LOK SABHA ELECTIONS-2009: CONGRESS SWEEPS TO BIGGEST

VICTORY SINCE 1991

The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) raced to an unexpected

decisive victory in May 2009, in what was billed as one of the most unpredictable
Lok Sabha elections. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh scripted history by
becoming the first Prime Minister after Jawaharlal Nehru to come back to power
after completing a full term in office.

Congress did exceptionally well on its own as it crossed the 200 mark while the
incumbent ruling combine was comfortably placed at over 250 in the 545-
member Lok Sabha. The UPA’s estranged allies like the Left parties, Lalu Prasad
Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Ram Vilas Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party
(LJP) were humbled even as the main opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP) finished at a low of 112 seats.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s personal image as a man of learning and

integrity and the electorate’s preference for stability proved to be key factors in
these elections.

The fear of a fractured mandate with disparate small political parties calling the
shots at the Centre also seemed to have scared the electorate, which showed a
preference for national parties, although nobody is writing off the regional
parties.
Congress party’s surprise comeback in Uttar Pradesh with 21 seats, where the
Congress has been in the wilderness for over two decades, proved to be a real
morale booster for the grand old party. What was even more heartening for the
Congress was that the party is gradually regaining its old base with the minorities
and the upper castes veering towards it. The Uttar Pradesh performance was also
a personal victory for Rahul Gandhi, who had argued that instead of going in for
an unequal alliance, the Congress should fight on its own.

In contrast to the Congress, the BJP suffered serious reverses as its tally
plummeted from 138 to 112 seats. It could hold on to its own only in Chhattisgarh
and improved in Karnataka.

Similarly, the DMK-Congress combine managed to minimize its losses in Tamil

Nadu where the rival Jayalalitha-led AIADMK front was projected to sweep the
polls, banking on the emotive Sri Lankan Tamils issue.

It was part of Rahul Gandhi’s two-pronged strategy of handpicking youth and

putting them in the fray in several constituencies across the country that paid off
rich dividends. Inducting youth was seen as a follow-up of his father Rajiv
Gandhi’s initiative in 1980s when he had started rebuilding his own team after
Indira Gandhi died in 1984.

Indian democracy has surprised many. In last elections, no one had thought a
Congress-led UPA would emerge winners. It did. This time, many said Congress
would be the single-largest party and UPA the top coalition, but few imagined
Congress would retain office with 201 seats—the highest any single party has got
in 25 years.

This election was supposed to be without any national issue. The Indian voter,
however, had different ideas—he voted with his feet for a coherent and stable
government. Many commentators have called this election a return of national
parties—no doubt, on the basis of the stronger performance of Congress and BJP.
But that would be misreading the election. While in UP, for instance, voters
seemed to have viewed national parties with favour, the BSP is still the main
opponent for all parties in the State, having emerging as either the winner or
runner-up in 68 of the 80 seats.

But more than that, there is another statistic that is more telling. The combined
strength of all national parties—Congress, BJP and the Left—remains the same in
this election as it was the last time. In 2004, these national parties had a
combined tally of 345 seats; this time they have a tally of 344. In other words,
some regional parties might have lost, but some have gained.

For the BJP, the election has been something of a disaster with Narendra Modi
being touted as L.K. Advani’s successor right in the middle of the poll campaign,
and Varun Gandhi usurping the party’s agenda with his personal positioning
exercise as UP’s Modi. At the end of it, the BJP was left with a negative campaign
and could hardly convey to the electorate what it would bring to the table.
The history of many religion-based parties in other countries often is that when
they do badly electorally, the die-hards in the party manage to convince
themselves that their poor performance was due to not their over-focus on
religion, but because of their not focussing sufficiently on religion-related issues.
Instead of diluting polarising tendencies, they further strengthen them. The BJP
has to resist such a retrograde step if it wants to come back to power. What is
required is not more of the Hindutva ideology, but less of it.

Economics and politics

A heartening message from the 2009 elections is that performance does matter.
Parties/candidates who have paid attention to governance have won the voters’
confidence and received handsome returns by way of refurbished mandates.

Development has a resonance that has often been lost under the weight of
caste.Sound economics alone does not always make sound politics in a country
with diversities and inequities like India. And while State governments keep an
eye on revenue, many have gone in for an adroit mix of “pro-poor” schemes and a
push for big investment in areas like SEZs, IT, roads, power and mining. Through a
forceful focus on the welfare agenda, they have avoided being branded as being
only mindful of elite interests.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar managed to earn the State the tag of being a
turnaround story, through a concerted effort to improve power supply and roads.
He has been able to show a marked infrastructure improvement in the State
where industry had fled, roads were non-existent and the countryside was hit by
a high migration of people to other States and cities.

Similarly, in Madhya Pradesh, a State hit by chronic poverty and under-

development, Shivraj Chouhan of the BJP has been able to capture the popular
imagination. He has done so through a version of cradle-to-grave socialism.
Although MP remains beset with problems but Chouhan’s success lies in his
targeted schemes for women and girl children, as well as his astute initiatives like
Kapil Dhara where he used NREGA funds to dig wells in rural areas and then
supplied free diesel generator sets. MP also has an extensive health cover for
those in the BPL category and has given farmers a bonus above the central price
for food procurement.

Andhra Chief Minister Y.S. Rajashekhar Reddy has managed to hold onto his seat
despite losing considerable ground to the grand TDP-TRS-Left alliance. This has
perhaps got to do with his capacity to retain the loyalty of dalits and a section of
small farmers. His Arogyashree offer of health coverage for the poor even at
corporate hospitals, the 108 emergency services and the cheap rice project
worked.
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi aggressively pushed the investment model
and his success in reducing power outages helped him construct a middle-class
constituency.

The Communist Factor

Wherever the Communists had come to power anywhere in the world either
through a revolution or through the ballot box, they have shown a tendency to
see to it that they cannot be dislodged from power by infiltrating the
governmental machinery through their cadres and through intimidation of those
opposed to them. That is what they succeeded in doing in West Bengal. The entire
credit for breaking their stranglehold on the governmental machinery and
initiating the process of freeing West Bengal from the asphyxiating clutches of the
Communists goes to Mamata Bannerjee. For years, she fought single-handed
against them and has ultimately succeeded.

Impact on Common man

There will be conflicting pressures on the new government—from the corporate

world for more and speedier economic reforms and from the middle and poorer
classes for more populist measures like writing off bank loans, subsidised sale of
essential articles etc. If the Trinamool Congress continues to act as a speed-
breaker in the way of meeting the expectations of the corporate world, inner
conflicts would once again distort the economic reforms and further delay our
catching up with China.

How to meet the expectations of the common man without sacrificing the needs
of the corporate world? These questions will haunt the Prime Minister as he gets
going for a second innings.

There has been no act of terrorism by the Indian Mujahideen since September
when they struck in New Delhi. There has been no incident of Pakistan-conspired
terrorism since the Mumbai attacks of November 2008. This should not be
interpreted to mean that their capabilities have withered away. One must view
this more as a tactical pause and one should be prepared for a resumption of
jihadi attacks. The comprehensive plan for strengthening our counter-terrorism
apparatus should now be implemented vigorously. Complacency would be
suicidal.

In these times of global recession, countries are learning to appreciate the value
of a large domestic market. China, for example, is trying to reorient its economy
from dependence on thinning external markets to domestic demand. The
inclusive policies that have now been given political legitimacy will help India
further expand its already healthy domestic market by bringing larger and larger
sections of Indian people into the economy’s participative base. This will not,
however, happen by more of the same from the UPA. It will call for deep political
reform. The State must cease to be the predator it is, hindering new businesses
and entrepreneurship. It must turn facilitator. The Right to Information Act, the
forest dwellers’ rights Act and the employment guarantee scheme must be
effectively used to mobilise people at the margins of society to turn them into
fully empowered participants in the growth process. Sectional favour and
patronage must give way to broad-based development. This will promote social
cohesion, the bedrock of internal as well as external security of the nation.

145 MPs won with less than 20% votes

Candidates winning with the votes of only a minor fraction of the electorate are
common enough. As many as 145 of the 543 MPs elected in the 2009 elections
had less than 20% of their electorate voting for them. Compared to the many that
romped home with less than 20% vote of the total electorate, just five MPs—the
ones representing Nagaland, Sikkim, the two Tripura seats and Tamluk in West
Bengal—got the votes of a majority of their respective electorates. Overall, the
average MP in the 15th Lok Sabha got the votes of barely a quarter of his or her
electorate.

An analysis of Lok Sabha elections since 1977 shows that MPs are garnering, on an
average, a smaller and smaller part of the total registered voters in their
constituencies. Polling percentages haven’t changed very much over the last 32
years. The turnout was 60.5% in 1977 and just a little lower at 58.2% in 2009. But
the electoral arena has got much more competitive now with several contenders
in the fray.