Trial round

The forthcoming elections in six States will impact national politics significantly, with the general elections a few months away.

A MINI general election first to lead to a full-fledged general election. This was how Union Rural Development Minister and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Raghuvansh Prasad Singh described the elections to the Assemblies in six States Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Mizoram, and Jammu and Kashmir scheduled for November and December. Interacting with a group of journalists on October 23, he admitted that the trends in the Assembly elections could influence the alliances and coalitions existing in different States and the formations to fight the national elections. And in that sense, the elections of November-December 2008 are crucial for the two mainstream forces in the country, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance [UPA] and the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP]-led National Democratic Alliance [NDA], he added.

This analysis, by a Union Minister from Bihar, one of the larger States, has many takers in the UPA and the NDA and in parties that belong to neither formation, the Left parties including the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Samajwadi Party (S.P.). However, the wish list of each one is indeed different.

The UPA desperately wants to stop the trend that was evident in the Assembly elections in the past three years, while the NDA wants to sustain it. Of the 16 States in which Assembly elections were held in this period, the UPA lost as many as 11. Most of these losses were suffered by the Congress. Everything is dynamic in politics and that dynamism will be reaffirmed in these elections too, said the RJD leader, with a hint of hope for a reversal of fortunes.

The NDA had only five victories, but the qualitative dimensions of these underlined that the combination was consolidating politically and organisationally in its strongholds and becoming a forceful presence in new areas. The wins in Gujarat and Karnataka, achieved by the BJP in December 2007 and May 2008 respectively, had special significance. The victory in Gujarat marked the return of the Hindutva mascot and Chief Minister Narendra Modi for the third consecutive term while that in Karnataka recorded the first ever triumph of the saffron party in a South Indian State. Both successes have boosted the morale of the party.

The non-Congress, non-BJP parties such as the Left and the BSP do not have the political and organisational strength to cherish hopes of coming to power in these six States, but the elections offer an opportunity to enhance their appeal in these States and consequently at the national level. In the past three years, the Left has made significant gains in its traditional strongholds of West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura, while the BSP recorded a historic triumph in Uttar Pradesh, the most populous State, in 2007 by becoming the first party in 11 years to achieve a majority on its own.

In political and organisational terms, all three formations have their strengths as well as their weaknesses and their plans vary from State to State. For the BJP-led NDA, which runs governments in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, the focus is largely on national issues such as inflation, price rise, internal security and terrorism. Its effort is to hold the UPA government at the Centre responsible for the governmental failure on these fronts.

The BJP and its sister organisations in the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS)-led Sangh Parivar have sought to inject a dose of Hindutva into the electoral scene right from the beginning. Cumulatively, the advancement of both peoples concerns and Hindutva has been done in such a manner that it covers up the failures of incumbent BJP governments.

The thrust of the Congress campaign, on the other hand, is on the gains of the UPA government. It is built around programmes such as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) and the India-United States nuclear deal. It also seeks to defend the troubles in the economy as a reflection of global phenomena.

The failures of the BJP State governments are also highlighted in the campaign, and there is an effort to present the track record of the Congress governments in Delhi and Jammu and Kashmir as better than those of the BJP governments. The recent unravelling of Hindutva-oriented terrorist outfits has imparted some additional strength and value to the partys campaign.

Talking to Frontline, Parliamentary Affairs Minister and Congress leader Vayalar Ravi said that the recent revelations indicated that the BJP and the Sangh Parivar had time and again engineered terrorist episodes in order to polarise society on communal lines at the time of elections. In hindsight, one can say that there were such incidents before almost every Assembly election, including the Karnataka elections last year. The conspiracy element that has been exposed in the recent investigations shows that some Hindutva organisations have been designated to pursue terrorism as a political ploy. The Congress would highlight this as also the difference between the divisive Hindutva and the all-encompassing religious philosophy of Hinduism, Ravi said.

The South Indian leaders perspective could well become a guideline for the Congress campaign, but it remains to be seen how successfully the party can advance it. For, the Congress organisational machinery is not in order in almost all the States that are going to the polls, and fights between different factions within the party are a common phenomenon. Naturally, the partys campaign potential is quite low.

At the level of issues and campaigns, the BSP and the Left parties have a theoretical advantage in that they can criticise and expose the failures of the BJP governments in the States and also those of the government at the Centre led by the Congress. However, apart from the absence of strong party organisations, the BSP and the Left parties are weakened in all the States going to the polls by the fact that they have been unable to firm up cohesive alliances. This has naturally inhibited their campaign. However, the BSP is expected to perform creditably in Madhya Pradesh, especially in the Bundhelkhand region, which adjoins Uttar Pradesh.

The CPI(M) is expected to enhance its vote share in Rajasthan, where it has been in the forefront of many mass struggles. The BSP also has a significant presence in Rajasthan, where it has roped in former External Affairs Minister K. Natwar Singh.

The feedback from the early stages of the campaign in Delhi is that the BJP is miles ahead of the ruling Congress. The BJP finalised candidates for most seats much earlier than the Congress. Its projection of veteran parliamentarian Vijay Kumar Malhotra as its chief ministerial candidate has also helped its campaign.

On the other hand, the Congress has given a relatively free hand to Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit in the selection of candidates and in the campaign. However, this seems to have come a little late in the day and is apparently not making any dramatic difference in the campaign atmosphere. The rising strength of the BSP, which is expected to raise its vote share to nearly 10 per cent from the 5.7 per cent in the Assembly elections in 2003, is also expected to harm the Congress.

However, the Congress is reportedly putting up a strong fight in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. In Rajasthan, the BJP government led by Vasundhara Raje is facing attacks from different sections of the population, including farmers and traders. The numerically significant castes, the Gujjars and the Jats, also oppose the policies of the government. Over and above this, senior BJP leaders such as former Vice-President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat and former Union Minister Jaswant Singh have expressed unhappiness over Vasundhara Rajes style of functioning. These leaders are expected to put up their own candidates and show their clout, which ultimately is bound to harm the party. However, a plus point for the BJP in Rajasthan is that the Congress leadership is yet to get its organisational house in order. It has not been able to highlight a chief ministerial candidate or devise a good campaign plan.

The situation of the Congress in Madhya Pradesh, too, is similar. The factions led by four senior leaders Digvijay Singh, Kamal Nath, Arjun Singh and Jyotiraditya Scindia are constantly fighting one another at all levels of the party. This has prevented the projection of a Chief Minister candidate as also the development of a unified campaign.

The general view in the State and outside a year ago was that the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government had become very unpopular. It was also surmised that the BJP would certainly lose the next election. The desertion of former Chief Minister Uma Bharati from the party and the formation of the Bharatiya Janshakthi Party (BJS) by her were expected to hasten the collapse of the BJP government. But it did not happen. On the contrary, Shivraj Singh Chouhan seems to have regained the initiative, working in a low-key manner, touring the State intensively, and connecting with the masses. There is a sense in the BJP that the potential damage to the party from Uma Bharati has been contained and that the threat from the BSP would essentially be to the Congress.

In Chhattisgarh, where Maoist violence has continued unabated in the past five years, the BJP government led by Raman Singh is facing a strong anti-incumbency mood. The Congress leadership in the State, driven by former Chief Ministers Ajit Jogi and Vidya Charan Shukla, is rated as capable of turning this into votes for the Congress. However, here too the party is plagued with extreme factionalism. The faction fight is driven not only by Jogi and Shukla, who are considered to be the senior-most leaders, but also by Mahendra Karma, the founder of Salwa Judum, the anti-Maoist resistance group that has literally wreaked havoc and caused great human misery in the tribal districts of the State. In spite of this, the Congress is relatively better off in this State than in Delhi or Madhya Pradesh.

In Mizoram, the fight is essentially between the Mizo National Front (MNF) and the Congress. The third formation here is the United Democratic Alliance (UDA) formed by the association of the Mizoram Peoples Conference (MPC) and the Zoram Nationalist Party (ZNP). The MNF has been in power for the past five years and the anti-incumbency feeling is expected to benefit both the Congress and the UDA. The general impression in the State is that the outcome will be a hung Assembly.

The situation in Jammu and Kashmir is indeed tense as the State gets ready for a seven-phased election from November 17 to December 24. Though the campaign is yet to pick up, the general assumption is that the main fight in Jammu will be between the Congress and the BJP, with the BJP having the upper hand.

The struggle in the Kashmir Valley will be among the National Conference led by former Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah and his son and party president Omar Abdullah, the Congress, and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) led by Mehbooba Mufti. There are doubts whether parties like the PDP will adopt extreme and separatist postures to enhance their political strength.

Evidently, in the early stages of electioneering, the forthcoming elections in the six States present a mixed picture with the BJP-led NDA having the upper hand in terms of campaign and preparedness. It remains to be seen whether it will be able to sustain this advantage. Whatever the final result, there is little doubt, as Raghuvansh Prasad Singh pointed out and many others agreed, that the Assembly elections in six States in late 2008 will impact national politics and the coming general elections in a significant manner.