Out of twenty-eight states of the Union, there are only six, which matter as far as power in Delhi is concerned. These states are Uttar Pradesh with 80 seats, Maharashtra with 48 seats, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal with 42 seats each, Bihar with 40 and Tamil Nadu with 39. Together they add up to 291, which are 19 more than the halfway mark required for a majority in the Lok Sabha.

If you look at this particular scenario, then you can infer what is going to happen, what has happened and why it has happened the way it has happened. Uttar Pradesh is fragmented where Congress and BJP are the fourth or third parties. In Maharashtra obviously these parties have allies with whom they contested this particular election. In West Bengal the Left dominates the politics of the State and in Tamil Nadu there are two regional parties which determine the politics. Bihar, again, is as fragmented as Uttar Pradesh is. In Andhra Pradesh, again, it is a contest between the regional party and the Congress Party. It explains probably why for the last decade and a half, we are electing one after the other hung Lok Sabhas and maybe for another decade and a half we may continue to do so.

‘Fractured Mandate’ Reflects India’s Diversity

This brings me to the point what some people fear and a lot of people outside keeping saying that it is a ‘fractured’ mandate or a ‘fragmented’ mandate. Both the words ‘fractured’ and ‘fragmented’ may sound a little derogatory but I would not accept the derogatory sense behind that. I believe very sincerely that this so-called ‘fractured’ mandate actually reflects the diversity of India in a better way than it has happened in the past, prior to 1989. What is important to understand is that gradually the election results in India have begun to reflect the diversity that is part of our society. There are no all-India issues on the basis of which elections are conducted here, as so many observed earlier in this discussion. There are no all-India waves, any more which would take the people in one direction. I think the last all-India wave which helped one party to win an election was in 1984 when Mrs. Indira Gandhi was assassinated. Otherwise no such phenomenon has taken place in India after 1984.

Towards a Bi-polar Polity with a Difference

So what is emerging and what kind of impact does this have on our polity? The first fact is that we are moving towards a bipolar polity where Congress and the BJP are the two poles. Frankly speaking, to my mind, there is hardly anything that differentiates the two. If you look at it from this viewpoint, while one party has assaulted the secular ethos of our polity, the other party has assaulted the liberal ethos of our polity. So there is hardly anything to differentiate between the two parties – Congress and the BJP. Look at the statistics. The voting percentages of different political parties would show that the Congress and the BJP together have cobbled up something around 50% of the votes, which means that 50% of the votes are with the Congress and the BJP together, and the rest 50% divided between different political parties. Now this kind of polity is going to stay here for some time.
What is the impact? To answer this several questions need answers:

Can the Congress Lead a Coalition?

The first is to what extent will the Congress Party be able to lead a coalition at the Centre. It is the first time that the Congress is leading a coalition at the Centre. All other coalition governments at the Centre have been either anti-Congress or non-Congress. There is no evidence that the Congress Party has actually imbibed that culture of coalition. Therefore much will depend upon how this party can lead a coalition successfully and how long it will be able to do it? That is one issue.

The Political Leadership of the Congress Prime Minister

The second question, which will be extremely important not only in the near future but also in the longer run, is what the headline of some newspapers said, “Will Dr. Manmohan Singh, the CEO, be different from Dr. Manmohan Singh, the CFO?” Will Dr. Manmohan Singh the Prime Minister be different from Dr. Manmohan Singh as the Finance Minister of the country?

The issue that I am trying to raise is his ability as a leader to lead a coalition where his party is essentially far short of a majority. His own problem is the fact that while he is widely respected as an intellectual, let us admit he hardly commands any mass base. In that sense one can say that he is not a mass leader. Another factor that goes against Dr.Manmohan Singh is the fact that he is a Rajya Sabha member, not a Lok Sabha member. I am not saying that this has happened for the first time. This had happened even earlier and on different occasions. However, a Rajya Sabha member leading a coalition government will find it extremely difficult to keep all those people together in this particular country. How well can he manage this?

Impact on the Economic Reforms Process

Another issue is the fact that he has been the person credited with launching the process of economic reforms and liberalisation in this country. Will he be able to continue to do that in the light of the fact that his 145-strong party is supported by a 61-strong left front led by the Communists? To what extent, that process will influence the kind of path the reforms process will take under Dr.Manmohan Singh. That is another thing, which we should be looking out to as far as the impact of this election is concerned.

Will the BJP revert to the Ram Mandir Issue?

Prof. Sanghvi has already mentioned the third thing which I wanted to mention. Will the BJP go back to the Ram Mandir issue? Will they revive the original Sangh Parivaar agenda? The kind of frustration that some of their leaders have shown immediately after the elections is a point of worry for many of us.

Impact on India’s Foreign Policy

Another issue relates to the foreign policy of India. What kind of foreign policy will India follow under this government, under this particular coalition? Will it be a continuation of what has been done in the past few years? What kind of relations will this government follow particularly with Pakistan and the United States? With particular reference to these two countries, the record of the earlier Congress Governments has been dismal, to say the least. So what is going to be the course of foreign policy under this particular government?

Let me sum up by saying that while the NDA was an experiment in a different way, a Congress led coalition is also going to be an experiment in a different way at the Centre. While one hopes that it succeeds, I don’t know how optimistic one can be for the near future.

The Discussion

This is a summary of the discussion that followed these two presentations

Shifting Alliances

The difference in vote share between the BJP and the Congress is very small – BJP 34.83% and the Congress 34.59%. The BJP has alliance with 10 partners, the Congress with 16 partners. This shows in a nutshell what our future is going to be. It is going to be alliance politics. In the BJP alliance, except for the BJP and Shiv Sena, others are not ideologically motivated. Similarly in the Congress-led alliance too, every political party decides, not on the basis of principles and policies but on what is expedient and convenient. After all, in Tamil Nadu, till recently the DMK, the MDMK, and the PMK were with BJP. in the last Parliamentary elections and Assembly elections.

They have now gone over to the Congress-led alliance this time. There are 8 parties in Tamil Nadu now - the Congress, the BJP, the CPI, the CPM, the two DMKs, the MDMK and the PMK.. In the recent elections, there were 6 parties in one alliance and 2 in the other alliance. In 2001, it was 2 in one alliance and 6 in the other. Neither the MDMK nor the PMK is ideologically oriented. Everybody seeks convenience on a ‘give me more, I come with you’ basis. This is likely to be the state of affairs for quite some time.

And more state and sub-regional parties are sure to emerge. The TRS (Telegana Rashtriya Samiti) was not on the scene in the last election. Even in Tamil Nadu there is a section, which says ‘Divide Tamil Nadu into two – North of Cauvery and South of Cauvery.’ So there will be more parties on regional and caste bases.

The Challenge of Stability and Growth

The challenge will be for the Indian electorate and the elected representatives despite these differences will be to give a stable and progressive government. One thing that may help meet this challenge is more decentralization. More powers to states and more powers to panchayats. No party has spoken about this. The need is to decentralize power to local bodies.

2004 - Not One Election but Many

Someone correctly observed that this was not one election. There were as many elections as there are States. Because of the way they have developed over the last fifty years, each state has developed its own peculiar political culture. Perhaps the time has come to seriously consider having proportional representation. Because parties with less than 1% vote are demanding 5 berths in the Cabinet of the government at the Centre. The PMK for instance with 0.5% of the total votes polled asked for at least 2 or 3 ministers in the Cabinet.

Unhealthy Competition

And there is competition among partners in the coalition for certain ministries which are lucrative like steel, mines, petroleum, finance, external affairs, home – muscle power and money power via Cabinet berths! On the other hand there is no demand for such ministries as education, health, social welfare. Nobody wants rural development or water resources. Everybody talks of linking of rivers but there are no takers for the Ministry of Water Resources.

The Case for Proportional Representation

In Tamil Nadu, Ms. Jayalalitha polled more than 1 crore votes. But she did not get a single seat. Yet the difference between the two alliances was only 40 lakh votes out of an electorate of 4.72 crores. In 1999, in Tamil Nadu, Jayalalitha got 227 out of 234 seats in the State Assembly. The DMK had only one representative in the Assembly then, Mr. Karunanidhi. That does not mean that they got only 1% of the total votes. Hence the need to think about proportional representation.

Congress and Leftists

Power is the best glue possible. You have power; you have the best possible glue. The leftists have always sat with the Congress. In Indira Gandhi’s time too they sat with the Congress, in Rajiv Gandhi’s time, with a huge majority, they sat with the Congress. They will sit with them because over the years the leftists have discovered that they can influence the Congress quite so easily to adopt leftist policies.

Voters in Temple Towns Reject BJP

Talking of secularism, communalism and all it is that in the three temple towns of Ayodhya, Kashi and Mathura, the BJP lost. And if this is not connected with communalism and secularism which is an ideological issue, then what is? What the voter was communicating was he would reward those who promote communal harmony in this country, which has a legendary, traditional history of tolerance, and punish those who seek to destroy inter-community relations.