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Radical shift in the social basis of political power

Elections 2004 signals a reversal of the process that brought the BJP to power and the possibility of an alternative bloc of the socially marginalised, says Yogendra Yadav.

The stunning verdict of Elections 2004 signifies a fundamental change in Indian democracy. Once the surprise of the final outcome, the sheer relief of regime change, the suspense over government formation and the verbal duels about who has the mandate give way to reflection on the meaning of this verdict, we might notice a change of fundamental order that this outcome has quietly ushered in. Elections 2004 may be remembered not for its realignment of political forces and experiments in coalition building, but for a more basic realignment of social and political power. The verdict signifies a radical shift in the social basis of political power.

The shift has been in the making for well over a decade now. The Mandalisation of north Indian politics in the 1990s triggered off a process that was not confined to the OBCs or to north India. The 1990s witnessed greater participation and more intense politicisation of the marginalised social groups in democratic politics. While urban middle classes were busy bashing politics and politicians, the democratic space provided by electoral politics was being used more deftly by Dalits, Adivasis, women and the poor. This `second democratic upsurge' from below was the distinguishing mark of Indian democracy in the last decade.

Yet, paradoxically, the same decade was marked by the rise of a political force that was fundamentally opposed to the interests of these very groups. The 1990s were also characterised by the rise to power of the BJP and the Sangh Parivar. There was no direct relationship between these two developments. It is true that the BJP tried, in some cases with partial success, to court the lower OBCs, Dalits and the Adivasis. But even in those cases, the BJP did not become the political instrument for the rise to power of the lower orders of society. This was the paradox of Indian politics in the 1990s: the national political power rested with social groups that lost out in the democratic contestation. The BJP had forged a political majority of and for a power social minority.

The BJP managed to perform this unusual feat with the help of a nuanced understanding of democratic politics and social change. The BJP formed its own `social bloc', a social coalition that offered enduring support to the party. The core of this support was a strong allegiance from the upper caste and well-to-do sections of Hindu society. Cutting through the various local rivalries that divided this segment — the traditional political rivalries between the Rajputs and Brahmins that dominated many States before the 1990s — the BJP moulded the upper castes and the `middle class' into a unified political bloc. The BJP's alliance building was either to consolidate its hold among this social group (as in the case of its alliance with the AGP and the BJD) or, more often, to supplement its core with some additional social groups that it could not have accessed otherwise (as in its alliance with Akali Dal and Shiv Sena). In some cases, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh for instance, the BJP itself courted the OBCs with some success. A highly skilful management of alliance politics and party's caste factions enabled the BJP to manufacture a majority from its narrow social base. What made this possible was the political fragmentation of newly politicised lower orders. An overwhelming social majority failed to secure a political majority for itself, while a minority of the socially powerful managed to manufacture a political majority by creating a high level of internal unity and strategic alliances outside.

The significance of Election 2004 lies in the fact that it signals a reversal of this process and the possibility of an alternative social bloc that represents the democratic upsurge of the recent times. The loose anti-NDA political coalition that has emerged during and after this election represents a deeper social coalition of the forces thrown up by the democratic upsurge. The coalition is no doubt only partial. The pre-electoral alliance of the Congress excluded the two most significant political carriers of the second democratic upsurge, the BSP and the SP. Many of the coalition allies — the NCP in Maharashtra, the TRS in Andhra and indeed the Congress itself in Kerala and West Bengal — are hardly representatives of the upsurge from below. Notwithstanding all these weaknesses, the success of the Congress alliance in this election demonstrates the power of even a partial coalition of the social majority.

To be sure, the Congress is not the architect of this fundamental transformation. If anything, the Congress is the unintended beneficiary, or just the vehicle, of this change. Far from designing and orchestrating this change, the Congress has resisted it as long as it could. For Congress the current coalition is nothing more than a political alliance, a necessary and in the long run an avoidable evil in its own eyes. In that sense it is not the Congress that has chosen the socially marginalised groups as an element of its core political strategy. In fact a hidden hand seems to be guiding these groups into choosing the Congress and the emerging political coalition as its political vehicle.

The historic task of building an alternative social coalition rested with the parties representing the `third force' in the 1990s. The third force in Indian politics, represented most coherently in recent times by the erstwhile United Front and by parties like the RJD, BSP and SP, arose out of the demise of the Congress system and the inability of the Congress party to represent the interests of the socially marginalised groups. These parties appeared to be the most appropriate representative of the democratic upsurge from below. But the political formations representing the third force were simply not up to this historic task. They were especially unsuccessful in the main task of building and maintaining political coalitions across different regions and interests. Thus the third force could never occupy the third space in Indian politics; the space continues to exist while the front has disappeared. Thus the task of building and sustaining a social coalition of the marginal sections of society has landed in the lap of the Congress, despite itself.

The outcome of the election begins to make sense in this perspective. The basic building block of this verdict is the State. In that sense this election has continued the basic features of the `third electoral system'. The State has emerged as the principal unit of political choice making. Each State is a political system unto itself, with its own party system and political rhythm. If the voters voted in the State Assembly elections held in 1970s and 1980s as if they were choosing their prime minister, they started voting in the Lok Sabha elections held in 1990s as if they were choosing their chief minister. This radical shift took place in 1991 and has continued thereafter in every election. The outcome at the national level is a sum total of the State level verdicts. Any party wishing to win a national mandate has to weave its way through the different States and secure a verdict in each of these.

Yet the focus on the States does not mean that there was nothing larger that cut across and binds the various State level verdicts. The larger question is: why did the NDA fare so badly in the crucial battleground of the States? Was it just poor luck that the political cycle of incumbency did not favour the NDA? This is clearly not the case, for the NDA had as much to gain from the logic of incumbency as it stood to lose. Besides, `anti-incumbency' begs another question: why did this rule affect some parties and not others? The closest we come to understanding the NDA's losses in these crucial States is by focusing on alliance arithmetic. The NDA broke an ongoing alliance in Haryana and Jharkhand and changed the partner in Tamil Nadu to its own disadvantage. The Congress entered into politically rewarding alliances in Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar and Jharkhand and took advantage of NDA's state of disarray in States like Haryana. This has been widely noted and commented in the media. But the usual explanation stops here, as if these alliances were no more than matters of political strategy.

This is where the deeper meaning and significance of the verdict of 2004 lies. The election was no doubt lost and won in the States and political coalitions are crucial to this story. Yet the success and failure of these political coalitions is not just a matter of alliance arithmetic. The apparently ad hoc political alliances relate to a deeper alignment of social and political power. The loose pre-electoral alliance formed by the Congress worked well for it happened to coincide with and express a deeper need within the political system, the need to create an alternative to BJP's social bloc.

This reading allows us to put in perspective some of the developments and strategies that generated considerable excitement in this election. The numbers never favoured the BJP in this election, in that the State level calculus of electoral prospects indicated losses for the ruling alliance right from the beginning. The party's strategists needed an opportune moment, something that could create a national hawa, something like Kargil in 1999. The BJP's stunning victory in the State Assembly elections of December 2003 provided this moment. The strategy did not work, but it may not be correct to think that this was mainly responsible for the NDA debacle. The move to advance the polls represented the best chance for a party that did not have very much to show for its performance.

The BJP tried to and succeeded in winning the first round of psychological warfare, thanks to the all-too-willing complicity of the media. The choice of India Shining and Feel Good as the campaign themes was part of this grand strategy of creating a media-led hawa through the country. It seemed to work initially but backfired in the last instance. Once its novelty wore off in this long campaign, this advertising theme served to keep the focus on the economic conditions of ordinary people. This did not bring any additional gains to the BJP and its allies among the so-called middle classes, a euphemism for the wealthy classes that were already backing it up. But it may have invited a backlash, thus creating a psychological context for forging an alliance of the lower orders of society. The Congress and its alliances provided an avenue for political expression of this emerging social alliance.

The long drawn out campaign gave this alliance the space to work itself out. This also ensured that the media blitz unleashed by the BJP could not continue to dominate the elections. In this sense, this election proved that in a large and diverse society like India, there are limits to what micro-management and spin doctoring can achieve.

The election verdict represents only a partial realisation of the alternative social bloc. The Congress-led alliance did not include two major constituents of the third space: the Left and the SP-BSP. It also needs to be remembered that the government of the representatives of the socially marginalised does not become the government for the socially marginalised, unless conscious steps are taken in this direction. While the 1990s opened up the political space by expanding the menu of political choices, this decade also threatened to render these choices meaningless as a result of convergence on ideological and policy questions among all the major parties.

If the Congress has an opportunity today, it is only because it has begun to realise that the `Congress system' is dead. If the Congress wishes to make use of this historic opportunity in this post-Congress polity, it must outgrow the infamous, imperious, Congress mindset and learn to share power.

The Left and parties representing the third force must focus on using this opportunity for long-term consolidation rather than immediate gains. They all must learn from history: parties grow by allowing themselves to be used as a vehicle by rising social classes. Social coalitions of the people must be translated into an enduring political coalition, if this shift in the social basis of political power brought about by this election is to be anything more than a passing affair.

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