[The News International - October 07, 2004]
Bad poll portents for BJP
by Praful Bidwai
Less than a week from now, Maharashtra, in Western India, will elect the state legislative Assembly. Pitted in the contest are two main rival blocs, the Congress allied with the Nationalist Congress Party (which split from it five years ago over Sonia Gandhi’s "foreign origins"), and the Shiv Sena-BJP coalition. Although the ruling Congress-NCP Democratic Front faces an anti-incumbency burden, it is the BJP that has the most to lose from this election in national-level salience.
Sounds paradoxical? It is only apparently so. This election is taking place in India’s second largest state (so become since Jharkhand was carved out of Bihar). More important, it is likely to magnify rifts within the BJP’s "second-generation" leadership. Irrespective of whether the BJP does better than in the past, its internal rivalries will probably sharpen even as the party evolves under a harder Hindutva line towards a second avatar of the Jana Sangh. (The Jana Sangh, created as the RSS’s political wing in the early 1950s, merged into the anti-Emergency Congress "rainbow coalition" Janata Party in 1977. In 1980, its former members established the BJP.)
Of course, the BJP-Sena alliance is not quite set to win the election. Opinion polls put the Congress-led Democratic Front slightly ahead of the Shiv Sena-BJP. An Indian Express-NDTV poll gives the Congress-led DF 132 seats (of a total of 288) and the Sena-BJP 111. A Telegraph-STAR poll gives the DF a slender majority (148) and its rival 128 seats. But an Aaj Tak-ORG-Marg survey forecasts a convincing majority (165-175) for the Congress-NCP and only 95-105 seats for the Sena-BJP.
In Maharashtra, pollsters could prove even more unreliable than elsewhere in the recent past. There are several complicating factors. Any number of "rebel" candidates are fighting the official nominees of the major parties; the contest is unevenly divided across regions; and Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party has emerged a significant player as the Republican Party factions traditionally supported by the Dalits face fragmentation.
Perhaps the greatest churning is taking place inside the Congress. Dozens of former Congress/NCP candidates who stood second in the 1999 Assembly elections now aspire to tickets. When denied these, they contest against the official candidates. Rebels are spoiling the party for the NCP and the BJP too.
However, the greatest-and newest-loser from the "rebellion" will be the Shiv Sena. In its leadership-succession battle, Sena chief Bal Thackeray has sided with his son Uddhav against nephew Raj, who is the more capable and better-known organiser. The Raj Thackeray faction will work against official candidates. Uddhav’s elevation has also put off Narayan Rane and Manohar Joshi, both former Chief Ministers. In the past, the Sena supremo would resolve internal differences through his patronage network. But big cracks are now visible in that network.
Big Money is another factor that will shape the electoral contest. About 200 candidates have declared assets worth Rs one crore to Rs 100 crores! Of these, as many as 54 are not even registered income-tax payees - a terrible comment on probity. Hundreds of candidates (of a total of 2,678) are no longer bound to any party through campaign-finance arrangements. They are just individual entrepreneurs.
The issue of separate statehood for the Vidarbha region (which was earlier part of the Central Provinces and Berar) will influence the elections. The statehood demand is growing. Vidarbha has a "development backlog". The Congress is divided over the demand. The BJP is inclined to support it. The Sena vehemently opposes it. The BSP strongly advocates of statehood. This could win it significant support in the region where 20 percent of the population is Dalit.
The BSP is an expanding force. In the Lok Sabha elections, it caused a loss of nine seats to the Congress-NCP in Maharashtra. Now, it could affect about 50 Assembly seats. Large sections of Dalit youth are disillusioned with the constantly warring RPI factions organised around individuals, which ally with different parties as a subordinate force. Mayawati’s strategy is to build an independent, exclusive Dalit party to tilt the balance of power.
The Congress-NCP is working up a high-energy campaign. Here, it holds the advantage. Vajpayee and Thackeray are too ill to campaign for the BJP-Sena. Advani is no substitute. Nor are BJP state leaders. By contrast, Sonia Gandhi is drawing large audiences. Her canvassing will make a difference. The real question is: Will it help overcome the DF’s anti-incumbency burden? The Front has failed to provide remotely decent governance and has changed Chief Ministers midstream.
The Congress-NCP could, in a worst-case scenario, lose in Maharashtra - although the Sena-BJP is unlikely to get a thumping majority. (It might form a shaky government by allying with the BSP.) A defeat in Maharashtra will represent a setback for the Congress-led ruling national alliance. But it’s unlikely to be grave.
Soon after Maharashtra, Assembly elections are due in Bihar, Jharkhand and Haryana. These will more decisively influence the national trend. The BJP and its allies face a likely rout in Bihar, where George Fernandes’ Janata Dal (United), is fragmented and badly depleted.
By contrast, a defeat in Maharashtra will mean a heavy political loss for the BJP-led NDA. A power struggle has broken out in the BJP, driven by succession to the first-rung leadership. As Advani recently indicated in a BBC interview, neither he nor Vajpayee will head any future BJP government at the Centre - assuming it forms one. This has impelled "second-generation" aspirants-all ambitious men and women - to stake position themselves for a fierce battle against one another. They include Venkaiah Naidu, Pramod Mahajan, Arun Jaitly, Rajnath Singh, Uma Bharati and Sushma Swaraj. None of them has a well-defined independent base.
Their differences became apparent during Bharati’s recent Tiranga Yatra. Naidu seized the opportunity provided by a court warrant to get rid of Bharati from Madhya Pradesh and then did his utmost to marginalise her yatra, in which no major BJP leader participated right till the end.
Mahajan has given Bharati only five campaigning days in Maharashtra, with 15 meetings, while Swaraj has been allotted seven days and 28 meetings. Advani will address 12 rallies and Naidu 15. Mahajan will speak in 71 places, and his brother-in-law Munde in 60! This means the power struggle will sharpen no matter how the BJP performs at the hustings.
Today, no top BJP leader can resolve internal power rivalries. Vajpayee seems to have lost the necessary acumen and political prestige. Advani seems to be in a state of disbelief about the Lok Sabha results. The RSS has stepped into this vacuum with its pet theory - which not many BJP leaders can convincingly refute-namely, that the electoral rout of April/May was caused by the party’s deviation from Hindutva.
The BJP’s Jana Sanghisation is a recipe for its contraction into a small pressure-group. This contraction is likely to get accelerated before the next Lok Sabha polls. The BJP has lost much of its ground support in UP and Bihar, and suffered massive electoral erosion in 25 out of India’s 28 states. In Maharashtra, the stakes are higher for the BJP than the Congress. And the dice are loaded against it.
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