The Hindu : Behind the election outcomes

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Dec 13, 2003

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Behind the election outcomes

A NUMBER OF explanations have been offered for the emphatic victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the recent round of State Assembly elections, in which the result in Delhi has been the only consolation for the Congress. However, the detailed post-poll surveys conducted for The Hindu by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in the five States of Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram and Rajasthan reveal that there is no one set of reasons that can explain the outcome. If there is an overarching message from these elections, it is that the Congress has suffered a widespread loss of support, signifying another stage in its long-term decline. The party was unable to craft a successful strategy; its choice of candidates was inept; small parties ate damagingly into its vote base; and in no State could it retain its hold over the reserved Scheduled Tribe constituencies.

The BJP won convincingly in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. Yet there was no big wave of support for the BJP in these States in comparison with what happened in 1998. In Madhya Pradesh, a mere 3.6 percentage point vote swing towards it was enough to win the party a brutal majority of seats. In Rajasthan, the swing in voter choice was considerably more but still under six percentage points. In Chhattisgarh (which became a State in 2000 through the bifurcation of Madhya Pradesh), the voters actually moved away from the BJP; the party's share of votes polled (in the part of undivided Madhya Pradesh that now constitutes Chhattisgarh) was 1.1 percentage points less than in 1998. On the other hand, there was a tidal wave of erosion of voter support for the Congress; the loss was 9.3 percentage points in Rajasthan, 8.8 in Madhya Pradesh, and 4.3 in Chhattisgarh.

Development issues did influence the outcome in Madhya Pradesh and Delhi. In the CSDS survey, a huge majority of voters surveyed in Madhya Pradesh felt that there had been a deterioration in the supply of electricity and road conditions during the Digvijay Singh tenure. In Delhi, on the other hand, 70 per cent of the respondents was pleased with the record of the Sheila Dikshit Government. A mystery in Madhya Pradesh is why the Government's record in primary education and watershed management — issues not covered in the survey — did not neutralise the negative feelings about other public services. Field reports indicate that more was claimed on the success of Madhya Pradesh's "Education Guarantee Scheme" than was the actual achievement and the full benefits of watershed management have not yet been reaped. The paradox of the 2003 Assembly elections is that the ruling party's positive development record seems not to have fetched it any worthwhile dividends in Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan. In Chhattisgarh, a majority (57 per cent) of the surveyed expressed their satisfaction over the Ajit Jogi Government's record in office; 58 per cent felt drinking water services had improved in the previous five years; and the corresponding figures in electricity and roads were 49 and 42 per cent. Voter perceptions were not as positive in Rajasthan, but even there a majority (51 per cent) was pleased with the Ashok Gehlot Government's performance in 1998-2003. An even larger proportion felt the Congress could do more for development than the BJP. If in spite of such positive perceptions the Congress was voted out in these two States, the explanation for the BJP's victory cannot lie in governance issues. The post-poll survey reveals that in Rajasthan candidate selection was important for as much as a third of the electorate and the BJP read the popular mood correctly. Other reports also suggest that the BJP ran a far better election campaign, choosing new and young candidates this time. In Chhattisgarh, a critical factor that delivered the State to the BJP was the huge loss suffered by its adversary in the Bastar tribal belt. The Congress' support in the region dropped by as much as 11 percentage points, which resulted in a loss of 10 seats. This was enough to turn the Congress' majority into a minority.

The erosion of the traditional Congress base in Bastar is representative of a larger loss of support among the Adivasi electorate. In Madhya Pradesh, there was a 14 percentage point swing against the Congress in the reserved Scheduled Tribe constituencies; this resulted in a loss of 24 of the 28 seats that party had won in 1998. In Rajasthan, the adverse swing was 15 percentage points and the Congress lost 14 of the 19 seats it had held. The BJP was the gainer in these reserved seats. Its triumph in traditional Congress strongholds appears to be the result of years of work by Hindutva organisations spearheaded by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh among Adivasis, much like the inroads made by the same forces into the tribal belt of Gujarat in the 1990s. The other distinctive feature of the recent elections has been the extent to which the small parties have increased their share of the votes polled, making a significant difference to the outcome. This was most evident in Chhattisgarh where the Nationalist Congress Party, headed by the former Congress leader, Vidya Charan Shukla, could garner as much as 7 per cent of the votes. Though the NCP could win only one seat, the party made a difference in 12 of the 49 seats the BJP won in the State, where the votes it got were more than the margin of defeat of the Congress candidates. There was a similar but somewhat weaker pattern in Madhya Pradesh.

The Congress lost three of the four States where it was in office. On the face of it, anti-incumbency was at work in these elections. However, this is too facile an explanation to be of much value. In two of the five States, the ruling party was returned to office. And in both Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, the Congress lost in spite of voter perceptions that its Governments had been doing a good job in the delivery of important public services. Voter dissatisfaction with the Congress and a preference for the BJP were rooted in reasons other than just a desire to express a protest vote against the incumbent. It is also not true that the BJP emerged on top in the Assembly polls because it did not fly the Hindutva flag. True, the party did not bring to the fore the Ayodhya temple demand. But in Madhya Pradesh the anointed leader was Uma Bharti, a high profile leader of the movement that led to the demolition of the Babri Masjid a decade ago. The BJP also drafted for its campaign the Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, another avowed proponent of Hindutva. The BJP may not have shown its Hindutva colours on the election trail, but it did not repudiate Hindutva either.

The extent to which the Congress has been weakened is demonstrated by the Mizoram outcome. In a State where the BJP had no presence, the party that hopes to supplant it at the Centre was unable to unseat the Mizo National Front. It was not able to build on voter concern over alleged corruption of the incumbent MNF Government, because, according to the CSDS survey, public memories of alleged corruption by the Congress regime of the 1990s remain strong. The Congress debacle in the Hindi heartland is demonstrated by the weakening of support across all classes, castes and ages. The CSDS survey reveals that while the BJP continues to enjoy strong support among the forward castes and the relatively well-to-do in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, a substantial proportion of Dalits, Adivasis and the poor deserted the Congress. More ominously for Sonia Gandhi's party, the younger voters preferred the BJP. The results in the one State, Delhi, where it had a better perception of the grass roots than the BJP, which hung on to the past, showed what might have been possible. In Delhi, it was the BJP which displayed the attributes of the Congress, pinning its hopes on its traditional support base among traders. Delhi, however, was an exception. The larger message from this major contest is that while the BJP is capable of running a party machinery that capitalises on voter discontent, its chief adversary has become a party out of touch with the electorate.

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