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CIAO DATE: 2/00
India's 13th Parliamentary Elections: A Vote of Confidence?
Panel 1: Politics
Philip Oldenburg, Ashutosh Varshney, Jairam Ramesh
November 2, 1999, New York
Nicholas Platt: ...programs division undertook this year. Back in July, we asked Phil Oldenburg, one of today’s panelists to write an Asian Update focusing on the issues involved in the recent elections in India. The elections have ended, the new government has formed, but Phil’s analysis remains very valid and insightful. And we have complementary essays for you for any of you are interested in it and you can find it on the way outside of the auditorium.
Then as part of our new partnership with Indiaserver.com we held a live web chat with Doctors Ashutosh Varshney and Phil Oldenburg a day after the government formed. Our goal is to provide informative public educational programs to as wide an audience as possible and new technologies are enabling us to do this. Incidentally at 3:00 p.m. today, we’ll hold another live web event with Jairam Ramesh, another one of today’s panelists. So tell your friends and colleagues who weren’t able to attend our symposium.
Now today’s symposium looks at the three broad areas of politics, economics and international relations. Our panelists will discuss what’s changed, if anything, in the landscape, or the three landscapes, as the result of the recent round of elections and the formation of a new government. Are we looking at an overall trend, for example, that suggests the end of a two-party system in India? Will the economic reforms package be shuttled quickly through Parliament? How will India deal with her immediate neighbors, Pakistan and China in particulator? What lies ahead for Indo-U.S. relations, particularly in the light of President Clinton’s upcoming and much anticipated trip to India? These are just a few of the many questions that our distinguished panelist will consider this morning. Please note that you all have copies of the morning’s agenda as well as bios on each individual speaker in your program materials. Let me again thank you all for coming, and encourage you to play participative role fully in today’s program. Let me also acknowledge with gratitude the support of the Starr Foundation, Sreedrar Menon and Anand and Aabha Kumar for their support for this and other India-related programs. So without further ado, I’d like to turn the proceedings over to our distinguished panel on politics. Phil?
Phil Oldenburg: Welcome on behalf of the Politics Panel. I suppose we are going to do our thing without having discussed anything between ourselves, so I don’t know how exactly that’s going to work. My brief is to take a look or present the results as we have them and for ten minutes, and then Jairam Ramesh and Ashutosh Varshney will speak each for ten minutes on presumably they have their own secret briefs. I’m not sure exactly what. But the questions that we are going to address and the ones in the program are do the results make possible a stable government, how will elections affect the future of party system in Indian, in particular Congress and the BJP and what are the biggest political challenges facing the coalition?
I have, so, I won’t, I’m not going to introduce myself obviously, you have more than enough material for all of us I think in here and judging from whom I know in this audience, I don’t need to in any case mention who we are.
I’ve prepared out of this most recent issue of Frontline and the NDTV web site a sheet of paper with the results on them, including in particular the vote share results, which I urge you to pay attention to. This sheet I should say is not guaranteed to be accurate. Among other things it should be noted that there are six seats left to be decided. And we don’t know what those results are going to be. And in addition, I haven’t had a chance to check through whether all these numbers add up. But you do have the sheet on one side the seats and the second side, the vote share. And swing percentages from the 1998 election. I recommend the front-line issue, if you can get a hold of a hard copy which has the full, for those of you who are numbers junkies, the full table of results, plus two articles, one on turn-out and one on exit-polling or polling generally, the results. And the next issue will have the Center for the Study of Developing Societies opinion poll data from which we will find out hopefully why voters voted the way they did.
Okay. What were the results, what do they mean? Again, I’m going to try and pay attention a little bit to vote share. Looking at three areas, the performance of the NDA, the performance of the Congress and the performance of what is now been demoted to being called the third space. This was once upon a time the third front, or sometimes the third force. It is now just the third space. But I think it’s not something we can ignore.
Clearly the NDA and the National Democratic Alliance, in which the BJP is the major holder of seats, it kept, the BJP kept it’s seat numbers, 182 with having contested 50 fewer contests. It lost, however, 1.8% in vote share. The BJP is now a smaller part of the coalition then it was before, but it as least taking a look at what parties compose, one would assume a more stable coalition. It has gained enough votes so that no single party, particularly presuming once these last six seats are there, can pull out and bring the government down, other than the BJP of course.
On the Congress side, Congress has lost, the Congress and allies have lost somewhere in the neighborhood of 27 to 29 seats, I haven’t the numbers are confusing to me, but Congress itself has gained 2.5% of the vote share. We can talk; I assume other people will talk about what the meaning of this is in terms of whether the leadership issue is significant or not, but in terms of the numbers, the crucial thing, and I’ll do that in a second, is to take a look at how the Congress did state by state. You have those figures and look at the vote share. There you will see that as always in the first pass the post system, the seat share typically is exaggerated over the vote share if you’re on the right side and you lose badly if you’re on the wrong side of the equation. On balance, the Congress has done far worse in seats than its vote sharing obviously would predict if there was an exact fit of representation. If I have time, I’ll go into some of that.
In the third space, the left parties were sort of held on by the skin of their teeth. The most important thing that has happened in the third space is the further regionalization of erstwhile, or at least parties that had national ambitions, notably the SPs, the Socialist Party and the Janata Dal. The Janata Dal split, as I’m sure you all know, it joined with the Lok Shakti and the Samata Party. The JDU is now basically a party of Bihar and a little bit in Karnataka. The Janata Dal isn’t much more than that. After all, if it splits, but certainly its remnants have been wiped out in other parts of vote shares gone down. Similarly the SP, which had great, larger national ambitions, is basically a UP party. And in UP, although it gained seat in seats, it lost in vote share. The NCP, the Sharad Pawar Congress did not essentially extend its reach beyond Maharashtra and the other part of the Janata Dal, the JDS, is now essentially in Karnataka alone.
So, and I would argue also the CPI has also been regionalized and has lost, it’s down to a tiny vote share. So we can neglect the CPI. The other parties, the CPM has been long been, a party essentially confined to Bengal, Tripura and Kerala and that remains true. The only two parties therefore with national reach are the Congress and the BJP.
If we take a look from the point of the view of the state capital. It seems to me the crucial vantage point. In Andhra, the Congress vote in fact increased by 4% and yet it lost 17 seats. It, the NDA won 86% of the seats with 50% of the vote, the Congress won 12% of the seats with 43% of the vote. Clearly the moral here is a good alliance. And a good alliance, which should be pointed out, in which the BJP lost vote percentages. The important thing is everyone knows about the Andhra results is that there was a simultaneous state election in which the TDP, TD1 handling, and that we have seemingly here a pro-incumbency factor where the government is allegedly a good government. That’s been the, as it were, the party line.
In Maharashtra, clearly the Congress lost due to the split. What’s important is to see the Congress won some seats and the NCP won some seats, despite the split which suggests clearly a regionalization of support of Congress support, or NCP, you can identify where the NCP is and where the Congress is regionally.
In UP, the BJP lost 27 seats and its vote share went down by 25% over its previous vote share. The number of points you can see also there. The SP, as I said, managed to increase its seats while its voter percentage went down and the BSP increased both votes and seats. I should add that the BSP is another party which seems to have shrunk mainly to itss base in UP, its increased its membership in Parliament by almost, it was five in the last one and now fourteen. Its vote share has gone down in the other states, it is however, still a crucial factor in quite a lot of constituencies in Madhya Pradesh. And I think one of the reasons for Congress not doing as well in Madhya Pradesh as they had expected was the fact that, I think it’s ten or eleven constituencies in Madhya Pradesh, the BSP held a very substantial share of the vote both in 1998 and in 1999. It’s quite striking that in so many seats in fact the percentage is almost exactly the same.
If we take a look from the point of view of the level of the constituency and the voter, it’s clear that there’s continuation of the two to three effective party system at the state and constituency level. I talk a little bit about this in the background paper that Nick mentioned. It means that despite the analysis of even a good magazine like FrontLine and others and following on from the discussion that I remember Jairam Ramesh took part in Delhi this summer when Pradeep Chhibber presented his results, that at the constituency level there is in fact cross-community, cross caste, alliances, centrist politics as it were, which is tending to a broad caste alliances and it’s not at all clear that the caste calculus that goes on is as the political pundits would have us believe. But that remains to be, when we get the opinion survey results, we’ll be able to hopefully get closer to the idea of how true that is.
In the anti-incumbency factor and I’ll sort of end with this, is very unclear. I did it sort of state by state and I won’t bore you with exactly how I came out on this, there are, it seems to be mixed. I sort of put no, yes, mixed. Did the anti-incumbency factor apply here, no, yes, mixed. And I had six no’s, eight yes’s and four mixed, yes and no. Just point out that in Bihar, which has been, just sort of automatically entered in as the anti-incumbency factor, the RJD, the Laloo Prasad Yadav party which was allegedly the recipient of the anti-incumbency factor actually gained vote share. 2.4%, not very much. Congress also gained 1.8% and it’s the JDU and the BJP that lose vote shares, so that the explanation in Bihar is not, or shouldn’t be I don’t think, immediately the anti-incumbency factor although one might argue that they could have gained even more had there not been an RJD government in Bihar. I think we have to look much more carefully at the alliance patterns and so forth. So let me stop there. My ten minutes and ask Jairam Ramesh to continue.
Jairam Ramesh: I suppose I’m going to be speaking to you today not as a functional Congress party member but as somebody who’s observing and analyzing these elections. Because I’m not going to give the party point of view here. And I’m also not going to speak only on the 13th Lok Sabha because I think enough of it has been said, written, Frontline and all the Indian magazines are now going to beat this to death and all of you can read it. I’d like to look at the last three or four elections really as part of a longer term trend that is setting in on the Indian politics and what it means for governence at the national level.
And the first point I’d like to make is that electoral arithmetic is still the driving force in Indian elections and not chemistry. I know there have been scholars like Pradeep Chhibber who have said that caste does not play an important role in Indian elections, or at least it does not play that much of an important role as it’s made out to be. I beg to differ. I’ve always differed with this. I believe that the driving force in Indian politics is caste. The driving force of mobilization is caste, of course without a transcaste alliance, no political party can hope to grow, the BSP and the Samajwadi party, which are basically caste-based parties, have realized the limits of their growth, they have to expand their appeal. But the mobilization is basically a cleavage based mobilization. It’s either a religious-based mobilization, in which case the BJP initially, it’s a caste-based mobilization as was the case with the Bahujan Samaj party, the Samajwadi party, it’s a linguistic mobilization as was the case with the Telugu Desam party fifteen years ago or it was a regional mobilization as was the case of the Akali Dal. So really what we are seeing today in Indian politics, we are seeing the transition from mobilization, a cross-section mobilization based on some amorphous thing called development issues, which characterized the First Republic until 1991 to a politics based on cleavages. Religion, caste, language and region. Of course, this has it’s own limits, as I mentioned to you, but what it does to political parties, is it gives them the defining characteristic and most of these parties today even though they have explored trans-caste alliances, most of these caretaker parties still remain one-issue parties. Most of these issue parties do remain exclusionist parties and not inclusive parties.
So we must, to get a feel of what’s happening in Indian politics, I believe, we must look deeply into electoral arithmetic, and not so much into chemistry. If Chandrababu Naidu had not tied up with the BJP, he would’ve been history, he wouldn’t have been invited by the Asia Society anymore, I suppose and he wouldn’t have been hailed as this great guru who brought reforms to the poor. He would’ve been history, he was wiped out in both these MP elections and the local elections, but he was smart and he had an alliance with the BJP, which leads me to my second point which is why the realization of polity is going on, we’re also seeing a very interesting phenomenon of regional parties piggy-backing on national parties. The traditional model of Indian politics have been that national parties piggy back on regional parties. This is why the Congress had for thirty years an alliance with the Dravidian parties. But the twelfth and the thirteenth Lok Sabha elections broke this nexus quite conclusively. And in fact, both in Tamil Nadu and in Andhra, the regional parties gained substantially because of the national party, the national presence and the expansion of the national parties. So while we sing praises of regional parties and regionalization of the polity, let’s not overlook the role that national parties are playing in consolidating the presence of regional parties. And this is I think a trend that is very much in evidence.
Third, and this is a point that Philip mentioned, but it bears repetition, that we’re really looking at twenty-five Indias. We are talking of a polycentric India today, much more so, much more starkly than has ever been the case before. And I would suggest to you that no electoral analysis that takes place at an all-India level can capture the nuances and the differences that exist at the level of the state. Why did the Vajpayee factor work in Haryana and why didn’t it work in Punjab? Why did the Vajpayee factor work in Andhra Pradesh, why didn’t it work in Karnataka? Why did the Vajpayee factor work in Madhya Pradesh but fail miserably in his own home state of Uttar Pradesh. So I think if we look for macro-level explanations, sociological explanations as political scientists often think to do, we will miss some of the interesting developments, the processes of political and social change that are taking place at the state level. So I think the third point I’d like to make is we are now looking at each state as sui generis, each state as a political and social system, driven by its own dynamics. Of course not immune to some national level, even national level trend but certainly the driving force of politics in India these days remains by and large state level and local level issues. In fact I would go even further than this and say that no analysis at the level of the state would capture the different social and ecological explanations for electoral behavior within the state. If you take UP for example, it’s impossible to explain what’s happening in Uttar Pradesh without looking at it as five constituent social and economical regions. Similarly, Andhra, similarly, Madhya Pradesh. Now does this mean Indian’s been balkanized? No, I don’t think so. I think what it means is there are these well-defined social regions which have their own electoral dynamics which we have tended to sweep under the carpet and we have tended to look at focus of larger national issues whether it was in terms of what Mrs. Gandhi did in the 70’s or national issues that came up in the late 80’s and early 90’s whether they related to social justice or the building of the Ram Temple and so on and so forth. But I think what we are seeing is not just as state local dynamic but very clearly, sharply differentiated patterns of electoral behavior at the level of the state itself.
Which leads me to my fifth point which is what we are seeing, after all politics is a reflection of what is happening in society. And you have three panels today, politics, economics and international relations. And I would suggest to you that you have missed the most critical panel, which is the social panel, because what you are seeing in electoral verdict is the process of social churning that is taking place. A break-down of the old social order, and a complete re-drawing of community and inter-community alliances. I mean the paradox in India has been that the instrument that has defined Indian civilization, mainly caste, which is the definition of stratification and hierarchy, is now being used as an instrument to destroy stratification and hierarchy and is being used as an instrument of established egalitarianism. And this is happening not just in North India, some people have written about it, but you’d be surprised it’s happening even in South India, which has traditionally been this region which has undergone the first phase of social revolution. Their power passed from the elites to the intermediate and lower castes over the last sixty years. But in a state like Tamil Nadu for example today, the old Aryan Dravidian cleavage has broken down and what you are seeing is in many ways the dalitization of the Tamil politics, which we had not anticipated ten years ago because we believed that the social revolution in the south had been complete and the social revolution had really to take place only in North India.
So what we are seeing across the length and breadth of the country is an intense process of social churning, new communities coming to the fore, using politics to establish their political presence. Striking new patterns of social alliances, some of them durable, some of them not durable and this is what is really leading to uncertainty in electoral outcomes. The old social order, which was based on a very, very, what I would call, those scholars who work in India would appreciate this phrase, “the Jajmani level of social management”, where you are an upper-caste and you had the lower-caste and then you had the Muslims, the minority population and this was the old social order. This is a patronage-based political system that the Congress party ran for fifty years. You give me award and I’ll give you development. Well that model is dead. The model of charity, the patronage based model of politics is clearly dead and we are now moved, if I am to use a colorful phrase, we move from the charity model to the parity model where each group in society is saying “I want to share in the institutions of governments, I want equal representation in institutions of governments, I’m not satisfied with this benevolent political party”, whether it’s the Congress or the BJP coming and telling me that they will do things that are good for me, I want to be in a position where I can exercise my own political power and growth of the BSP for example in Uttar Pradesh, it has to be explained by the fact that here is a population that accounts for 20% of the state, which has not seen political power and political leadership in the last fifty years and is now seeing the prospect of a political leader and the direct (INAUDIBLE) sides of political power.
I think therefore these are some of the longer-term trends that are visible in Indian politics. We are seeing very decisive mandates at the level of the state, but we are seeing uncertain electoral outcomes at the level of the center. In fact today the only state in India of the twenty-five states where the political model is not a bi-polar model, is Uttar Pradesh. Uttar Pradesh is the only state where you have a quadrangular political model, but then I would argue that here’s a state with a population close to that of Indonesia’s. Why should it have only two political formations? It’s a deeply diversified state, it’s a highly pluralistic state, it’s a state racked by cleavages. Why should canto political formations do full justice of the diversity of Uttar Pradesh? So I think you have the mental model of we have, of these professionals have, that any movement to a two political, two party is a good thing in Indian politics. May not always hold true, but what you’re seeing today across India in the level of the state is decisive mandates one way or another. Call it anti-incumbency, pro-incumbency, mandates have been very decisive at the level of the state, but it’s been less decisive at the level of the center and the reason why the uncertainty exists at the center, is what I suggested to you, that you’re seeing this process of breakdown of the old social coalition that has supported politics, particularly in the Northern part of the country, which accounts for something like 45% of India’s population today and it is this churning, it is this social transformation in North India, particularly, that accounts for what has happened to Indian elections in the last ten to twelve years. Until we try to get a grip at the level of, the more deeper level to what is happening to social processes, what is happening to transfer of power from the haves to the have nots, which took place in the south and in the western part of the country over the last seventy years, is now taking place in the Northern part of the country under radically altered circumstances. We’re not going to be able to understand fully the nuances of Indian politics.
Let me very, very briefly touch upon political parties themselves. I think one of the, some of my Indian friends in the audience asked why I was dressed like a Pakistani. So I presume there are a large number of BJP sympathizers in the audience because I know the Congress party does not particularly derive support in this party of the world, but let me say, the BJP today really is the Congress of the 90’s. The great umbrella party, the rainbow coalition that’s sustaining politics for the first fifty years. The Congress party is the BJP. And this is a historic, it’s a tectonic shift in Indian politics, you want me to cal it Hindu right-wing nationalists, but the fact is that this Hindu right-wing nationalist, as TV channels never tired of calling this party and don’t do real justice to the BJP, I might say, even though I’m on the other side of the political side, is defining Indian politics, is defining the agenda. It’s defining the course of politics, both at the national level and at the state level. And it’s very interesting. It is representing the Congress is every minute detail. This is the Hindu Dharma, the Congressization of all political parties.
The way the BJP has reacted to Kalyan Singh in the state of Uttar Pradesh. The way the central leadership of the UP, of the BJP, could not accommodate a backward class leader in its fold. The way a political party is claiming to be part of the governors process has been unable to sustain what it calls it’s experiment and social engineering--really shows up the limitations of all political parties, because all political parties are basically deep down upper caste, elite dominated parties. The Congress, the BJP, and you’ll be surprised to know, even the Communist Party. In fact the most caste ridden party in Indian is the CPM. Whatever their spokesman might say to the contrary.
But the fact is the BJP has expanded, has expanded on an intelligent policy of having alliances. And it could have this policy because it was not in conflict with state level parties, this was not an option available to the Congress. The Congress’s raison d’être in Andrah is fighting the TDP. The BJP can have an alliance with the TDP because the BJP and TDP are not in conflict with each other. So there is a natural advantage that the BJP enjoys with the Congress, that it could have these state level alliances that the Congress cannot have because the Congress has been in opposition to these political parties. But through the intelligent use of these alliances, it has spread its influence across the country, but now in many parts of the country, it is facing the limits of growth. Because there is this social clash that is taking place between the constituency that has supported the BJP traditionally and the new constituency that has entered the BJP in demanding an equal share of the political cake as it demanded from the Congress. Whether the BJP will be able to fulfill their demands remains to be seen and that I think we will see in the next two to three elections.
Finally as far as the prospect where stability is concerned, I’ve jokingly, one of the TV programs I said, the future of the Vajpayee depends on the battle between Atal and the Beharis. And it’s a fact that this whole, the whole stability of this government is predicated upon the personality of Mr. Vajpayee, his ability to hold this alliance together and really the cause for concern for BJP supporters is there an alternative figure to Mr. Vajpayee, who can hold this alliance together suddenly not on the horizon, I’m not saying a figure might not arise two years from now, but they’ll have to work very consciously to develop such a figure of consensus who is acceptable across the political spectrum.
I foresee, personally I foresee at least another two to three rounds of elections in the next ten years before the political system stabilizes at the national level. I do not subscribe to the view that political instability is detrimental to India’s interests. I think this political instability, as long as it reflects a process of social transformation, as long as it reflects egalitarian processes of transfer of social and political power is actually in India’s long term interest. Thank you.
Ashutosh Varshney: Let me first briefly say what I will not discuss because it’s already been discussed. I agree so much with Jairam on what he has said and let me just pull out three points and give you my perspective on them very briefly before I move on to my main analysis. There is no doubt in my mind that the Hindu social order based on caste stratification has collapsed and he uses the term charity-based mobilization to a parity-based mobilization. In political science, we use the term, vertical mobilization, where it was led by the upper caste, with patronage, with patron clanned linkages of the lower class to a horizontal mobilization. But the lower caste takes control of themselves, mobilize without the support of the upper caste. They will need them at some point because no particular caste by itself can come to power, but the move is from vertical to horizontal.
Two, that there’s clearly a much greater regionalization of the polity, federalization of the polity today, than was the case earlier. The main unit of political action, if you will, is shifting increasingly to the states. And I also believe that is a healthy development.
And finally I agree, but only partly, that BJP is becoming more and more like a Congress party, yeah, I think it’s right of center, Congress party, that’s the difference. It’s more like the Republican party, not like the Democratic party here. Congress party was more like the Democratic party and just as the Republican party has a Christian coalition on the right wing of the party, the BJP has the VHP on the right wing of the party, that relationship is at this point sympathetic but it’s a very troubled and troubling relationship. So I would use the term right of center Congress party, not Congress party per se, so it is a partial disagreement with that. But BJP has basically been mainstreamed conclusively by this particular election. I think there is no doubt about that.
I would like in my eight minutes left to present a conceptual overview of Indian polity, using concepts from my own discipline and tease out the implications for this elections.
If you were to ask the leading democratic theorist in the world since the second World War, Robert Dahl, the Yale professor, what would be his assessment of India’s elections and democracy today especially over the last ten years, what would he say? Robert Dahl would argue and most of political science would agree, overwhelming proportion of political science would agree, that India has become a matured democracy, though it has room for greater maturity. In an article that I have written and is coming out next year, I call it, it’s a deeper democracy but it’s an unfinished democracy. Deeper, but unfinished. Why is it deeper, why is it unfinished? It is deeper because India satisfied more than ever before two principal criteria of democracy: Contestation and participation. By contestation, we mean the freedom with which those in power are contested or challenged. And by participation, we mean how large, we talk about the segment of the nation’s population that participates in an election, how large it is and especially whether the previously excluded are participating more vigorously.
Let’s look at contestation and see its relevance for the Indian elections, thirteenth, as well as the last five since 1989. Well of the last five elections since ’89, power has changed in Delhi four times. Government has changed hands four times. ’89, ’91, ’96 and ’98. In the recently concluded elections, the incumbents have won for the first time in the last fifteen years, since ’84. But that is only the visible tip of the iceberg, as we dig deeper, we find that more than 50% of incumbents, individual incumbents, 274 out of 537 members of Parliament, of the previous Parliament, lost their seats. Such results are impossible unless contestation is fair, those in part are being challenged much more vigorously. But what about participation? Despite the widespread prediction of voter apathy and fatigue, the third election in three years last month registered a 59.5% turnout. It appears the turnout in India has now stabilized around 60%. Whether our dramatic issues increase or reduce the turnout by a mere one to two percentage points, a 60% turnout rate is emerging as a trend, which is very high, comparatively speaking. More importantly, however, the social base of participation, as Jairam has already said, is distinctively shifted downwards and horizontally.
Keeping up the trend inaugurated in 1989, the turnout in villages even this time, even last month, was 9% higher than in urban centers, 60.6% in the rural constituencies, whereas 51.6% in the urban constituencies. The odds of Scheduled Caste likely to vote are 2., two to three percent higher than the national average and more strikingly, the tribal, the Scheduled Tribes have registered a remarkable increase in their turnout in this past election.
If there is any apathy towards voting, it is in India’s largest cities and the more affluent segments living in Sundarnagar, Greater Kailash, etc., etc., not among the plebian orders of the country.
On the whole therefore, this is a picture of rising consternation and rising participation, hence a more mature and a deeper democracy, but still unfinished. And there are three issues that I can take up in greater detail in the question time if necessary that call attention. First, there is a part of the country which has not participated in the larger increases, in the trend towards larger contestation, a freer contestation and rising participation and that’s Jammu and Kashmir, especially in Kashmir valley. The country is freer today but one part of it is unable to express itself freely and it’s a particularly sore point in India’s otherwise impressive democratic record even by democratic failure.
Two, while electoral vitality is beyond doubt, what happens to democracy between elections is something on which we need to know more. There’s not enough research, for example, whether India subscribes more to civil rights today then it used to earlier pertains directly to between elections democratic vitality. My hypothesis is that civil rights in India today are on a much stronger plane, have a stronger regime then used to be the case in fifties and sixties, but much greater research needs to be undertaken to prove or disprove that point.
And thirdly there is considerable improvement on gender, but the fact remains that even in the last elections, men voted more then women. Women today vote more than they used to earlier but even now they vote less than men do. And it needs to be explained why this is so. For some reason, that part of the subaltern category is participating less in the larger national trend.
There’s another conceptual way of summarizing in the electoral democratic record of the last ten years. India has what might be called a democratic surplus. Using economic analogy, one could say the democracy in India has become a stock variable. It is no longer a flow variable. Let me explain. Most democracies in the world happen to be rich economically where military coups and downright suspensions of political authority are not expected that don’t alter the fundamental features of the party. That’s why it is said that democracy in richer countries is a stock variable. Flows don’t go up and down, the stock doesn’t go up and down, there’s not a stock market. Stocks go up and down slightly, flows go up and down widely and we know that in the poorer countries of the world, as we’ve been truly reminded recently, a military coup can suspend a democratic quality while suspension of democracy can be undertaken by a civil authoritative leader also.
And now it is very clear from all survey evidence that elections today are assumed to be the only way to come to par in India by all sectors of society and quality. Election, getting elected as a way to come into power is the norm. Is the assumption. That assumption is not in doubt, but seriously in doubt in Pakistan and elsewhere around the country except Sri Lanka, because Sri Lanka relies also on the basis of this theoretical reading, a very vigorous democracy. Jaffna is just northern part, below Jaffna, democracy is very vigorous.
Now let me in the remaining three minutes concentrate quickly on the ’99 elections. Try and add something to what has already been said. A great deal has been said. First of all you should note that elections typically outcomes a zero sum but India’s thirteen national elections have produced a positive sum outcome. All major parties have gained and lost at the same time. Some have lost seats but gained votes, others have gained votes, but lost seats. Consider the following evidence of votes/seats paradox. The BJP as we’ve been informed has lost 1.5 percentage points of popular vote but has gained 34 seats. A slightly complicated calculation, I’ll be happy to give you how this is calculated because the NDA today is not the NDA it was in 1988. BJP itself is down by two percentage points but that is not, I think, a net loss in BJP’s vote because BJP contested fifty fewer seats. It is very likely that BJP would’ve retained its share of votes if it had contested 376 seats as opposed to 326 which is did this last time.
Two, Congress has lost about thirty six but it has gained two percentage points, 2.8 percentage points, it has gained more over two important state governments, Karnataka and at least partly Maharashtra and therefore, the city of Bombay. It has staged a serious recovery in U.P., where its worth had gone down to a paltry 5.5% in 1998. Something inconceivable even in the mid ’80’s.
The BSP, the Scheduled Caste party is now the fourth largest party in India in terms of vote share, there are only three parties in India which get more than 5% of national vote. The BJP, the Congress and the CPM. CPM still gets 5.1, 5.2, 5.3. The Scheduled caste party now is between 4.3 and 4.7. 4.7 in 1998 ,4.3, this time. It has lost a tenth of its vote, but its seats have gone up by ten. And the SP of the party of powerful regional chief Mulayam Singh Yado got, gained six seats but lost nearly a quarter of its 1998 vote.
One could go on, but one should note that before summarizing and conceptualizing or generalizing from this that the only party which has gained both in terms of seats and votes is Chandra Babu Naidu’s TDP. It is true, I agree, that if it had not [formed an alliance with the BJP...] its seats would’ve been drastically reduced but nonetheless, if you look at this 43, 41% vote today, that’s higher then what it got in 1998. And the only party in India which has lost both in terms of seats and votes is Jayalalitha’s ADMK. I greatly doubt that many tears would be shed for that. Otherwise it has been an election with positive sum outcomes. Now such systematic divergence between votes and seats clearly suggests as has already been pointed out, the overwhelming importance of coalition-making today, coalition-making and power sharing. It is also clear that BJP is far ahead of the Congress in the game of power sharing and coalition making. Congress continues to insist in its recent pronouncements, forgetting this emerging logic of the polity?, that it would make it on its own. It would not have opportunistic alliances, as if it was possible in a multi-cornered political space to have principal alliances. It’s possible to do so when it’s not so multi-cornered. But there would be of course opportunity for alliances in a fragmented space like that.
To conclude then, it is clear that power sharing and coalition strategies would bring governments to power in the foreseeable future. The BJP appears to be ahead of the Congress in that game. And unless Congress can begin seriously to search for allies with which then it can contest next elections whenever they take this, I don’t think they’ll take this in the next three years, I think in three to five years, it will continue to lose the battle for power in Delhi.
Phil Oldenburg: Okay, thank you. I’ll make a quick comment, on the coalition point, I think just to underline the point that Jairam made about the coalition party. The Congress ironically starts with this enormous disadvantage of not being able to make coalitions in many of the states and it’s an interesting point whether or not the BJP, whether we’re looking at a period in which the BJP because it’s able to do that and allow regional parties their state as it were. That bargain is available now to the BJP and not available to the Congress. And that is, I think, suggests the possibility of a stable BJP-led coalition because they can, they have these possibility of doing state-based coalition parties, which the Congress does not have, so it’s not in fact the inadequacy of Congress leadership to put together coalitions, it’s a very fact of life of the enormous strength of the Congress in a lot of states where regional parties have in fact, have had the edge. Let’s open it to questions and then we’ll have a chance to go back, because we are running a bit behind. Maybe you can identify yourself if you have a question or a comment, short comment? Rocky?
Rocky: Is the BJP that came out on top in the elections with these various alliances in any important sense a different party than the BJP which we’ve been reading about for the last several years? What is its motivating force? Is it ideology, its culture, its religion, its view of the world different in any important sense today then it did from what it was, say, five years ago?
Jairam Ramesh: I think you have to look at the BJP as one wholly-owned subsidiary. In a family of wholly-owned subsidiaries, of which there is one holding company. And this is a modern, liberal forward looking wholly-owned subsidy. But the fact is that the holding company, they are assessed, which provides the intellectual justification, the intellectual basis for the cleavage brought politics that has brought the BJP into power. It’s still very much a very powerful presence. I think the BJP is making the transition now from a mobilization that was based on sharp difference issues, based on religious passions as well, to a party that claims to be the national party of governments. Certainly the BJP has abdicated all its elements of its economic policy in general. This is a remarkable transformation in Indian politics. But four Prime Ministers in the past three years, three political formations in the last three years and each Prime Minister wanting to show that he is more reformist then his predecessor. Each Prime Minster laying out the carpet for Ambassador Frank Wisner. I think this tells you that coming to power has moderated the sharp edges of the BJP and the great mistake that Congress is making is to portray, the more that the Congress tries to portray the BJP as a party of lunatics, the more support the BJP gets. So in a way what you’re seeing is what he said, the mainstreaming of the BJP. It is today much more open to ideas, much more pragmatic in an economic ideology. Less obsessed with a closed, insular type of model of economic development which brought it to power in the first place. But there are still fears. There are still very large elements of this family of this network which, who believe that the right, the wrongs of history have to be addressed. Who still believe that what happened 1,000 years ago has relevance in the next thousand years. So you know, this, the BJP will self-evolve. I’m sure there is going to be a battle between the liberals and the moderates, I’m sure there’s going be a battle between those who want to make it a more economic development-based party than a religion or a cleavage based party. So I’m actually quite hopeful. I’m not one of those who believe, who have idealistic fears about the BJP. I believe the longer they are in power in the state and in the center, the longer they co-habit with allies and the coalition partners, the more inclusive they will become. But they have been exclusive in the last thirty-five to forty years.
Phil Oldenburg: I agree with that assessment about, written about this precisely.
Marshall Bouton: I would agree with that also and just add a point that we should remember that the BJP is still lead essentially by its older generation of leaders and that there is a hand over problem that’s going to come in the reasonably near future and that’s something that we have to pay attention to.
Jairam Ramesh: I just want to make two very quick points. One that the BJP has been very successful in mobilizing sections of society who have been outside the political, in fact one of the key reasons why the BJP has been successful in the thirteen Lok Sabha elections and we haven’t discussed this, is because of the phenomenal success they’ve had in the Scheduled Tribes. You know we have this, we have this Scheduled Caste and we have the Scheduled Tribes. And remarkable success that the BJP has had in North India particularly in mobilizing and spreading it’s influence in the areas of Scheduled tribes. Now I know my Congress friends say that what the BJP has done has substituted a Hindu-Muslim dichotomy for a Hindu-Christian dichotomy. And now no longer is Allah the hated victim, it’s now the Pope. So they have substituted one hate, like the Americans require the Other, the BJP also requires an Other. And now the Pope is the Other. But there have been, I think the way they have spread themselves in quite remarkable and secondly and this is something that has not been common to the party in India particularly, they are becoming a party of the upwardly mobile. So it’s not just a caste cleavage. You’re seeing a caste cleavage as well in India. So the upwardly mobile in rural India, the upwardly mobile in (INAUDIBLE) India and certainly the upwardly mobile, those who worked in urban India, are with the BJP. Chances are that in India today, the more urban you are, the more educated you are, the more prosperous you are, you work for the BJP. The more illiterate you are, the more rural you are, the more, you know, socially backward you are, you’ll probably end up voting for the Congress. So I think you are not only seeing a caste-based cleavage in Indian politics but more importantly for students of political science, you’re also seeing a class-based cleavage.
Ashutosh Varshney: Two quick points. One indicator of BJP’s seriousness about stitching coalition and presenting itself as a party interested in governence rather than petty disputes with its partners is that it did not put out its own manifesto this time. It adhered to the NDA manifesto, which is the manifesto of 24 parties. This is a development which has not been remarked upon, but it’s a development which suggests a great deal of seriousness, as well as a development which sends out greater, signals of greater credibility to coalition building. That it was adhering does not bring out its own manifesto. So these are all signs of greater responsibility and seriousness. Though there is of course a lunatic fringe that exists especially in Western India, where I’ve done a lot of research in Bombay and Ahmedabad.
Female voice: This is more for Professor Varshney and the comment about gender. Currently in India’s society, men are slightly above women in education, jobs, etc. So wouldn’t you feel that until there’s more equality in that that the difference in men and women and number of voting wouldn’t really equalize that much? Kind of more of a social issue than political.
Ashutosh Varshney: It’s quite likely that you’re right, but I would present it as a hypothesis at this time. No one for example studied at length the gender basis of voting, what is it that drives women to voting when they do vote, what is it that keeps them at home? Very likely what you’re suggesting is the case, but we really don’t know enough about this problem yet. What we do know is that men are more likely to vote even today than women.
Jairam Ramesh: There are sharp regional variations. The reason why men vote more than women in India is because of North India. If you look at South India, it’s just the reverse. In fact, Yogendra Yadav has a piece in the next issue of Frontline where he shows that the key factor which swung the vote in favor of Chandra Babu Naidu, a positive swing, was the vote of the women. And we know that NDR came to power in Andrah Pradesh last time basically because of the women, the prohibition plank he had there. Kerala, Tamil Nadu historically have been states where women’s mobilization. So the women’s organizations get depressed because of UP, Bihar, Punjab, you know, you would think that Punjab, because it’s the most prosperous state in India, would have a higher degree of women’s participation, there is no coalition between economic development and social development. Punjab is a good example of this. Haryana, where there (INAUDIBLE) all women is very low. So it’s really North India. It’s possible, I think once we see the desegregation, it would also be interesting to see how women’s voting is different across the four southern states. That will tell us a great deal about not only the North/South differences, but some other micro-differences with which we need to engage.
Phil Oldenburg: Another footnote, Yogendra Yadav’s speech the second democratic upsurge which appeared in a volume edited by Francine Frankel, others hopefully soon. Does this analysis for both scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and women using survey data, so you have at least some additional material there. (INAUDIBLE)
Rajiv Chaudhry: Couple of comments and a question. One of the things that nobody talked about in analyzing the election was the Gandhi factor. How many seats were won or lost by the Congress party because of the Gandhi family or because of the foreign issue. I’m just curious as to what you think the answer might be. But I also want to make a comment that I think one of the biggest weaknesses of Indian democracy is that the second largest party in Parliament continues to foist dynastic politics on the country and the question therefore for Jairam is you are smart, reasonable people, why don’t you grow up?
Phil Oldenburg: Let me take a stab in terms of what happened items of the Congress party and the leadership issue. As far as I can tell, it was a non-issue. I don’t think it gained or lost seats. In fact, I don’t think any of the so-called national issues, explicit issues particularly Kargil had any kind of serious effect on this election. I can’t defend that in detail obviously. I do think a factor which was important and which people tended to forget was the economic situation which has been so good essentially for the last year for most people. That the old, the price rise, the price of onions issue wasn’t there, it was a dog that didn’t bark and that tends always to favor an incumbent government. But in general I think it was startling how few serious issues were there and clearly the foreigner issue did not take off and I don’t think it had any affect, that’s my own view of it.
Jairam Ramesh: I agree, I think the foreigner issue did not take off, but I think what did take off is that an election got converted into a presidential form of election. It was a Vajpayee vs. Sonia election, and clearly Mr. Vajpayee was the winner there’s no question that the projection of the BJP and the NDA was Mr. Vajpayee, the strategy of the Congress was to make this a Congress with the BJP fight. But you know, it turned out to be a Vajpayee vs. Sonia battle and it’s not just the foreign factor, there’s the competence angle, there’s the incumbency angle and I think Mr. Vajpayee’s handling of Kargil. It was in many ways, it was a magnificent display of statesmanship on his part for a prime minister who did nothing for twelve months or thirteen months, literally slept, but during Kargil, he demonstrated that he could rise to the highest heights of governence. And this had a very positive impact on the people. So I believe that this was a Vajpayee ward, but the oddest paradox is there are some states where Vajpayee didn’t swing the wall for the BJP. In UP, the local level factor just was so strong that the Vajpayee charisma did not work. As far as your other question is concerned, I think we need to really discuss this separately. Why we have dynasties, but let me say this, when Mr. Dhirubhai Ambani passes on his empire to Mukesh Ambani, you don’t talk of dynasty, and when Mr. Ratan Tata takes over TATA, with 18% of ownership, you don’t talk of dynasty. I mean the minority shareholder can’t throw Mr. Ratan Tata and Mr. Mukesh Ambani out. But a minority shareholder can throw Mrs. Gandhi out. And it’s happened in the past. So it’s up to the voters. If the people next time decide that Mrs. Gandhi has not delivered on her promises, they probably will vote her out. I think legitimacy in a democracy like India comes from the election. Now whether you call it dynasty, whether you call it lack of leadership, we can argue about this, but yes, there is a larger issue of leadership, if Mr. Sharad Pawar had not left the Congress, the thirteen Lok Sabha election would have looked exactly like the twelfth Lok Sabha election. If Mr. Sharad Pawar and the Congress had fought the election together, we would’ve gotten 43 seats in Maharashtra and we would not have been talking about this great mandate for the NDA. So, the Congress’s party’s inability not to strike alliances, but the Congress’s party inability to develop a leadership within itself has cost it very dear. And I’m sure Mrs. Gandhi realizes this also.
Phil Oldenburg: I should just point out, a small electoral result which might bode well for the future for the Congress is that the TMC vote collapsed in Tamil Nadu from 20% to 7%. Less than the Congress vote in Tamil Nadu.
(INAUDIBLE)
Jairam Ramesh: You know the areas where the BJP has done very well in the thirteenth election I must say, with due respect to all the people who have intellectual inclinations towards the BJP in this audience, have been in the states where it has practiced the politics of mobilization based on the sharp difference issue. The one state where BJP has gained the most in this election is Assam. Nobody talks of Assam because Assam is in some remote northeastern corner. You probably are from Assam. Okay, but nobody talks of Assam because Assam is in some backwaters of the Northeast. The fact is that today Assam is a state which has the highest proportion of Muslims in the state’s population, it’s almost 30%. And that’s a recorded number. The unrecorded number is much higher. And this has worked to the BJP’s advantage. And in fact, Assam is an exception to our model of regionalization of the polity because this is one state where the regional party has been decimated. And the fight in Assam is between two national parties. So, so much for regionalization of the party. But in Assam, what they have done is they have used this, the fear of demographic invasion to their advantage. In the tribal areas, while it is true that Christian influence has worked to the advantage, it has worked to the advantage of a narrow layer of tribals at the top end. You know this creamy layer phenomenon is very important in Indian politics. What happens is all the benefits, whether it’s of reservation, whether it’s of education, whether it is of economic growth, get cornered by a creamy layer of the backwards or the discriminatory classes. And then those who don’t have it say hey wait a minute, we also want it. So then the conflict becomes within the Dalit community, within the tribal community for a larger share of the vote.
Secondly, the Congress has not been able to recalculate its leadership. You know to give you an example, our tribal leader in Orissa, he has been winning the elections since 1967, so if you ask us who’s your tribal leader in Orissa, we have one name, Mr. Gil Demark. But two out of every three Indians today is below the age of 35. I mean there’s a historical demographic shift that is taking place in Indian society. The population is getting younger, the electorate is getting younger and this is a trend that is going to continue for the next twenty years. The Congress’s inability to recalculate leadership and give leadership positions to tribals, to Dalits, to Muslims has meant that these people are looking for avenues for advancement in other political parties. The Dalits have found that in the BSP, the tribals are finding that in the BJP. That is part explanation for this phenomenon. (INAUDIBLE)
Male Voice: ...in particular, I think in the past, Congress has passed reforms for regulation of industries, say the telecommunications industry. But then cases going before the Supreme Court negates the will of Parliament. So when one is dealing I guess as an outsider looking at telecommunications within India, does the last election change things at all, change this uncertainty?
Phil Oldenburg: I assume the economics panel will talk about those and other issues later but if you want to give a short answer.
Male Voice: ...Jairam can say something quickly.
Jairam Ramesh: Well you know the famous Enron case, they had twenty-six cases in Indian courts, but they got settled in two years, but within two years they had twenty-six cases where they got settled. I would be loathe to argue that the reflection of judicial activity is a reflection of the breakdown of the system. I think it’s a very healthy trend, I think it’s very healthy for people to go to courts and put public interest litigation. It makes the executive more accountable than it otherwise would’ve been. It adds to frustration, it adds to delays, it adds to uncertainty, I agree, I share your frustration, but in the larger democratic context, I think that the courts have fulfilled a very positive role in providing an avenue for people, agreed parties to come forward and express their point of view. On balance, I think that’s a good thing.
Phil Oldenburg: We have to wrap up. Ashutosh, you want to, one more point to be made that we haven’t covered?
Ashutosh Varshney: I would be happy to take more questions.
Phil Oldenburg: We have two minutes left.
Ashutosh Varshney: There are two hands up, I would rather let people. Short question.
Male Voice: The question is for Jairam, you spoke a lot about the transformation of the BJP. Could you speak a little about what you foresee happening in the Congress over the next few years and of course not give us a party line but what you really think might happen.
Jairam Ramesh: Well you know, the one advantage the Congress has over the BJP, is the BJP in many ways represents, looks like the CPSU of the Soviet Union. The average age in the polit bureau of the BJP is over seventy. That way, it’s more favorably endowed. It has leaders in the late forties, early fifties, mid fifties and therefore we have an age advantage. Unfortunately now they have to be projected, projected as leaders in their own right. I think the way the Congress is going to evolve is the Congress is going to find it difficult to come back to power at the national level on its own for the next five to seven years, undoubtedly. But the Congress will be a formidable, political force in states. There was a time in the late 90’s, in the mid 80’s and early 90’s when the Congress was the dominant political power in the center but lacked any base whatsoever in the states. Now we are seeing a dominant Congress in large number of states, but a weak Congress at the center. This is the process of political evolution. And I see the Congress really emerging, going back to what the Congress used to be in the fifties. Large number of states, a large number of powerful states’ attributes wanting to assert their authority and individuality, tension between the central leadership and the state leadership. Some kind of tension resulting in expulsion, but more often than not in the case of the Congress, expulsion also results in return after awhile, so I think that the Congress would be a loose coalition within itself. It’s going to be a coalition of state level leaders and frankly, I believe that this dynasty business which has been raised, you know, dynasty is not accompanied by visible improvement in corporate governance in the Congress party, the dynasty’s going to be thrown out. This is the change, nobody is going to accept dynasty for the sake of dynasty. It’s dynasty plus. You have to provide something else other than dynasty. So I’m quite optimistic and I think that leadership will come from the states and not from central pool, who have really got no base whatsoever to speak of any importance.
Phil Oldenburg: I think that will be the last word.
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