WITH just months left for the 15th general election, the big picture is still infuriatingly foggy, making punditry a hazard for all but the extraordinarily astute and the extraordinarily stupid.

Agreed, elections are not always easy to predict, but this country has rarely gone into a general election without an identifiable favourite. The eventual outcome may belie the expectation, as most famously in 2004, but it is unusual for the run-up to offer so little clarity as now.

Consider the big battles of the last three decades. In 1977, the Janata Party was a breath of fresh air to Indira Gandhi’s Emergency-stained Congress. In 1980, the same Indira was acknowledged to be on a comeback trail. In 1984, Rajiv Gandhi was the dazzling pin-up who would decimate the competition. In 1989, Vishwanath Pratap Singh was the new white hope. In 1991, the Congress was without Rajiv and without a leader. But perhaps because of that (the sympathy factor) its victory was anticipated.

The year 1996 heralded the era of the first real coalition – as opposed to the Janata Party and Janata Dal experiments of 1977 and 1989. From here on a plethora of players would jockey for power at the Centre, bringing their regional interests to weigh on national decisions. But even through the pre-election haze of that watershed year, the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party was foreseeable, as was the decline of the Congress.

Nineteen ninety six saw the Hindutva party replace the Congress as the largest single party, and though the 13-day Atal Bihari Vajpayee government would yield space to a rickety alliance led by Deve Gowda, Vajpayee was seen as the man of the future – and for one reason alone. He had grasped the message of 1996: The party that made the smarter alliance won the race. Over the next two years, he would assiduously woo the regional parties, among them those implacably opposed to Hindutva.

By the time of the 1998 election, the United Front had self-destructed while the Congress remained the sulking child, in denial about coalitions. That left the field open to the alliance built by Vajpayee. He fulfilled the expectation – in 1998, when he took office at the head of a 13-party alliance, and again in 1999, when, riding on Kargil-generated emotions, he led the 23-party National Democratic Alliance to victory.

By 2004, the BJP-led NDA was widely reckoned to be on a hat-trick, thanks to Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s image as an alliance builder and the BJP’s swashbuckling India Shining campaign. But in all the euphoria, pundits had missed two important pointers. The NDA had already begun to unravel and, second, Sonia Gandhi had finally accepted the utility of alliance-making. Away from the media glare, she quietly stitched up winning partnerships. The Congress formed the smarter alliance, beating the BJP at its own game. The 2004 verdict upset all predictions. But that only reinforced the irony of the BJP’s early projection as the winner. So great was the delusion that Vajpayee even recklessly advanced the election dates.

 

Today we are at that juncture where, going by the trend in previous elections, the favourite should have been identified, even if the eventual outcome shows this to be an error of judgment. Yet, as of this moment, the 2009 race appears wide open – not because of a difficulty in deciding among the numerous likely winners, but because no player seems to fits the bill of winner. There is no buzz, no live-wire feel around any party/alliance that would place it ahead of its rivals. Even the outlines of the smarter alliance are not visible. Yes, there is some excitement around Mayawati. But if she is destined to be prime minister, it is far from clear how she will get there.

On paper, there are three formations competing for victory. The Congress and its allies. The BJP and its allies. And a loose, unhappy arrangement called the Third Front. At the fag end of its tenure, the Congress, leading a lacklustre alliance, looks fatigued, bombarded by problems, and without a winning strategy. The BJP, buoyed by a string of state election victories, ought to be rejoicing. Instead it looks worried, a factor underscored by its struggle to win new allies.

The once 23-party NDA is today a five-party rump in the opposition. At the time of writing, the BJP had made but a single addition, the Indian National Lok Dal, to its existing four allies – namely, the Shiv Sena, the Akali Dal, the Biju Janata Dal and the Janata Dal (United). Would the INLD’s changed destination (it was earlier with the Third Front) spur more parties to board the BJP bandwagon? Will this help the BJP make the smarter alliance in 2009? This would depend on two inter-related conditions being met.

First, prospective allies must think it worth their while to cede seats to the BJP. Remember, if you want influence at the Centre, you also need seats to back you. Second, the BJP itself must appear to be winning – the latter condition will be fulfilled if the BJP does well in the upcoming elections to the assemblies of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhatisgarh and Delhi. In the first three states, the BJP is in government while in Delhi it is in the opposition, looking to end the ten-year rule of Sheila Dikshit.

Should the BJP retain even two of the bigger states, it will trumpet the success as only it can. Of India’s political parties, the BJP alone is versed in marketing. A hyped up BJP win against the Congress in a crucial semi-final match will greatly increase its attractiveness to potential allies. Yet, prospective partners will also be aware that this is treacherous turf. Overdo the gloating, and you could lose the advantage. The BJP created a huge fanfare around its three state election victories in November 2003, but went on to lose the big prize in 2004.

 

The Third Front continues to baffle. Indeed, because of the Front’s tendency to act as a revolving door, it has remained an on-again, off-again pro-position, and nobody quite knows who its members are. J. Jayalalitha (All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam), with her towering presence, and the potential to win a handsome cache of seats from Tamil Nadu, was touted as its natural leader. But she would perennially waver over her membership, finally choosing to up and quit in 2007. The migration to the Congress camp of Mulayam Singh and Amar Singh (Samajwadi Party) in July 2008 all but sealed the Front’s fate. Yet the formation bounced back, and for a brief moment looked good enough to emerge right on top.

The perceived game changer was Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati, who, in the days prior to the 22 July 2008 confidence vote on the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal, suddenly and dramatically fetched up on the same side as Prakash Karat (Communist Party of India-Marxist), Ardhendu Bhushan Bardhan (Communist Party of India) and Nara Chandrababu Naidu (Telugu Desam Party).

 

Mayawati withdrew support from the Congress and headed out to the Third Front for an eminently sensible reason. She was – or at least she thought she was – the Front’s candidate for prime minister. The logic went like this: Mayawati would bring brand equity to the bedraggled Front. And the Front members in turn would back her for the high office, striving for a consensus around her name, once Manmohan Singh had lost the trust vote. The cascading impact of Prime Minister Mayawati on Dalit votes across the country would ensure that she became the front runner in 2009. So strong was the ‘Maya for PM’ buzz that parties competed to endorse her. Karat and Bardhan arrived on her doorstep as did Ajit Singh (Rashtriya Lok Dal), Om Prakash Chautala (INLD) and K. Chandra Sekhar Rao (Telangana Rashtra Samithi).

Of course, the plot bristled with holes. The Third Front badly miscalculated in assuming that Prime Minister Singh would lose the vote. Even if Singh lost, the numbers did not add up. Between them, the BJP and the Congress held a majority in the 14th Lok Sabha, and Mayawati could not have got into South Block without Karat and Bardhan leaning on the BJP. In the event, Manmohan Singh’s emphatic victory ended the speculation, once again blurring the contours of the Third Front. Three months after that high point, Front leaders are hedging their bets, refusing to name Mayawati for prime minister, except when badgered by a media hungry for sensational news. For her part, Mayawati has dumped Ajit Singh, and has shown no interest in sewing up an alliance with the TDP – which Chandrababu Naidu had sold as a done deal back in July.

 

The undeserved loser in all this is the Congress. At exactly this point five years ago, the ruling BJP was on the up and up. It had won three of four state elections held in November 2003. But this was not all. Fortuitous global conditions, manageable crude prices, a stock market on a bull run, a buoyant economy and low inflation figures combined to make 2003-2004 – the BJP-NDA’s final year – its best year in office. The GDP growth under the Vajpayee government took an odd trajectory – rising from 4.4 per cent and 3.8 per cent in 2000-01 and 2002-2003 respectively to just beyond eight per cent in 2003-2004. The BJP’s supreme confidence flowed from these indicators. The party basked in what the media rhapsodized as the ‘feel good’ factor. If the BJP lost, it was because in all the excitement, it had overlooked making the smarter alliance.

By contrast, the Congress’ GDP growth story, spectacular for the most part, has taken a body blow in the crucial last year. GDP growth rate averaged an unprecedented 8.8 per cent over the United Progressive Alliance’s first four years and topped nine per cent in 2007, catapulting India to economic wunderkind status. Hyphenated all its life with Pakistan, India was now in the same league as China. Next, consider prices, the biggest worry for an incumbent government. Inflation rate, which was pegged at 3.96 per cent in April 2006, averaged 4.5 per cent in 2007, making India that rare haven where high growth combined with low inflation. It added to the government’s sense of well-being that through much of this period the stock markets were in a frenzy. At Davos, the Swiss alpine resort where the best in world business and politics meet annually, India would be feted as the new Asian giant; its achievements invoked as much in admiration as in envy.

But the four-year dream run would end soon – and not for any particular fault of the Manmohan Singh government. If Brent crude oil prices averaged around $30 per barrel during much of the NDA regime, they galloped furiously in the UPA government’s last two years. By June 2008, Brent was ruling at over $130 per barrel. But this was hardly the worst piece of bad luck for the government. More misfortune would follow with the American financial meltdown – the severest since the Great Depression – choosing to impact the world in the last quarter of 2008. While experts widely regarded India as having escaped from the crisis with bruises, the bruises nonetheless left their mark – on the stock market, the services sector and the IT and BPO industry.

 

The growth prognosis for 2008 and 2009 is nowhere as rosy as initially projected, with the Asian Development Bank severely scaling down previous estimates. Prime Minister Singh would himself warn of slowing growth in an 20 October address to Parliament, pegging GDP growth in the last quarter at 7.9 per cent. This, combined with sky-high prices (At 12 per cent, annual inflation reached a 13-year high in August 2008), indicated India was heading for a medium growth, high inflation period – the exact reverse of what Manmohan Singh had achieved in his first four years.

 

The inflation-economic slowdown climate threatens a government that had put together a phenomenal domestic economy-foreign policy-social sector package. If India’s high growth under Manmohan Singh was previously unachieved, his bid to end India’s 34-year nuclear isolation was a success scored against impossible odds. Not only were there steep international hurdles to cross – International Atomic Energy Agency, the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group and the American Congress – these had to be crossed in severely testing domestic circumstances. In June 2008, with the Left adamant on opposing, the nuclear deal was considered dead. Yet within the next month, Singh had sealed an unlikely pact with the Samajwadi Party and won the trust vote, pushing the deal into fast track, even as his emissaries negotiated language minefields, battled pressures and met one deadline after another. Hyperbolic as the newspaper headlines were –‘Nuclear Dawn’ screamed one, ‘N-powered’ said another, ‘Sixth power’ proclaimed yet another – they conveyed the magnitude of the achievement.

The nuclear deal has been criticized. Even its supporters are worried by the riders that were attached to its passage in the US Congress. But this does not diminish the enormity of what India has pulled off: It is today the only country with the fortune to be able to keep its nuclear weapons without signing the NPT.

The UPA government’s social sector initiatives have not been celebrated. But consider what it has put on the table – three breakthrough social legislation and a first-ever attempt to accept and address Muslim deprivation. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005 and The Right to Information Act, 2005 are not schemes. They make the right to work and the right to know enforceable obligations. Another first is The Scheduled Tribes and Other Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, enacted to correct the historic injustice done to traditional forest dwellers by giving them ownership over forest lands. The Sachar Committee boldly went into an area avoided by previous governments, and declared without hesitation that Muslims have been denied equality of social, educational and job opportunity.

To be sure, activists have struggled to get the acts passed; in some cases they have battled unnecessary dilution. The implementation of the acts has also been patchy. But these problems must be understood in the context of an entrenched bureaucracy unwilling to give up its power. Already there is encouraging feedback on the NREGA and RTI.

 

Tragically for the Congress, the pluses seem to have taken a back seat to an overwhelming sense of doom. This is partly the party-government’s fault. If the party seemed disinclined to go full throttle on the government’s economic and foreign policy triumphs, the government, in turn, has down-played the social sector accomplishments to the chagrin of Singh’s detractors in the party. The understanding between Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh was that she will follow the aam aadmi agenda, while he will ensure that India took the high road on the economy and foreign policy. The constant conflict between the party and the government has shattered this compact. As a result, while the UPA government’s achievements have not been highlighted enough, its failures have come to national attention, thanks to an opposition relentlessly focusing on them.

It does not help the government that its final year in office has brought so much bad tidings. For others reasons too its prospects in 2009 are none too good. Muslims are angry with the government for its refusal to order a judicial enquiry into the 19 September encounter in Delhi’s Batla House area. Batla House is a single incident gone wrong, but it is symptomatic of the desperation in the community that it has become the peg on which to hang its grievances. Added to this the fact that the Congress has not won a single state election of consequence since it retained Maharashtra in 2004.

 

In the last general election, the Congress and its allies had a landslide in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Tamil Nadu and Delhi. These states together account for 128 seats. It is impossible that the UPA can repeat this feat. And should the Congress fare poorly in the November 2008 state elections, that will be an indication of what awaits it in 2009. The Congress’ hopes must rest on the following: A durable seat-sharing arrangement with the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh, an alliance with Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal, and the revival of its winning alliance in Bihar. However, the SP-Congress pact is under strain, Mamata has been mercurial and Ram Vilas Paswan and Lalu Prasad cannot be banked upon to stay together.

The BJP’s problem is that it has ceased to be the alliance leader that it was. If the party is today stuck with only five allies, it is not for want of trying. The BJP strategised on exploiting the structural disadvantage the Congress faced in the states. Wherever possible it teamed up with the Congress’s principal rival, for example, in Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Punjab and Bihar. In West Bengal, it lured away Mamata from the Congress.

But, today, most parties find themselves having to weigh the benefits of a partnership with the BJP against the all-too evident drawbacks. There is no party in India, other than the Shiv Sena and possibly the Akali Dal, that does not covet the Muslim vote. Chandrababu Naidu and Farooq Abdullah left the Hindutva embrace for this reason, while Mamata Banerjee remains undecided for the very same reason. Nitish Kumar and Naveen Patnaik are putting up with the BJP only for want of a better alternative. The violence let loose by the Sangh Parivar in Orissa and Karnataka has further damaged the BJP’s cause with its allies.

The BJP’s prospects in Uttar Pradesh, from where it got more than half its seats up until 1998, do not look good. Its best bet is Jayalalitha. With Muthuvel Karunanidhi in all manner of trouble, she is looking at a landslide in Tamil Nadu. But the lady has so far not obliged, possibly because it suits her to maximise her seats and negotiate a post-poll alliance.

 

The Third Front’s strategy centres on Mayawati but she is more a problem than a solution. Chandrababu Naidu, who is fond of telling his voters that he was twice offered the chair of prime minister, can hardly go back to them saying he has given up that ambition for the sake of Mayawati. The Left Front constituents know that ceding leadership to her would end their independence. Finally, Mayawati is a known opponent of pre-poll alliances. She will not give up on this policy, without a rock solid assurance that the Front will project her as prime minister.

Last, even assuming alliances firm up on election-eve, there is no guarantee that constituents will not migrate towards whoever offers them the best bargain.

So? So, it is a toss up.