Verdict 2018 Wooing Voters in 2019: Some Takeaways from December 2018 SMITA GUPTA Congress President Rahul Gandhi at the party headquarters in New Delhi, Tuesday, December 11, 2018. In December 2018, five Indian States went to the polls to elect representatives to their Legislative Assemblies. The results of these elections, some six months before the term of the Sixteenth Lok Sabha ends, are a timely expression of public opinion on the issues to be addressed by political parties – both all-India and regional – in a diverse democratic nation that is riven by majoritarian politics, ignoring serious issues such as economic inequalities and rural-urban divides. If the results reminded all-India parties of the consequences of ignoring State-specific issues, they provided regional parties an unexpected reality check on their potential to make, or unmake, victors. One key takeaway is that all-India parties would have to negotiate political space with regional parties to make substantive electoral gains. With India scheduled to elect its Seventeenth Lok Sabha in mid-2019, Smita Gupta, Senior Fellow, The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy, turns the spotlight on the key lessons delivered by India’s voters to its political class through the elections to five State Legislative Assemblies. In this analysis, she provides insights into voter behaviour in three Hindi- speaking States and one each in the north east and the south. Rural wrath, urban discontent, rumblings within the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, and the need for the Opposition parties to come to an understanding at the States, she points out, are some important issues that should engage the attention of India’s political parties as they prepare to woo the voter in 2019. “Perhaps democracies get invigorated, not by grand narratives, but the elixir of change itself. This election restores the balance of power in Indian democracy, and gives it an opportunity to find its true measure.” —Pratap Bhanu Mehta1 n the December 2018 Assembly Elections held in five States, the most significant results came in from the three Hindi heartland States - Madhya I Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Rajasthan - where the Congress defeated, in direct contests the party that conclusively replaced it in 2014 as the principal pole of Indian politics: the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). In the other two States, two regional parties, the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) and the Mizo National Front (MNF) trounced the Congress: in Telangana, the TRS retained power; in Mizoram, the MNF unseated the Congress. In both, however, the BJP remained on the fringes, with its 2014 score of five in Telangana sliding down to one. For the Congress and Rahul Gandhi, who completed one year as party president on December 11, the day the results came in, these elections could not have been more momentous. They announced that the Congress was still in the game, though a long distance away from regaining its old position as India’s dominant political power. For the BJP and Narendra Modi, who had wielded absolute power for four-and-a-half years—retaining, winning or forming governments, even engineering a few post-government formation coups, in no less than 142 States since coming to power in 2014—the results were a body blow: a proclamation that Modi’s BJP could be defeated. The victory of the regional parties in two of the five States that had gone to the polls symbolised a reassurance to other similar formations that they continued to matter in Indian politics, and would remain relevant wherever, and whenever, the two major national parties failed to address regional aspirations. Indeed, these elections—spread across a great swathe of the country, a State in the north east, a major part of the Hindi heartland, and the newest State in the south—provided the perfect occasion As a barometer of public mood, the poll for a critical political test for the two results set the stage for the all-important national electoral battle next year. principal national parties, the BJP and the Congress. By acting as a barometer of the public mood, the poll results have now set the stage for the all-important national electoral battle next year. A possible return of coalition politics They suggest the return of the era of coalition politics at the Centre in 2019, similar to what the country witnessed between 1998 and 2014: during those years, a coalition government first headed by the BJP, and then by the Congress came to power — both were dependent for their parliamentary majority on smaller parties. Even the latest issue of Panchajanya, the Hindi weekly of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) from which the BJP takes its ideological inspiration, predicts a “hung Lok Sabha” and then mourns this possible outcome as one “that would imply political instability”.3 A third possibility, that it might be a United Front-style government, formed by a small party with a big rump, such as when the Congress backed H.D. Deve Gowda’s Janata Dal between 1996 and 1998, or as functioning currently in Karnataka4, seems unlikely. In private conversations, most leaders of smaller parties, despite their public posturing, emphasise the need for stability of government, and, therefore, agree that the largest party in any coalition should lead it. This is not to say that leaders like Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) Chief the Trinamool Congress (TMC)’s Mamata K. Chandrasekhar Rao. Photo: PTI Banerjee, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP)’s Mayawati and now even the Telugu Desam Party (TDP)’s Nara Chandrababu Naidu do not nurse ambitions of becoming Prime Minister one day. A Congress MP, close to the leadership, when asked about the possibility of the ‘Karnataka model’ being replicated at the Centre said, “It is unlikely, but if it were to happen, we [the Congress] would have the first right of refusal.”5 On the BJP side of the fence, such an arrangement seems even less likely. For the Congress, its hat trick in the Hindi heartland has revived hope that the party is on its way to recovering lost ground—and lost glory. Rahul Gandhi may not have produced an alternative “grand narrative”, but the “elixir of change” has re-energised the party faithful in a way unimaginable till recently.6 For the BJP, its failure to hold what it considers its bastion has had leaders calling for “introspection” as Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley phrased it, it is time for ‘chintan’(brainstorming) and ‘manthan’ (churning) again, and a return to the drawing board. By debunking the myth that Modi’s BJP was invincible, it has re- awakened self-belief not just in the Congress but in the smaller parties across the political spectrum, both in the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) camp as well as in that of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). Not surprisingly, this restoration of “the balance of power in Indian democracy”, as Pratap Bhanu Mehta describes it, has triggered a series of serious questions for the various political parties. Is the BJP’s dream of winning a second term at the Centre still possible? Can the Congress resurrect itself, or should these election results be attributed merely to anti-incumbency? How important will the regional/small parties be in the new political matrix? Will the Hindutva project, and its many violent manifestations, still be the BJP’s Brahmastra? Or can the Congress neutralise it with its soft saffron version? The answers to these questions will emerge in the next few months as parties respond to the changed political map, in which three saffron (BJP) States in the middle of India have turned green (Congress). Reading the Assembly results An extrapolation based on the results of these Assembly Elections, would indicate that the BJP could lose as many as 327 Lok Sabha seats from Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Rajasthan alone. With a majority of opposition parties taking heart from these results and determined to see the back of the party, the general elections next year will definitely see State-level non-BJP alliances in the rest of the Hindi heartland, especially in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, where the BJP’s graph is already plummeting. The Samajwadi Party (SP), the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) have already decided to contest next year’s Lok Sabha polls from Uttar Pradesh together: even without the Congress, this alliance has the capacity to bring down the BJP’s current tally in the State by 50 seats. In all, the BJP is almost sure to lose around 90 seats from the above five States in this region alone, where it is the strongest. It also stands to lose in Gujarat, where it won all 26 seats in 2014: the Congress’s good showing in the Assembly polls in 2017 would suggest that. Similarly, the numbers are likely to change in favour of the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) combine in Maharashtra, where the BJP won 22 seats out of 48 in 2014, with its partner, the Shiv Sena, adding another 18 to the tally. The BJP is also unlikely to be able to compensate for these losses either in south India, where it barely exists outside Karnataka, or from the gains BJP president Amit Shah talks of making in the north east, West Bengal, and Odisha. In Andhra Pradesh in 2014, it won two seats out of 20 and in Telangana one out of 17. The situation for the party has not improved since; and the alliance it had with the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) no longer exists. In Karnataka, it won 16 of the 27 seats in 2014 and it is more likely to lose than gain seats here, given the Congress-Janata Dal-S combine is in power in the State.