A tilting of the scales?

The complexion of the electoral battle has dramatically changed. As the exit polls forecast a National Democratic Alliance score at barely half the Lok Sabha's total seats or less, the Bharatiya Janata Party's campaign is drawing an apathetic response, especially in the north.

FOR the first time since the results of the last round of Assembly elections came in December announcing the Bharatiya Janata Party's victory in three northern States, there seems to be some light at the end of India's long political tunnel. After the exit polls at the end of the second round of the Lok Sabha elections, a dramatic change has occurred in both popular and "expert" assessments of the political situation. Suddenly, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), the triumph of which was seen as a foregone conclusion by many, is looking vulnerable. Yesterday's underdog, the secular Opposition, has emerged as a tenacious fighter with a chance to turn the election around. And the supremely confident BJP, which arrogantly claimed it would cruise to victory on its "India Shining" campaign, appears confused and unsure of itself, although it has not abandoned its bluff and bluster.

The April 26 exit polls are, of course, not the cause of this change of mood or perception. Rather, they are the culmination of a number of trends - ground-level campaigns and political mobilisation by different parties, varying popular responses to them, and media perceptions and depiction of the changing terms of the electoral contest. These changes add up to a tilting of the political scales. This has created at least the possibility of an end to the six-year-long rule of the communal Hard Right under the BJP-NDA. Only days ago, this possibility seemed to be closed. Today, it has materialised as plausible.

A number of factors explain this change. First, the slick "India Shining" hard-sell campaign, run to super-saturation levels at enormous public expense since December, has irritated and angered large numbers of people, who see in it falsehood, exaggeration and falsification of their lived experiences. Many among the poor probably feel that "feel good" or "India Shining" has chided and taunted them by highlighting the dazzling gains of a narrow consumerist elite, while suppressing the larger reality: declining incomes and employment, a grim agrarian crisis, and shrinking social services - on top of persistent Fourth World-level social indices such as grinding poverty, lack of social opportunity, widespread ill-health, illiteracy, and severe income and regional disparities.

"Feel good" has boomeranged not only because it does not conform to the experience of a majority of Indians, but because people felt it violates norms of truthfulness and public decency. If the number of seats won by the NDA falls significantly, that must be treated as a vote against hypocrisy and deviousness too.

Second, the BJP thought that mere packaging and high-powered marketing could successfully substitute for substance and content. Its deceptive propaganda, and the promotion of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee personality cult would be enough to lure the voter. Clever "micro-management" at the constituency level, based on extremely detailed "internal" opinion polls with absurdly large samples such as 200,000, would complete the job of winning the contest. Such "micro-management", significantly, includes putting up bribable dummy candidates who would take away some caste-group votes at the margin. This is not quite working.

The voter has discovered that the NDA has little to offer him or her, especially on bread-and-butter issues and vital matters of governance. The BJP has long enjoyed remarkable success in being all things to all people and in making a virtue of double standards - a "principled" ideological party which can also be calculatingly wicked against its own core beliefs, a Muslim baiter which can shed crocodile tears over the killing and destruction it itself organises. But this "speaking-in-multiple-voices" strategy has been carried to an extreme and may have turned counterproductive.

Third, the BJP's star campaigner, and its publicly most acceptable asset, Vajpayee, has turned out to be a hollow leader, and even a poor crowd-puller, especially in States like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Maharashtra. He increasingly comes across as too tired, effete, pedestrian and incoherent to be inspiring. His remarks about the "difficulties of managing a 22-party alliance" and wanting to give it all up have corroded his image. His persistent personal attacks on Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her children have eroded his stature. His vicious rhetoric against Jawaharlal Nehru's policies and "the Leftist influence" on his regime has given the lie to his (always spurious) claim to be an inheritor of the Nehru legacy. He now says Nehruvian policies produced "bad results in all fields, especially in the economic and educational arenas" (The Statesman, April 24).

But two things have damaged Vajpayee the most: demonstration of a deep personal insecurity about his own constituency, and his wooing of the Muslim vote - in ways worse than the BJP accuses the "pseudo-secularists" of using. The first is reflected in the creation of Atal Himayat committees, especially around Lucknow, based mostly on discredited Muslim leaders, and the holding of frequent, poorly attended mohalla meetings in the city. The Vajpayee campaign has resorted to outright bribery in the form of distribution of saris. The programme, on confidant and campaign-manager Lalji Tandon's birthday, led to a stampede killing 22 women and three children.

The BJP must be held fully culpable for that shameful and gruesome episode. It organised the programme in its nuts-and-bolts details and publicised it through a five day-long advertisement campaign and posters. It provided transport to the women recipients of the saris. And it decorated the venue just like an election meeting. Tandon personally handed out saris to the destitute women.

This is a far more serious electoral malpractice than what Indira Gandhi committed and was punished for by the Allahabad High Court in 1975. It annulled her election from Rae Bareli because Yashpal Kapoor, a government employee, was coordinating her campaign. Kapoor, in fact, had resigned from service the previous day, but was not officially relieved. The court held that he was duty-bound to keep away from direct involvement in elections. In all fairness, the BJP deserves even more stringent punishment for a manifestly corrupt practice resulting in 25 deaths. Whether the Election Commission delivers this or not, the episode has seriously dented Vajpayee's credibility and moral stature.

The abject manner in which Vajpayee has solicited Muslim votes lacks grace and decency. He has not once repudiated the BJP's communal ideology or demonstrated that he is truly sorry for the violence unleashed against Muslims in the last six years, especially in Gujarat. The only real proof of genuine regret would have been to dismiss Narendra Modi. Instead, Vajpayee has been addressing meeting after election meeting with him. His appeal for Muslim votes not only reeks of sanctimonious dishonesty. It is downright duplicitous in resorting to cheap tricks to confuse Muslims.

In mid-April, Vajpayee said there are no serious "ideological differences" between the BJP and the Samajwadi Party (S.P.); the two could even form an alliance. The objective of this ploy was to draw Muslims away from the S.P., hitherto the BJP's strongest opponent, and scatter their votes.

Many Muslims in Uttar Pradesh have misgivings about Mulayam Singh Yadav because he accepted the BJP's tacit support while forming the State government in Lucknow and welcomed its nominee (and now Lok Sabha candidate) Kesarinath Tripathi as Speaker. Mulayam Singh Yadav did not issue a notification for the prosecution of BJP-VHP (Vishwa Hindu Parishad) leaders in the Babri Masjid demolition case through a common charge-sheet. Vajpayee shrewdly, but cynically, exaggerated Mulayam Singh Yadav's ambivalence to suggest that Muslims cannot trust him and should not vote for the S.P.

However, as soon as Vajpayee saw that the Congress is gaining support among U.P.'s Muslims, he appealed to them to "stick to the S.P." He did so in so many words at Bakshi-ka-Talab in U.P. on April 27. It is truly astounding that the BJP's "star" candidate and India's Prime Minister should ask electors to vote for a rival party! This signifies the BJP's descent to abysmal deviousness aimed at fragmenting the Muslim vote.

CLEARLY, the BJP-NDA is seriously worried that the Congress is winning significant Muslim support in U.P. That is why it has befriended conservative Muslims like the Delhi Jama Masjid's Imam Syed Ahmed Bukhari. Bukhari is almost a caricature of his father and enjoys little credibility even in Chandni Chowk. He has suddenly discovered that it is his "religious duty to raise my voice against the exploitation of Muslims" by secular parties. He has appealed to Muslims to "give the BJP a chance". "Let's befriend them and see what they have to offer... "

This must be placed in context. The single most important issue that helped the BJP acquire national prominence and credibility among the middle classes in the 1980s was its campaign against the "appeasement" of Muslims by "pseudo-secular" parties. Today, the same BJP is busy appeasing rabidly communal or opportunist Muslim leaders like Arif Mohammed Khan. Its brazen tactic of "appeasement" for votes could damage it severely.

Compounding all these negative factors is the disarray among the BJP's allies (now just half their number a year ago) and in its own ranks. Even in saffronised Gujarat, the BJP is a divided house. The tension between the Janata Dal (U) and the BJP over seat-sharing especially, in Bihar, and the quarrel between the BJP and Shiv Sena in Maharashtra, are only two examples. So serious is the mutual recrimination between JD(U) leaders in Bihar that its State president Nitish Kumar sulked and stayed at home and away from his own constituency for two days. Nationally, the allies are likely to lose their political importance even more sharply than the BJP. In the last Lok Sabha, they contributed about 120 seats to the NDA. Now, the number could shrink to 60 to 80.

Going by numerous reports and polls, it would be no surprise if the BJP itself sheds 20 to 30, or even 40 seats. It stands to lose significantly-to-heavily in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Tamil Nadu, and moderately in smaller States like Jharkhand, Himachal Pradesh, Uttranchal and Delhi. The only significant gains could come from Karnataka (where polls show fuzzy results) and Punjab. As for all-critical U.P., the BJP must slog even to retain its tally of 25. Its own internal surveys say it will not cross the upper limit of 22 seats.

If the Congress' U.P. campaign retains the momentum it has gathered, it could put the BJP on the run. By all available indications, a strong anti-incumbency sentiment prevails in that State. That, not just nostalgia for the Gandhi-Nehru legacy, explains the tremendous response that Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi have evoked wherever they have campaigned in U.P. Reports suggest that the Brahmins are moving away from the BJP in a big way towards the Congress, just as the Rajputs did towards the S.P.

On the whole, the anti-NDA opposition has proved far more combative and energetic than it first appeared. It has successfully de-constructed and dismantled the "Shining" campaign. In many States, it has put the NDA on the defensive, interrogated its claims of good governance, and focussed sharply on the issue of communalism.

If these trends continue, and the Congress displaces the BJP as the third largest party in U.P., the NDA's overall strength could fall to a low 220-240 seats. The BJP's own surveys estimate that the NDA will get 260-270 seats, falling short of the halfway mark in the Lok Sabha. This may still enable the NDA to form a government by using disgracefully unethical means and by splitting parties. But such a government will have little credibility, popular legitimacy or moral authority. It may not last its full term.

A national alternative to the NDA could still emerge. Whether this can happen on the basis of a broad non-BJP-non-Congress coalition or under the Congress' leadership remains to be seen. But the alternative has certainly entered the realm of possibility. This is itself cause for celebration after six dark years. Turning this possibility into reality calls for careful strategising, good campaigning, and principled negotiation. The coming fortnight promises to be eventful.