WIDER ANGLE. A complex political patchwork

It’s been a long and strenuous haul for Arvind Jha, the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP’s) campaign manager for Madhya Pradesh. “I've lost count of the rallies,” he says in a voice made hoarse by speeches and campaign trail dust. The AAP is fielding 208 candidates across the State and Jha’s confident the AAP will make its debut in the Madhya Pradesh assembly even if not in big numbers. “People have seen what we’ve been able to achieve in Delhi in three years,” he says confidently.

Jha asserts — rightly or wrongly — the BJP will get wiped out in the rural areas because of widespread farmers’ anger. For him, the only question is whether the AAP will cut into the Congress party’s votes.

The AAP isn’t the lone newcomer in the Madhya Pradesh elections. There are other local parties like Sapaks, that’s campaigning mainly on an anti-reservation platform. Mayawati’s BSP also has pockets of influence in the State and held six seats in the last assembly.

But Madhya Pradesh is still an exception to the rule across the country. It’s one of the few States where the two ‘national’ parties are squaring off against each other. With minor variations, it’s the same story in the two other north Indian States — Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh — that are also going to the polls and where the Congress and BJP are involved in a more or less straight fight, even if Ajit Jogi would like us to believe otherwise.

Back in the 1960s, the Congress was a monolith that ruled over everything it surveyed with the exception of Tamil Nadu, where the DMK rode to power on the language issue. And there was, of course, the National Conference in Jammu and Kashmir. But for the most part, the Congress held sway. In 1984, after Indira Gandhi’s assassination, Rajiv Gandhi got the sympathy vote and swept more than 400 seats in Parliament out of 543.

Today, it would be a near impossible feat to repeat those numbers simply because the two national parties must share power in too many States with strong regional parties.

In 2009, the Congress grabbed 33 out of 42 seats in undivided Andhra Pradesh and they were able to form a government at the Centre largely because of this strong performance.

But soon afterwards, the architect of their victory, YS Rajashekhar Reddy, died in a helicopter crash and in the 2014 general elections the Congress won just two seats. It gave way to two regional parties, the Telugu Desam and the Telangana Rashtriya Samiti. And not long after that, Andhra Pradesh, where linguistic States were born, was divided in two.

It’s a slightly different story across the border in Karnataka where the Congress and the BJP have battled it out in several elections. But in the recent State elections, HD Deve Gowda’s Janata Dal (S) picked up 37 seats which was enough to give it the kingmaker’s role and the chief ministership.

A lopsided victory

In 2014, the BJP beat the odds and the regional parties and vaulted to power with a lopsided victory in which it scored full houses in several States, including all-important Uttar Pradesh where it got 71 out of 80 seats.

Even in its headiest imaginings, it could scarcely have expected to pull off such blanket wins — except for the collapse of the Congress. In the three States that are currently having elections, the BJP managed to bag 62 out of 65 seats. Only Kamal Nath managed to hang on to his Chhindwara seat and Jyotiraditya Scindia to his Guna seat, both in Madhya Pradesh. The Congress was reduced to one seat in Chhattisgarh even though they had fared much better during the assembly elections. These are numbers that even the BJP’s strategists admit will be tough to repeat in 2019.

National parties, regional colour

And while Congress and the BJP call themselves national parties, the question is whether they really can be considered so any more. The Congress governs just four States and none of them is major. The BJP holds power in 15 States out of 31 and is a junior partner in four others. Nevertheless, the fact is that its geographical spread is poor.

Looking at a map of India and it rules all the way from Goa to Uttarakhand. But in remaining States it has such a negligible presence so as to be almost non-existent. Take Odisha, for instance, where back in 2004, the BJP had seven out of 21 parliamentary seats. In 2009, Odisha had become a regional party stronghold under the tight control of Naveen Patnaik’s BJD and the BJP was wiped out totally. In 2014 it managed to win back one seat.

The BJP can, at least, say it once had a presence in Odisha which is more than it can claim in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. In Tamil Nadu, its solitary seat, Kanyakumari, is held by Pon Radhakrishnan, minister of state in the ministries of finance and shipping and it barely has a presence elsewhere in the State. In Telangana, Bandaru Dattatreya won in Secunderabad but it hasn’t made more headway. In fact, the State elections now throwing up surprises and the Telugu Desam and Congress combine might even be in with a chance.

The political map of India has, therefore, become a patchwork of different regional parties. Right now, the BJP holds 272 seats while Congress has a historically low 49. Together, they have 321 seats. Over 220 seats, meanwhile, are held by regional parties. Under the circumstances, we should probably accept that coalition governments will be the rule rather than the exception and 2014 was an anomaly.

Anti-incumbency factor

The looming question is how much can Modi’s star power overcome the weight of anti-incumbency and the widespread lack of any feel-good factor to his term. Or could he get a lift from people having little faith in the leadership qualities of Rahul Gandhi and other opposition leaders who might throw in their hats for the top job?

All these forces will be at work in the coming months. The opposition will be trying to carve out deals to ensure they stick together and don’t fragment. The biggest question of all will be whether Mayawati will stay in her uneasy alliance with her arch-rival, the Samajwadi Party, and the Congress. Mayawati’s the one player who could tilt the balance either way.

It’s difficult to say in this fractured political landscape which combination of parties will come to the fore in 2019. But the State elections taking place right now will almost certainly give us a taste of what’s brewing.

COMMENT NOW