The Hindu Business Line : Of political stand-offs and opinion polls

In the backdrop of the standoff between ruling coalition partners on the India-US nuclear deal and a recent opinion poll on a range of issues, RASHEEDA BHAGAT takes a look at the implications for the common man and the small investor in the equity market.

Even as the standoff between the UPA government and the Left parties reached a flashpoint last week over the Indo-US civil nuclear deal, and stopped just short of a point of no return, many were left wondering what the aam aadmi thought of the whole imbroglio. Let’s not forget the Congress party’s dizzy poll promise — Congress ka haath, aam aadmi ke saath.

Well, a recent opinion poll by NDTV (fieldwork by GfK-MODE), where 12,179 people across 120 constituencies were surveyed, throws up the expected answer; 44 per cent — three fourths of the respondents were from rural areas — were not even aware of the nuclear deal. But the surprising part was that 63 per cent of those surveyed said they trusted whatever the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, had to say on the beneficial effects of the nuclear deal; only the remaining 37 per cent were willing to trust the Left on its stand.

But a major finding of the poll is that in the event of the Left withdrawing support and toppling the Congress-led UPA government, the biggest beneficiary of a mid-term election would be the Congress, even though it cannot hope to form a government on its own. Against the 145 seats it had won in 2004, it would win 185 in a fresh election.

The BJP, which seems to be in a perpetual state of disarray and gets a shot in the arm only when the UPA government goes from one muddle to another, we are told, would lose ground and will be able to get only 116 seats, 22 less than it got last time. Along with the Congress, UP’s Bahenji Ms Mayawati will be a huge beneficiary too, almost doubling her seats from 23 to 42, and that too at the cost of the Samajwadi Party. Mr Mulayam Singh’s woes are from being over.

Bad news for Left

The projections are that even though some of the UPA allies such as Lalu Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal would stand to lose if elections are held now, its total tally would be 232 seats, a good 20 seats up.

Reserving the worst news for the last, the Left, which is raising such a hue and cry over the nuclear deal, would win only 39 seats, 25 lower than it had secured in the 2004 elections. But, surely, there will be other factors contributing to the Left parties’ poor show, not the least of which would be the mess the CPI(M) finds itself in Kerala, with its key leaders facing charges of corruption. And the overhang of Singur and Nandigram in West Bengal would not exactly enthuse its traditional vote-bank to rush to the polling booths.

Of course, a caveat that needs to be put in here is that the sample size of 12,000-odd respondents is too small to make the poll findings accurate. And, anyway, our recent experience with opinion polls has not been very pleasant. Forget the BJP, which will, of course, dismiss the results of such unfavourable polls with a snort. Congress leaders themselves will be surprised to find that the Indian voters have given the party the thumbs-up signal.

Nobody knows better than the Congress MPs themselves what kind of governance and succour the party had promised the country and its deprived classes. We, as well as they, don’t require any polls to gauge the huge gap between the plethora of promises and their pitiful fulfilment.

The most sobering message from this opinion poll should go to the Left. There are strong supporters and opponents of the Indo-US nuclear deal, and the support or opposition often runs across political party lines or ideology. Luckily for the Left, its allergy to anything American finds it many more supporters today, when American hegemony and arrogance are becoming more and more oppressive.

But elections are rarely won on emotive issues alone and the high pitch of the CPI(M) General-Secretary, Mr Prakash Karat’s anti-nuclear deal rhetoric cannot divert all attention away from the mess the CPI(M) leaders have created in Kerala. The era where the NDA government’s high-decibel ‘India Shining’ campaign had made the close-to-the-ground and no-nonsense approach of the Left, that had raised critical questions affecting the Indian masses, seem attractive, has passed. The present Lok Sabha saw the highest ever contingent of Left MPs, but the people who sent them there had their own aspirations, which were not even remotely connected to any major policy issues such as this nuclear deal.

The people expect parties they vote in to take up their roti-kapada-makan or bijli-pani-sadak issues; the last thing they expect is that the meagre land they have will be taken away from them. Attempts to usher i n industrial development in the State might be — and in this particular case were — justified. But try selling the ‘overall-good mantra at my cost’ to anybody — rich or poor — and one finds it doesn& #8217;t work. The same way the trickle-down theory doesn’t sound very appetising to those at the very last rung of society!

One supposes it is the realisation of these ground realities, along with some serious soul-searching, that has resulted in the Left loosening its stranglehold on the Manmohan Singh government and agreeing to a joint mechanism with the UPA government to examine the nuclear deal. This mechanism, we are told, will help resolve the stalemate over the nuclear issue.

Prominent Left leaders, such as Mr A. B. Bardhan, Mr Sitaram Yechury, Mr D. Raja, and others are taking some time off from their frequent media briefings or TV studio-hopping to meet Congress leaders such as Mr Pranab Mukherjee to think of ways and means to calm frayed nerves.

Equity market celebrates

It is now the turn of market analysts and equity experts to interpret the political scenario, and so we find these experts now telling spooked investors how “the worst is over”. Or how “no political party wants elections, so we will not have elections within 6-12 months”… and similar calming talk. One may question their political acumen, but one can always be sure that the market is the first to read the signals right.

If, last week, the indices went into a tailspin on tough talk from the Left, on the first day of the new week they did a little jig; the Sensex registered its highest six-month gain in a single day, when it shot up by 417 points. On Tuesday, too, it managed to keep its head above the water and closed with a 76-point gain.

Of course, the regulators will try to find out who was behind the anonymous messages that the Left was withdrawing support. When markets are spooked, devious operators step in and manipulate prices by triggering panic-selling on the back of rumours. Undoubtedly, many smart and nimble traders make a neat pile of money on such days, but for every winner, there has to be a loser.

And just like the aam aadmi or the person at the bottom of the trickle-down-effect, the losers during volatile market sessions are those who come to Dalal Street with big dreams and little money, and it takes very little time for th em to go bankrupt. Experts in air-conditioned studios might say with a flourish: ‘They have only themselves to blame’. But is this the entire truth? Hardly.

Response may be sent to rasheeda@thehindu.co.in

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