New trends versus old truths

DIPANKAR GUPTA

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THE 2014 general elections will clearly be a contest between Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).1 At the national level the Congress is no competition; nor are the many regional parties which only have a satrapy status. They are defined by their provinciality and depend on a good, big honeypot at the Centre around which they can buzz.

Yet, the BJP versus Modi contest is not as facile, nor as glib, as it may seem at first glance. If Modi’s real combatants are those within his party then some old truths need to be contested. First, the BJP is not as cohesive or disciplined as it was once known to be. Dissension within the ranks will surface if it does not come up with about 220 (out of 543) seats in the next general elections. Thus while the BJP will still be the single largest party, it might have to seek allies with a begging bowl and not from the commanding heights.

Second, the BJP had traditionally prided itself on being organization driven and not personality dependent. Modi’s ascendance threatens to change that feature which obviously would rankle with many in the party. It would be wrong to say that it is just the old guard that Modi has put in the shade. There are prominent BJP chief ministers in three states who would not like a diminution in their status; nor would several political veterans at the Centre accept such a fate.

On one issue, however, there will be unanimity between Modi and his internal rivals. Neither side would like to rake up identity politics. At a time of heightened political tension, there is the temptation to ignite a sectarian war. It perhaps comes naturally to a party that has been bred on the ideology of Hindutva and on the collective hurt of a wounded national pride. At the same time, it is also a weapon that cannot be sullied or trivialized if brandished about on a routine basis. However, the need to go all guns blazing on identity is hardly necessary given the disarray in the Congress-led UPA. Why waste heavy artillery now when the other side is in retreat?

This is why Hindutva ideology is not in evidence even though it is Modi, of 2002 Gujarat fame, who is in the forefront. If the competition from the UPA had been a real threat, the BJP might have needed to dig deep into its ideological core. It must be acknowledged, at the same time, that the Congress has succeeded in forcing Modi to be defensive about his ethnic past. In this it was aided, in no small measure, by the provisions in the Public Interest Litigation, in the Right to Information Act, and by the electronic media.

This much the Congress has succeeded in using to its advantage, even as it prepares to go down. By mounting relentless pressure against Modi it has forced those in favour of identity politics to think differently; or, at least, not openly embrace inter-faith hostility as a friend. Thus while the Congress may not be a serious contender this time around, there is no doubt that its presence, even if it be somewhat frail, continues to be an important political signpost. It remains a potential rallying point in the game plan of different regional parties, though it is hard to say just yet which way the chips will finally fall.

Even so, as the BJP has a clear edge in this election, it no longer need be wistful if its Hindutva ideology is left idling for the moment. Had the Congress-led UPA been a serious threat, it would have been more attractive for the BJP to position identity politics up front and centre. As its ideological other is so out of steam this season, it would be a waste for the BJP to rev up its old engines. Therefore, while the Congress and its allies did put Modi in a troublesome spot on the 2002 carnage, they have not been able to reap the rewards. If the UPA had delivered, and not dithered while in office, it may have pressured the BJP to fall back on its ethnic ideological core.

 

Against this background, it was easy for Modi to position the BJP as a development agent, and what could be more secular than that? If he and his party seem to be getting away with it, it is the Congress that has eased the passage for them. For those who remember, till as late as the 1990s, economic growth was never a selling point for the BJP the way it is now. The process started in 2004 with its ‘India Shining’ campaign, but at that point it failed to pull it off. Today, against the background of the scandals that have dogged the UPA government, Modi’s claim to the secular, developmentalist terrain has greater credibility. Some even believe that this plot was always on his side of the fence.

This has enlarged BJP’s appeal among those who were not traditionally Hindutva partisans. As nothing fails like failure, Congress is hard put to find an ideological niche it can call its own. It is now abandoning much of its commitment to fight identity politics by hammering away at caste loyalties and encouraging reservations to occupy larger spaces. This has not added to its lustre, for when it comes to caste mobilization the BSP, the RJD and Mulayam’s Samajwadi Party are more adept and better recognized.

Notwithstanding the UPA’s rather desperate attempts at getting Jat votes, the fact remains that caste politics is doing pretty badly this time. Now that everybody, but a small minority, can claim a reserved status of one kind or another, problems and contradictions have begun to emerge from within. Backwards against backwards and Scheduled Castes against Scheduled Castes is next on the agenda, should caste politics be allowed to fester. In this no political party can gain because it is one thing to fight for large agglomerates like ‘Backwards’ and ‘Scheduled Castes’, but quite another when spats erupt within. When that happens there is trouble in paradise. Communities that once came together to campaign for reservations are now turning against one another for a larger slice of the cake that was kept aside for them.

 

This, in addition to the undermining of religious, inter-faith sentiments, has taken the gloss away from identity politics in general for the coming elections. Why, indeed, should the BJP be compelled to pull out its phantom punch if its opponent is already sagging against the ropes? Consequently, Modi eloquently expands on issues such as dirt, hygiene, women’s education, and even the precedence of toilets over temples, without the fear of being tripped up. No previous BJP leader would ever go out on a limb on such issues. Yet, the confidence with which Modi is shunting aside past ideological bulwarks and putting Hindu passions in suspension, demonstrates his easy swagger. The secular space, to paraphrase Napoleon, was lying in the gutter; Modi just picked it up.

In doing this, Modi is putting the accredited secular parties under stress. None of them spoke on matters of everyday life such as cleanliness, quality of education, health care, or the girl child’s right to study in such simple, homely ways. His much publicized teatime tete-a-tetes (chai pe charcha) allow him to adopt a Gandhian affectation of concern for ordinary things. These may not make for ‘breaking news’, and yet their impact is routinely felt at an intimate, even domestic, level just as Hindutva once did.

 

Till just about two years back, Narendra Modi was still a regional hero, a role he played admirably. He also demonstrated a gift for political grandstanding that was not part of his repertoire earlier. He converted every attack against him as being against Gujarat. This ploy appeared credible since the national and world press had cast this state as a bloody one, which made the ordinary Gujarati squirm. Jyoti Basu also profited for over two decades by doing something similar when he blamed the Centre for every ill that befell West Bengal. But the Left Front could not leverage this at an all-India level because its purported ‘communist’ ideology was hard to sell on the national stage. Nor did the ‘leftists’ ever show any remorse for their glorification of Stalin.

Apart from everything else, Modi’s timing was right. He projected his Gujarat Shining image when India was economically reeling on nearly every front. It took far too long for the UPA to counter and contest Modi’s claims, but by then it was too little and too late as well. What further allowed Modi to make the switch as a development agent is UPA’s reluctance to contest his figures when he first initiated this move. For at least a decade, scholars and commentators have pointed out that Gujarat’s golden wheel was spinning nice and fast well before Modi entered the scene.2 Whether it is petroleum, pharmacy, soda ash, or port facilities, Gujarat was well ahead of the pack from the late 1980s onwards. It occupied the third position in India from around that time and continues to hold that position even today.

 

For nearly a decade, beginning 2003, when Modi launched into self-praise, the Congress never challenged him on his developmental boast. Therefore, when the UPA failed to combat rising prices, falling employment and increased inflation, Modi walked in as a secular hero. Once he donned this mantle, India became his for the asking, if not for the taking. He could now claim that he had a political formula that the country could adopt, a promise that the Left Front in Bengal could never credibly make. The CPI(M)-led government there had once done something remarkable on the agrarian front with Operation Barga, but nothing of any import after that. A whole generation born since then has not experienced anything positive happening to them during Left Front rule.

At any rate, Modi is not merely a Gujarat figure any longer, but a national one. Once again, this position lay in the gutter, next to the secular sceptre, and once again Modi just picked it up. In order to seal his claim to national eminence, Modi has chosen to contest outside Gujarat, and where better than from Benaras in Uttar Pradesh? He had to nail the accusation that he is a small-time regional player and, to that extent, he has decided wisely in contesting from the Hindi heartland as well. Should he do well in UP, with the BJP winning about 220 seats nationwide, nobody can stop him from being the prime minister. This holds not only for those outside the BJP and the NDA, but also for those within, especially those who are upset at Modi leapfrogging over party old-timers.

All of this adds up to making the 2014 election one where national issues come to the fore, as do national leaders. Regional parties can only aspire to get the better of the two honeypots in operation, and both of them, the Congress and the BJP, are in essence all-India. This is why they are all waiting and watching to see how things pan out between the two national rivals. Nor should this appear as an exception to the rule. When Indira Gandhi was a contender or when her son succeeded her or, indeed, when Nehru ruled, elections were always national in scope and intent. V.P. Singh too came to power because he projected himself as a national leader all set to oust another national leader, viz., Rajiv Gandhi. Therefore, while people officially vote for their local MP, they usually have in mind a prime ministerial candidate who is a national figure.

In between there have been periods when some prime ministers were exceptions to this rule. The likes of Charan Singh, Deve Gowda, Inder Gujral or Chandra Shekhar did occupy the top position, but they did not last long. In other words, it is not as if this election will project a national leader, or national leaders, above local representatives in the voters’ eye for the first time. It has happened before and will happen again. There is a tendency to look for something unique in every election, but more often than not, that which we pick as spectacular often turns out to be humdrum. In general elections, the trick lies in condensing local factors around a national endeavour, and whoever does this best wins. This is the mantra that nearly always succeeds.

 

In terms of voting behaviour, country and town are not as distinct as they once were. Yet, for some reason, election experts at every turn worry about the rural-urban divide. Old habits die hard; even as the ground underneath us shifts, we still hold on to ancient truths! The fact that in the last general elections in 2009, the UPA won more urban than rural seats shows how facile is the much discussed distinction between town and country. The Congress played a major role in UPA’s urban triumphs for it won most metropolitan centres and the million plus cities. Out of the 34 big cities where the UPA was victorious, Congress won in 23 of those; and in another 81 smaller urban areas, it won 67 out of the 81 that the UPA captured. Except for Bangalore, no major metro could resist the UPA, and the Congress was a big part of that story.

 

Even so, the tendency to call Congress a rural party and the BJP an urban one persists in the minds of many. The coming elections will once again show how the rural and urban Indian votes cannot be categorized in terms of town and country, or Bharat versus India. The NDA and the UPA tally will reflect this lack of bias between village and city for a number of reasons. First, between 2001 and 2011, 18 new million plus cities have come up in our country, according to the Census. In addition, in these ten years, 72 class I towns and 2774 census towns emerged.3 In fact, it does not make sense for any party to play the rural versus urban card, or vice versa, because there are roughly 200 urban and semi-urban constituencies in India today. If a party chooses to lean on the side of village or the city, it would do so at its own peril.

It is true that while roughly 32% of Indians live in non-rural settings, a majority is still to be found in the villages. But that is not the whole truth. In little hamlets across the country, one finds a steady hum of non-farm activity.4 In the mid-1990s, about 45.5% of rural net domestic product was not agricultural, and this surprised experts. Nobody at that time was aware that roughly half the rural economy was not agricultural. Over the years this trend has deepened. By 2009-10, a survey revealed that about 64% of the rural economy was not agricultural.5 For all practical purposes then, most of rural India is not really rural; a village is just a poor, residential neighbourhood where families have lived for generations.

As agriculture is no longer the mainstay of the rural economy, it should not come as a surprise that both rural and urban aspirations have tended to merge. This can also be gauged from the fact that many rural children, nearly 21%, go to private schools6 in the hope that education would be their ticket out of the village. Under these conditions it would not be surprising if political views get standardized across rural and urban India. Why then should political parties view life in simple town versus country terms when education and occupation in cities and villages are trending in the same direction?

 

Given these great transformations taking place in town and country, one would have expected clear programmes reflecting these changes. Far from it! Both the national parties parade homilies and good intentions, but little that is concrete. Modi claims he will bring development to India as he did in Gujarat (this as we said earlier, is stretching the truth) and the Congress promises more sops and doles. Search through their speeches and manifestos and it will be hard to pull out any clear map of how the major political parties will navigate the economic road ahead. That there is no urban or rural plan is bad enough; we do not have a clear idea of how, among others, civic amenities, health and education can be brought up to speed either.

 

Little wonder that the main debate all around us is about corruption. That is one economic factor that hits everybody between the eyes, no matter which way one looks. The attention of the voter today is turned on administrative delivery like never before. This tendency has perhaps been pumped up by a lack of definite and deliberative progress that is in line with aspirations – both rural and urban. As the formal declaration of allegiance (some even say obeisance) to economic liberalization grew, so also did the value that the less state the better. This helped little in honing economic efficiency, as it was supposed to, but led instead to crony capitalism and corruption of a kind that India has not witnessed in recent history. Naturally, it resulted in widespread agitations in the past few years.

Behind this unrest we must factor in urbanization. This will help us understand why corruption and anger against the administration has welled up and spread onto the streets. The old cleavages, as we found, between town and country no longer exist; nor do the ethnic and communal divides make much sense. In place of cleavage politics7 there is a move the world over where unities are developing between classes, especially in the less developed countries. The one common factor behind the uprisings, from Brasilia to Bangkok, is the extent of urban discontent. Urbanization in Brazil now stands at a massive 85%, 25% of Egypt’s population lives in Cairo, and a third of Thailand in Bangkok alone. The Indian story, as we found a little while back, is equally impressive, especially when we take into account the increase in rural non-farm activity.

When there is a sudden surge in urbanization, and such expansion is accompanied by a lack of administrative support and attention, then public anger defies old cleavages. Classes come together more easily than before, especially when the government fails to present a clean image. As economic ideologies lie wasted and ethnic divides need a rest, where else can public discontent express itself but in anti-corruption crusades?

 

It is not surprising then that Arvind Kejriwal has turned out to be a spoiler with the potential to untidy Modi’s carefully nurtured garden. Perhaps there are many in the BJP who would like just that, but not too much of it. A little Kejriwal is welcome for it might bring down Modi’s charisma and the BJP toll to about 180 seats. In this scenario, looking for allies would become most critical, allowing Modi’s detractors within his party to come to life. The BJP would still be the major party, but Modi power would be diluted with him on a backbench as coalition logic would rule. On the other hand, too much Kejriwal is a dangerous thing, as the BJP cannot afford to fall under 180 seats.

In essence, this election will be a balancing act between Narendra Modi and the BJP!

 

Footnotes:

1. I owe this phrase to Kumar Ketkar.

2, Indira Hirway, S.P. Kashyap and Amita Shah, Dynamics of Development in Gujarat: Some Issues. Centre for Development Alternatives, Ahmedabad, 2002.

3. See, censusofindia.gov.in/2011prov-results/paper2/data_files/India2/1.%20Data% Highlight.pdf; accessed on 15 March 2014.

4. See, Five Year Plan 2002-2007, vol. 1, Annexure 5.3, The Planning Commission, GOI, New Delhi. See also, Statistical Outline of India, 2006-7. Tata Services Limited, Department of Statistics, Mumbai, 2007, p. 35.

5. Ramesh Chand and S.K. Srivastava, ‘Changes in the Rural Labour Market and their Implications for Agriculture’, Economic and Political Weekly XLIX(10), 2014, p. 49.

6. Sonalde Desai, et al., Human Development in India. Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2010, p. 83.

7. Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan, ‘Cleavage Structure, Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Introduction’, in Seymour Martin Lipset and S. Rokkan (eds.), Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross National Perspectives. Free Press-Collier Macmillan, New York, 1967.

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