Back to the future
The decisive vote against the BJP's elitist policies and communal agenda opens new avenues
Praful Bidwai
The Hindustan Times, 15 May 2004
This election marks a defining moment in our politics, of the same significance as, say, the post-bank nationalisation Garibi Hatao elections of 1971 or the post-Emergency elections of 1977. Indeed, it opens up more possibilities for a politics of transformation and popular empowerment. The changes of the 1970s, although momentous, were largely directed from 'above', by political parties, leaders and slogans. In the present verdict, people's gut-level concerns and choices from 'below' have played a decisive role. Political parties have acted as little more than their instruments.
The single most important message from the verdict is that the Indian people comprehensively reject the BJP's politics with its characteristic combination of communalism, parochialism, divisiveness, deception and unabashed economic elitism.
Let's put the issue bluntly. The BJP set out not just to rule for another five years, but to firmly establish a middle class-driven system, an Indian version of "property-owning democracy" based on the "India Shining" myth, in which the underprivileged would be effectively disenfranchised, the ethnic-religious minorities would submit docilely to Hindutva's majoritarian dictates, and where rapacious corporations would rule unhampered by democratic control.
This project, and the entire set of social and economic policies that came with it, has been voted out. The significance of the verdict goes infinitely deeper than shifts in vote-shares, striking of alliances, the burdens or advantages of incumbency, appeals of different "brands" (like Atal or Sonia), or various strategies of election "micro-management".
Three very dissimilar states capture the essence: Gujarat, Andhra and Uttar Pradesh. In Gujarat, the electorate finally punished the BJP for its viciously Right-wing, oppressively dualistic economic policies, its years of vile mis-governance and India's worst state-sponsored communal carnage.
The anti-BJP undercurrent, evident in all local elections two years before February 2002, was temporarily, artificially, suppressed by the polarisation following the carnage, and the absence of a political alternative. (The Congress was then playing as Hindutva's 'B' team.)
The BJP received its worst drubbing in the very areas (central and northern Gujarat) where the violence was the fiercest. Modi's politics-crudely communal, blatantly imperious, and using language bordering on the obscene-has become a huge liability. So has the neoliberal legacy in which capital thrives only by virtue of deindustrialisation and casualisation of production, and through rapacious labour exploitation-witness Alang's ship-breaking yards.
Andhra's results are an unambiguous rejection of Chandrababu Naidu's corporate-CEO-style politics. Naidu's Andhra was turning into Chile-under-Pinochet, with massive transfers of public assets into private hands, starving of social sector spending and big tax-breaks for corporates.
For Naidu, attending the Davos forum and blowing up huge sums on PR to impress potential investors was always a higher priority than redressing acute hunger or indebtedness (which drove over 3,000 farmers to suicide). Naidu stood exposed as a communally compromised politician when he refused to criticise the BJP's outrageous conduct and its defence of the Gujarat pogrom.
As agrarian distress grew, the Andhras readily compared his tall claims about information technology with reality-IT's measly two percent share in state GDP and the state's falling software-export rank. The people couldn't take deception anymore. One more reason for Naidu's rout is that Andhra was the only state where the Opposition mobilised people in a sustained way.
In UP, the BJP has not only suffered a halving of its seats and substantial decrease in votes in all regions. Its social base has shrunk: even Brahmins are deserting it and the OBCs aren't returning despite Kalyan Singh. The party's defeat in Faizabad-Ayodhya, Kashi and Mathura only confirms what's known: the temple issue is dead.
The principal reason for the BJP's growing unpopularity is agrarian distress, unemployment, and popular exhaustion with Machiavellian politics, reflected for example, in Vajpayee's pitiable attempt first to get, and then divide, the Muslim vote by twisting facts to present Mulayam Singh as an ally.
The BJP may soon be out of UP's reckoning even as the Congress revitalises itself through the projection of youth, dynamism and transparent earnestness. (That's Rahul's image at least today). The BJP could shrink into what it was before the mid-1980s-a relatively minor Western India party, with 30 (or50?) Lok Sabha seats.
The Congress's performance has outstripped the most optimistic projections, including its own (which shows how much the belligerent BJP and a collusive media intimidated and disoriented it). The credit must go to the party's projection of a Left-of-Centre identity, based on pluralism and inclusivism, willingness to forge alliances, and Sonia Gandhi's tireless, focussed campaigning.
She consistently drew vastly larger crowds than Vajpayee-and genuine applause when she stressed gut-level livelihood issues and unsparingly attacked communalism. She has grown in acceptance and stature-as a serious, dignified and yet accessible leader, who is tough on the BJP but who never descended to its gutter-level personal attacks.
Vajpayee's manufactured, bloated, image no longer sells. It has shrivelled badly in the past three weeks. In any case, he's unlikely to lead the BJP into the next election.
The Congress did well where it was combative and unabashedly Left-of-Centre. It fared poorly where plagued by despair, drift and confusion about what agendas to emphasise. It must now rediscover the worth of good "populism"-a much-maligned word, once used to kill the best programme designed for Indian children, namely mid-day meals. The future lies in ordinary people's sensibilities, not the Sensex, leave alone global finance.
The Left has put up its best-ever performance and assured for itself a moral-political stature far higher than its 62 seats. This derives from its fundamental commitment to popular sovereignty, secularism, its leaders' intellectual qualities, and its clean politics. A Congress-Left alliance must form the core of the next government. To be inclusive, representative and durable, it should draw in Deve Gowda's JD(S), Mulayam's Samajwadi Party, and Ajit Singh's RLD, besides the Tamil parties.
However, it would be a huge mistake to rush into alliances without negotiating a proper, comprehensive common agenda, which reflects popular aspirations as well as rational priorities. This will be important in four areas: economics, social policy, institutional structures, and foreign and security policy.
The economic priorities include major employment programmes, quantum-jumps in social spending, macro-economic correction through progressive taxation and democratisation and reform of the public sector, not its privatisation. Crucial here is reversal of past policies which have added to inequalities and regional disparities and which generated nominal growth while impoverishing people.
It's vital to reaffirm secularism and pluralism actively by exemplarily bringing the Gujarat pogrom's villains to justice, by resolving the Ayodhya dispute through a formula such as V.P. Singh's temple-plus-mosque, banning and penalising Togadia-style hate-speech, and extensively revising communal textbooks.
Our public discourse must change towards genuine tolerance and respect for difference. Structures and institutions corrupted by the BJP-the PMO, the Akademis, ICSSR-ICHR, Prasar Bharati, numerous official and advisory committees-must be thoroughly cleansed and reformed.
Our foreign policy has become unbalanced as regards the US, Israel and the Iraq crisis. It's basically disengaged from the neighbours, barring Pakistan. India must return to its broad-range policy orientation, which emphasises Non-Alignment and a multipolar, non-hegemonic, multilateral, peaceful and rule-based world order. Similarly, our security policy must be freed of the jingoism the BJP has imposed on it. The nuclear policy must be turned upside-down, with disarmament as the top priority.
This is a big agenda-but the minimum the new government will need to command credibility and authority and launch a politics of transformation.
Copyright 2004 The Hindustan Times
|
