilitation work carried out in the wake of the natural disaster some months ago, and the loss of many senior leaders who switched sides and went to the BJP. The triumph of legal victory, when the Congress regime was restored by an order of the Supreme Court after its collapse due to defections, has worn off. And yet, the Congress is no passover. There are differences within the Uttarakhand unit of the BJP as well. Whichever party manages the internal crises better will have the upper hand.
Manipur and Goa are the two smallest States which will not just test the national parties but also regional formulations. Goa has assumed significance because of Minister for Defence Manohar Parrikar, who not just hails from that State but also served as its Chief Minister before Amit Shah and Modi plucked him out abruptly and brought him to the Centre. Despite this dislocation, Parrikar has been a regular flyer to Goa in the past two years, not just keeping in touch with local politics but also, according to both his admirers and detractors, wielding influence over the Government led by his successor laxmikant Parsekar. At least two Union Ministers have hinted at the possibility of Parrikar’s return to Goa as Chief Minister in case the party retains power this election. The Goa Assembly poll is a prestige battle for Parrikar also because his party is being challenged by a breakaway faction of, believe it or not, the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS). longtime RSS veteran in the State, Subhash Velingkar, has raised a banner of revolt against Parrikar. He has been promptly sacked by the RSS, but instead of fading away, he floated a new outfit and has made it his mission to prevent the return of the BJP and plot the Defence Minister’s humiliation.
What adds fizz to the Goa election is the arrival of AAP and the departure of the regional outfit, the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP), from the ruling alliance. The story of MGP is a long one and needs to be told in some detail one day. Once Goa’s dominant political party, which even defeated the mighty Congress in the first election held after the State gained liberation from Portuguese rule 55 years ago, and ruled until 1979, the MGP has been reduced to an also-ran, having to depend on largesse from bigger organisations for relevance. Since 1979, it has suffered multiple splits, with key leaders migrating to either the Congress or the BJP over the years. It was formed on the plank of merging Goa with Maharashtra — a popular fad in the sixties but now a non-issue. The party failed to change with the times. Its split with the BJP is unlikely to cause major ripples in the State, nor will its supposed alignment with the breakaway RSS faction impact the result to a significant extent.
The AAP has been giving a great deal of political time to Goa, in addition to Punjab. Nearly all of the party’s senior leaders have made trips to the State, blasted both the BJP and the Congress, and promised a change for the better. The problem is that the leaders it has managed to draw into the party there are kind of perpetual grumblers; they have a reputation of being talkers more than doers. The activist sorts are not what the electorate in Goa is looking forward to. And yet, if the AAP hopes to make an impression, it’s because the party believes the Congress has become so weak that the Opposition space at least is there for it to occupy. It’s true that the Congress is facing internal problems in Goa; party leader and former Chief Minister luizinho Faleiro recently remarked that like devotees who go to pilgrimages, disgruntled Congress leaders of the State visit Sonia Gandhi’s residence in New Delhi. It’s not clear if Faleiro was elevating the Congress president’s residence to a lofty position equivalent to a pilgrim spot or being sarcastic. Either way, his comment reflected the ills within the Congress.
Tiny Manipur is crucial to both the Congress and the BJP. It’s the former’s Government in power there, while the latter is seeking to expand its footprint in the North-East, having won Assam months ago and managed its Government in Arunachal Pradesh as well. The Congress is wary of the developments — initially it had to lock horns with various regional outfits that have mushroomed there, and now it faces the new challenge of a growing BJP in the North-East. The BJP’s rise can be attributed to a great extent to the work done by the RSS over the years in the region. The Congress has to now battle the BJP and a local party, the Naga People’s Front. If it fails to hold on to power now, it could well signal a steady but certain downfall for the Congress in the region.
The stakes are, therefore, high. If the BJP manages to draw blood in Uttar Pradesh, it can approach the 2019 general elections with its head held high. Besides, a win there can propel the BJP-led Government at the Centre into taking more radical measures of the demonetisation kind — in areas of electoral reforms, for instance (though Prime Minister Modi has said that political considerations will not come in his way to revamp the system). If the Congress does well, it will serve to refurbish Rahul’s failed image — after all, he even failed to get the alliance in Uttar Pradesh stitched; it happened because of Sonia and Priyanka’s intervention, if media reports are to be believed.
Alexander the Great had said that he was not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep, but of an army of sheep led by a lion. Soon, we shall know who the sheep and the lion are.