Festivals are ancient rites which celebrate divine power and man’s obeisance to god. They represent the aesthetics of worship, enriching cultures and societies. Bharat is a civilisation of timeless festivals. There is hardly a region where a patron deity isn’t celebrated joyously almost every month. But another festival of recent provenance has become a ritual of homage to human deities. During the past three decades, elections have become frequent festivals in India with one taking place in a state or a constituency almost every month. Sadly, these aren’t celebrations that display unity and joy. They honour the grim gods of divide-and-rule.
Next month onwards, 161 million voters in five states—Rajasthan, Telangana, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Mizoram—will elect 679 mini devtas. These fiestas hardly sweeten India’s political marketplace since they cover only around a sixth of India’s total assembly constituencies and span 83 Lok Sabha seats. Yet, the imminent month-long political carnival will definitely define the stature of many national and regional leaders.
At stake is the winnability quotient of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, all three Gandhis—Sonia, Rahul and Priyanka—and the incumbent chief ministers and their visible challengers. The battle is primarily between the Congress and the BJP, with other players acting as spoilers or marginal players. Both the national parties are struggling to curate a victory template. These elections will not be lost on won on the basis of projects inaugurated or freebies promised, but mostly on the performance of the CMs and MLAs. National leaders do attract crowds but are usually unable to take them to the polling booths and offer prasad at these mass melas. For a robust democracy, all the parties must ensure that state elections are meant to be of the locals, by the locals and for the locals.
For the Congress, the state polls signify a struggle to not just retain its shrunk electoral base, but also to expand it. Its credentials will be burnished only if it retains Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, and recaptures Madhya Pradesh, which the BJP hijacked using defections. The Congress, which couldn’t capitalise on the formation of Telangana, must assert its forgotten identity.
On the other hand, the BJP has more to prove. It must retain Madhya Pradesh and defeat the Congress in the other two states to re-establish its status as the party which rules over a majority of the states, which was the case until a couple of years ago. But how will saffron fly its flag in states it has lost earlier? Many BJP insiders believe the solution is to give more freedom to local leaders and allow them to choose the candidates. They think the party must abandon its model of paradropping VIP campaigners from other states and reduce Modi’s exposure as a crowd puller. He remains their trump card and WMD for political rivals at the national level, assuring BJP’s victory in 2024. However, the vanishing tribe of local satraps with integrity and acceptability has made his job difficult.
This dilemma was evident in Karnataka, where the party lost in spite of Modi drawing huge crowds. An analysis of the last 30-odd assembly elections reveals that the BJP’s strike rate has plummeted in those states. Undoubtedly, it added more states to its kitty in the first round of state elections, boosted by Modi’s campaign charisma after he became prime minister in 2014.
Until 2017, the BJP was flying solo or with allies in around 20 states. It started losing many in 2018, when the Congress bagged MP, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan. It subsequently lost more states—Punjab, Maharashtra, Haryana, Himachal, Karnataka and Bihar. Assam, Uttarakhand and UP were the only expected outcomes. Meanwhile, some BJP allies left the NDA, thereby weakening its local bases.
Moreover, unlike during the Vajpayee-Advani era where decentralisation of power was the norm, the current leadership prefers a centralised command and control structure. A new BJP has emerged with young leaders yet to deliver major electoral successes in their states, while senior satraps are being purged. Once, Vajpayee was the party’s national star; his galaxy had many little stars shining in the skies of various states. Modi was the brightest among Shivraj Chouhan, Shanta Kumar, Keshubhai Patel, Pramod Mahajan, Yediyurappa, Madan Lal Khurana, Kalyan Singh, Rajnath Singh, Nitin Gadkari, Vasundhara Raje and Bhairon Singh Shekhawat. They were the architects of the model of “Pehle panch pradesh, phir poora desh (First five states, then the whole country)”. The BJP won five states under Vajpayee and added about a dozen more after Modi captured the national stage in 2014. But none of its current CMs, barring Yogi Adityanath, is capable of ensuring victory in their states. They depend on Modi and Amit Shah for resources, forces and political vehicles to win the war.
The situation in the Congress is worse in terms of talent and strategy. After the assassinations of Indira Gandhi and son Rajiv, the party hasn’t won a majority in the Lok Sabha. It crossed the 200 mark just once. Indira’s Congress became the political cemetery of mass state leaders after she started running it as her personal fiefdom. She ruthlessly reduced her party’s local giants to pygmies; a style adopted by Rajiv and later by Sonia. The Congress ‘Bahu (daughter in law)’ could bring her party to power only by forging an alliance with outfits that had left the NDA. But she couldn’t ensure the return of the Congress by itself at the Centre and even lost many states to the BJP.
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But it seems the Gandhis have learnt their lesson—propping many mini-Manmohan Singhs nationally and Bhupesh Baghel, Sachin Pilot, D K Shivakumar and Bhupinder Hooda regionally could yield dividends. While holding the reins firmly in their hands, the Family has restored a sense of unity in the Congress ranks. This tactic yielded electoral dividends in Karnataka and Himachal Pradesh.
Both parties are victims of excessive dependence on their national leaders and personality cults. The projection of Indira as the INC’s iconic national commander served them well once. The model has passed its expiry date. The time has come for both parties to dump the Indira-isation of Indian politics. They shouldn’t be misled by semi-robust opinion polls which generate psychologically amplified popularity by deliberately asking respondents who the most popular prime minister is while forecasting the results of state polls. Taking the limelight away from the dhartiputras and putris (sons and daughters of the soil) of a state may buff the images of the badshahs of the Delhi Darbar, but will ultimately reduce geographical clout and regional mindspace. Modi’s original call of ‘Vocal for local’ must be implemented on the ground. Else, the gods governing the glittering galas of glory risk becoming fading idols in the broken temples of lost ambitions.