The Hindu Business Line : What went wrong for the NDA?

A DULL and listless election when it began, with the ruling NDA firmly in the driver's seat and perceived to be racing towards victory, has suddenly been transformed into a keen tussle. As the Andhra Pradesh Assembly results came out on Tuesday, where the Congress-Telangana Rashtra Samithi combine scored a two-third majority, the mood in the BJP camp was sombre. The words that were mouthed by BJP leaders about the poll outcome on May 13 were brave, but the facial expressions were indeed grave.

The results for the Lok Sabha polls are yet to be out but exit polls, and the drubbing that the TDP-BJP combine got in Andhra Pradesh, are indicators that India is headed towards a hung Parliament. Also, putting together the exit poll projections for the Congress Front and the Left Parties, the tally of seats this combine might get comes close to the NDA. And, there is an outside chance that it might well surpass the NDA's total.

So, what went wrong for the NDA? In just 30-40 days, how did the picture change so drastically? How did the sheen and gloss come off the party that had ushered India into such a shining territory and, that too, over a mere four-and-a-half years compared to the Congress dispensations of 50 years? How did the BJP, the party that Corporate India and the equity markets had grown to simply love during the last five years, suddenly look shaky and vulnerable? Are the Indian voters not grateful for a government that can make their country's economy grow by a magic 10 per cent as it did in the last quarter?

Apparently not, if one can see the writing on the wall from the outcome of the Andhra Pradesh Assembly polls. Of course, it should be kept in mind that the southern States, barring Karnataka, where it has made some inroads, have not been the BJP's bastions, and north of the Vindhya, particularly in the Hindi heartland of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh (not to mention Gujarat), the party is likely to hold on to the huge gains it made in the 2003 Assembly elections. That triumph was one big reason why the Lok Sabha elections were advanced in the first place by the BJP's think-tank.

If the NDA fails to return to power after having delivered a reasonably good administration, and more important, a near full-term government, after the disastrous spells of truncated governments since 1996, it will have a lot of introspection to do. In fact, even if it manages to return to power with a slender majority, or by getting the undependable support of smaller parties, it will need to do even more soul-searching. Remember how the Narasimha Rao Government of the Congress(I) lost power in 1996, after its Finance Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, had ushered in economic reforms in 1991?

At that time, as the United Front Government was sworn in, Dr Singh's team had to take a lot of flak from Congressmen who blamed the economic reforms and the disconnect between urban and rural India when it came to reaching the benefits of these reforms to the rural masses. At that time, two factors moved to the centrestage. One, that India did indeed need economic reforms but "with a human face" and, two, the Congress(I) had failed to return to power because its leaders were not able to explain to the masses the long-term benefits of these reforms.

As though the average Indian is so stupid that he cannot understand what is good and what is bad for him. But, if he is starving today, or his crops fail because he has no water for irrigation, or his cattle die for want of fodder in drought years, or his reasonably educated son cannot find a job, there is no point in telling him to wait for a few years for economic reforms to solve all his problems. His need is today.

Looking at the poll results in Andhra Pradesh and watching one of the most famous votaries of economic reforms, the TDP chief, Mr Chandrababu Naidu, get such a drubbing, it is safe to conclude that in a country like Indian where millions live below the poverty line, issues pertaining to the public distribution system, an opportunity to earn enough to keep body and soul together — either through employment in the farm sector or through small entrepreneurial ventures as those promoted by self-help groups — and decent primary education and health care, are much more important than high decibel campaigns on an economically resurgent India.

The Indian voters, majority of whom come from marginalised sections of society, both caste- and class-wise, get a chance to have their say only once in five years. This is their rare moment in the sun and governments who have not performed — the Congress leaders have much more experience of this than their BJP counterparts, who are only novices in this game — are shown the door.

Apart from the factor of incumbency and the apparent failure to meet the expectations of the ordinary rural Indian, another area where the BJP should do some serious soul-searching pertains to the Moditva element of its Hindutva ideology. The March of 2002 might have become a dim image in the memory of many Indians. But the Zahira Sheiks and Bilkis Banos of Gujarat, who, unfortunately for the Moditva brigade, survived to stir the collective consciousness of the nation, have undoubtedly succeeded in planting not only deep hatred towards the BJP in the minds of the minorities, but also a seed of suspicion in the hearts of the majority community.

No less an institution than the Supreme Court has been reminding the nation that not only was the grossest form of injustice done to the victims of the Gujarat carnage, but also that justice continues to escape them even today. And this because of an unrepentant and recalcitrant State government that seems hell bent on shielding the perpetrators of heinous crimes such as rape and burning people alive.

The `heroics' of the Narendra Modi Government might get the BJP a rich harvest of votes in Gujarat, but has, obviously, had a negative fallout in many other regions. It has made even the most liberal Muslim turn away from the BJP, and disenchanted the genuinely secular elements among the majority community, who do not share a vision of India where all sections of society do not have a sense of belonging and pride in their country. After the trouncing of the TDP-BJP combine in Andhra Pradesh, there was talk in political circles on Tuesday evening that the Prime Minister, Mr A. B. Vajpayee, is firmly against the NDA making a stake for forming the government if it does not get at least 240 to 250 seats.

If this really happens and he is able to carry his colleagues along on this line of thinking, more from the point of stability than anything else, it remains to be seen whether knives are out in the party for the scalp of their erstwhile hero, the Gujarat Chief Minister Mr Narendra Modi.

Call it wishful thinking, call it an improbability... but if this does happen and there is change of heart within the BJP leadership that making heroes out of the likes of Mr Modi or the VHP's Praveen Togadia is detrimental to the Party's long time interest, the tears, blood and shame of a Zahira Sheikh or Bilkis Bano would not have been in vain.

(Response can be sent to rasheeda@thehindu.co.in)