How to read the four big state assembly election results that came in today? Shock, surprise, celebratory pageantry and gloom, they were all there in equal parts as the day progressed, not changing its script much since the early trends established the drift of things. But emotions do not fully capture the momentousness of what has happened. Even the analytical frames that are the stock-in-trade of psephology, like anti-incumbency, seem inadequate because they are essentially ahistorical and can be applied any time, anywhere.
Disenchantment is of course writ large on the way three incumbent state governments were felled by the electorate, with only Himanta Biswa Sarma’s Assam standing as an exception. Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Kerala, to varying degrees of surprise, have had well-established titans of the opposition taken down. Of them, M K Stalin, 73, despite the earth giving way under his feet without any warning, seems the most well-placed to return to fight another day. The structure of politics and ideological belief-systems on which his party stands is perhaps not dismantled. Mamata Banerjee’s future is more cloudy. She is only 71, but ambushed so spectacularly on her native turf by the BJP, she is now up against a newly entrenched party that will not easily give up its hard-won territory. Pinarayi Vijayan, 82, surely walks off into the sunset.
Go beyond the personalities and the more historically salient and disruptive features stand out in stark relief. It is for the first time in over half a century—since 1971, in fact—that Tamil Nadu will see a ruling party that’s not squarely within the bipolar mainstream of Dravidian politics. Disenchantment, here, was married to a politics of enchantment and rapture that few saw coming. Similarly, it is for the first time since 1967, barring a month or two, that India will have no Left government in any state—that’s another long certitude fallen by the wayside. Closing an even longer gap than those two, it is for the first time ever that saffron comes to rule in West Bengal, whose political culture was long deemed to hold it as anathema but whose modern historical memory is smeared with the trauma of Partition.
In the meteoric rise of Vijay and his Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam, borne aloft by a remarkable youth-led wave beyond both the DMK and the AIADMK, do we see the demise of an entire political ecosystem? It’s too early, and the signals are too scanty, to make that assessment. The star has been famously sphinx-like about what he stands for, except for being a rebel with a singular cause: of unseating the DMK. His appeal, for now, seems to draw from a kind of indeterminate, hybrid positioning: anti-establishment without being ideologically committed. The form was ravishing but the content is still encrypted. Whatever verbal assertions have come from him still place him close to the default line of the Dravidian political ethos, and its contrarian stance vis-à-vis New Delhi. How that evolves will be worth watching.
All we have for now is his stunning reversal of the state’s traditional top-down political socialisation, with younger voters actively influencing family voting patterns. The one thing you can decipher there is an aspirational spirit searching for direction. A charismatic figure is easier to fall for than an argument, and with him Tamil Nadu returns to its old predilection for personality-driven politics that has not been seen since Jayalalithaa’s demise. No wonder comparisons are being made to MGR. Vijay’s campaign doubtless tapped into a latent fatigue with Dravidian binaries. The question now is whether he will be forced into post-poll negotiations that will necessitate pragmatic choices. The Congress seems an eager suitor but the BJP, via its proxy, could be interested too.
The defeat of Mamata Banerjee after 15 years in power is, without exaggeration, of tectonic proportions. The sheer scale of the BJP victory—well past the 200-seat mark—begs a few questions. Was this merely an anti-incumbency wave? It is tempting to see it as purely a rejection of Mamata, especially given the way voters also chose the Left and Congress where they could—both parties curiously spying in this moment a chance for revanchism. Even the minority vote split and chose alternatives in various constituencies, depriving Mamata of her famous 30 percent head-start. But there are many reasons why seeing this as a purely anti vote may be a reductive reading.
There was certainly a kind of near-terminal fatigue—visible in a volley of accusations about the quality of governance, of corruption and administrative high-handedness. But the BJP’s numbers suggest something else at work too, however loath the secular mind may be to admit it: an aspirational consolidation cutting across caste and class lines. Two factors stand out in Bengal’s benighted landscape of decades-long immiseration. First, the erosion of the women’s vote for Mamata, despite her welfare schemes. Since no one particularly complained of delivery gaps, one cannot offhand dismiss the existence of a certain orientation in the desire for change. A clear politics of change also emerges in the urban habitats. Perhaps the old bhadralok is now a historical relic.
The BJP appears to have nationalised the election to its advantage—turning it into a referendum on whether a provincial identity is sufficient to satisfy the needs of a new, consumerist generation, whether in their South Kolkata habitats or the endless industrial suburbs. At any rate, Bengal has delivered a mandate that suggests its ideological barriers are far more porous than once believed. The role of the Election Commission, the mass disenfranchisement of millions, the deployment of paramilitary forces, all these will surely invite scrutiny. But remember, the BJP had won 38 percent of the vote even when the system was in Mamata’s hands, just as the Trinamool has won 40 percent now, without its benefit.
It is difficult to trace the exact mechanics of anti-incumbency. If it is possible to say Mamata lost because she did not build roads, one would be hard put to explain Pinarayi’s exit by those parameters. Kerala’s map has been filled with new roads and flyovers in the last decade! Here, a certain egocentrism is clearly at fault—an octogenarian leader, infatuated with his own personality cult, unwilling to cede space to promising talent even within his own party. The Congress gets an opening it has been denied elsewhere and, barring its own exceptional talent at infighting, it can console itself for the loss in Assam, the only other state where it was the second alternative.
Assam’s verdict is perhaps the least surprising, yet is no less significant. Delimitation had altered electoral arithmetic in ways that favoured the ruling party, and a sharply polarised campaign helped consolidate its core support base. Here, a pro-incumbency vote itself reflected social anxieties. In a broader election cycle marked by such upheaval, only Puducherry stood out as a reminder that stability, too, can be an electoral preference.
Santwana Bhattacharya | INTEREST FREE| Editor
(On X @santwana99)