by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group
Death of political parties is too visible & worrisome
The Delhi assembly results that are on every television screen now are significant not just for the surprise element. With BJP losing its sheen just nine months after its epochal victory, or so it seemed, in the May Lok Sabha polls, the election in the city state raises crucial questions on the very nature of politics.
Is it fundamentally changing, with the electorate refusing to wait impatiently for five years and let non-performers enjoy power? What are the political parties doing? In the past, parties won elections on the strength of their base in the society, including the elaborate networks of executives, supporters and the assorted well-wishers. The left parties in particular maintain even till now armies of ‘full-timers’ who’re paid not only ‘wages’ but ‘bonus’ and are given insurance cover individually and for family. The CPM party owns impressive buildings in West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura. Party funds the elections of its candidates.
With CPM and its left partners tottering in the 2011 West Bengal assembly elections, and getting swept away in last year’s Lok Sabha poll, it first struck observers of politics that something was amiss and political parties could be losing its relevance. In 2011, CPM lost its 34-year-long chokehold over Bengal not because the party lacked cadre strength but because its paid army was quite helpless against the collective fury of the people that Mamata Banerjee could unleash. It was a slugfest between an organized machinery and just one woman. Music, poetry, theatre, street-corner meetings—Mamata used every trick in the book of crowdsourcing to meet her two objectives: painting CPM as a party of crooks, and portraying the act of voting against it on the election day as some sort of a divine obligation. Her 2011 success certainly gave ideas to many politicians.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi could be one of them as he too faced last year’s poll independent of the party, after putting his Man Friday Amit Shah in its charge. Since its inauguration in 1980, or even in its past incarnation as Jan Sangh, BJP in election mode was always a collective enterprise with every member or supporter offering his input. But Modi changed the rule of the game. He stood at the centre of a highly focused and hugely expensive election campaign, with not the shadow of any other person in the limelight. Is campaign portrayed Congress as venal and inept and the voter was told Modi would give him a new deal; acche din is round the bend. Bypassing the party was easy for him as the exponential rise in the numbers of mobile phones made it possible to target the voter and make him feel that it was Modi himself who was urging him to vote. Media’s over-excitability came in handy. Everyone believed that an astronomical amount of illicit money from India was lying in some Swiss bank accounts with the connivance of the Congress, and after coming to power Modiji would bring the hoard back with a snap of finger. Modi won the election not because he knew how he’d get the alleged black money out but because corruption is a sore point on which voters were outraged.
Arvind Kejriwal of Aam Admi Party is the most consistent practitioner of the rising cult of ‘party-less election’. AAP is not much of a political party in the old sense. It has no ‘bhavan’, unlike Congress or BJP. Except Kejriwal’s, its other faces flit in and out of the party when they please, the departure of handsome, and raucous, Shazia Ilmi from AAP to BJP being a case in point. AAP is a Kejriwal show all the way. And the “Muffler Man” has mastered the art of taking the electoral issues to the voter through ingenious means and sold dreams and, if elected, would set things right. Be it essential commodities or vegetables or electricity tariff, he would bring prices down by half.
Like you, I am also waiting to see the outcome of Delhi election. But, regardless of result, it is clear that BJP was retreating from the beginning and arrogance of power led its leaders to take Delhi’ pampered voters for granted. They had not voted for BJP since 1998 in Assembly polls. Modi should have realized it would be a referendum of his nine months’ performance as Delhi city was ruled by his government through the Lieutenant Governor. Modi was pitted against a canny opponent like Kejriwal and in desperation picked ex-IPS social activist Kiran Bedi who lacks her younger adversary’s ingenuity. But in the process Modi forgot the changing nature of politics, with electoral contests tending to become more and more direct and failed to establish direct connection with Delhites.
Indira Gandhi was the first to experiment with direct election. In 1971, she had no more than a Congress in the making—she had split the main party and won the poll majestically by appealing to voters directly. In an India left in abject poverty following high inflation and years of drought, her slogan, garibi hatao, resonated in the hearts of common men. And she could send her message to electors in an age when the nearest telephone could be miles away, not to speak of mobile phone and the internet.
The trouble with direct election is its too much dependence on emotionally motivating voters, a strategy in which one can slip up by promising the moon, or failing to keep his word. Indira Gandhi failed to eliminate poverty and, in two years, she became so unpopular that she started behaving like an autocrat and paid the price. In Bengal, Mamata Banerjee’s popularity is on the decline; maybe she hasn’t faced electoral defeat yet because there is no Kejriwal within hundred miles of Howrah Bridge. But Modi has got a match in the “Muffler Man” who single-handedly demolished Congress Party in Delhi in December 2013 and wiped out Bahujan Samaj Party too. If Modi caught the imagination of the people in May 2014, the Muffler Man has risen from the ashes in February 2015. Rahul Gandhi failed all secular forces and Kejriwal is the new hope of all anti-Modi forces within and outside the BJP. Both, Modi and Kejriwal, have fought elections as individuals. If they have worn garlands on their shoulder, they should be ready for egg on their face.
