07-23-2008, 11:35 PM
Good op-ed from Pioneer, 24 July 2008
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Confidence vote trickster
Ashok Malik
For the Congress, the July 22 victory was decisive but also misleading. The general election, in spring or winter, will be a grim battle.<b> However, for the Congress's main rivals, such as the BJP, the existential questions are equally troubling</b>
It goes without saying that the result of the confidence vote in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday is not necessarily an indicator of the winter/spring general election. With an artful mix of stealth and acumen, the Congress-led UPA Government has proved its majority. <b>There has even been a generous mood of middle class sympathy for and solidarity with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh following his dogged pursuance of the nuclear deal. Yet, this is a passing moment.</b>
<b>The Congress faces ferocious anti-incumbency for reasons as far apart as inflation and economic mismanagement, national security and a general sense of listless governance.</b> For the first time in 20 years -- since the Bofors election of 1989 -- a ruling party will go into a Lok Sabha election battling pointed unpopularity, rather than just indifference. How the Congress addresses this challenge will be a truer test of its capacities than the July 22 vote.
If the Congress needs to take its victory with sobriety, however, there is ample reason for the Opposition too to go back to the drawing board. What is the upshot of the confidence vote experience for the three major entities that led the attack on the Manmohan Singh Government -- the BJP, the Left and the BSP? Frankly, it's not all rosy.
<b>For the BJP, a certain momentum that had begun to build up following the victory in Gujarat in December 2007 and had gathered vigour after the Karnataka Assembly poll has been halted. </b>For a supposedly resurgent Opposition party to be unable to defeat a precarious, unpopular Government in its final year is an extraordinary setback.
The BJP saw desertions from its own ranks which it has chosen to explain as impelled by local, constituency-level factors. <b>More important, it did not see an accretion in its numbers. It expended precious time, energy and political capital in convincing allies in the NDA that they needed to stay together.</b>
At one level, this speaks for shortcomings in political management. However, the issue is far deeper than merely one of individuals or of removing personality X from position Y. <b>The fact is the BJP is gripped by an existential crisis. Many within the NDA sense the party, at least this version of the party, is past its prime, its platform is not inspirational enough for its target voter.</b> Despite successes in key states, there are question marks about its 'winability' in the 2009 election.
The BJP may believe that it can exploit the Congress's 'bribe-tainted' confidence vote, but does it have the political wherewithal and the credibility to run a sustained anti-corruption campaign? Second, at no point after 1984 has the disconnect between the urban middle class and the BJP been as sharp on the eve of a Lok Sabha election as it is today. <b>The party may still win a protest vote, but there is no positive identification with its goals, ideals and programme.</b>
<b>The divergence between the party's key electoral constituency and its spokespersons on the India-US nuclear deal is a symptom of this problem. In the past months the question was often asked: "Why is the BJP opposing the deal?" This was, really, shorthand for a whole host of other questions: "What does the BJP stand for? It's alright the BJP wants to come to power, but what does it want to do in office? Has the BJP figured out if the Congress is the bigger enemy or the Left?"</b>
There are six to nine months before the next election. <b>In this period, the BJP needs to move far away from the pointless and politically counter-productive nuclear debate -- which has got hijacked within the party and its related organisations by a small clique of pedants and hysterical hyper-nationalists -- and focus on stitching together social coalitions, tying up State alliances and deciding upon and articulating its programmatic content.</b>
Admittedly, not every party faces such hard questions from even natural sympathisers. Yet, the BJP's potential voter expects more clarity and consistency from it than, say, regional/caste party adherents do from their leaders.
<b>The Congress is a free-floating entity that, broadly speaking, believes in nothing at all-which is why Mr Manmohan Singh stands out and wins respect because, for all his failures, he appears to believe in at least the economic and strategic potential of the nuclear deal. </b>The BJP, however, is expected to be more anchored.
The outlook is scarcely better for the Left. <b>Irrespective of Mr Somnath Chatterjee's expulsion, the rift in the CPI(M) can no longer be wished away as bourgeois fiction. Power pragmatists who see themselves as an election-oriented regional political force in West Bengal will now seek to temper the Delhi-based apparatchiki who want to refashion the CPI(M) as a 21st century League against Imperialism.</b>
Even if a Third Front Government comes to power in Delhi in 2009, the CPI(M), with a possible 40-50 Lok Sabha seats, and with a diminished, impolitic general secretary, will not be able to control it. For four years, the Congress deferred to comrade Prakash Karat. The Mayawatis and Jayalalithaas are not going to be as accommodating.
<b>Finally, there is the BSP. On paper, Ms Mayawati has triumphed. She raided the Samajwadi Party and deprived it of half-a-dozen Lok Sabha MPs, networked with the UNPA leadership, and even embraced the world view of Mr Karat.
In the coming elections, she could damage the Congress's Dalit vote in Madhya Pradesh, Delhi and Rajasthan and perhaps elsewhere in north India. Nevertheless, her all-India appeal is constricted. She has had little impact in Maharashtra and Karnataka, for instance.</b>
That aside, she has to concede that an SP-Congress alliance in Uttar Pradesh will severely test her, and probably check her hopes of winning 50 or more of the State's 80 seats. If Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav's Muslim support stays true, the BSP will be in some trouble.
<b>Also, there are limits to a rainbow coalition. Ms Mayawati cannot incorporate the likes of Atiq Ahmed -- the SP rebel and criminal-MP from Phulpur -- and still hope to mobilise middle class/upper caste voters in, say, the Allahabad region, where Atiq is widely regarded as a gangster.</b>
Despite its decisive result, then, the confidence vote and attendant episodes have thrown open a bag of imponderables. Once again, like in the mid-1990s, India fears it is on the edge of political instability and a very confused mandate. Suddenly, 2009 looks a very grim year.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Confidence vote trickster
Ashok Malik
For the Congress, the July 22 victory was decisive but also misleading. The general election, in spring or winter, will be a grim battle.<b> However, for the Congress's main rivals, such as the BJP, the existential questions are equally troubling</b>
It goes without saying that the result of the confidence vote in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday is not necessarily an indicator of the winter/spring general election. With an artful mix of stealth and acumen, the Congress-led UPA Government has proved its majority. <b>There has even been a generous mood of middle class sympathy for and solidarity with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh following his dogged pursuance of the nuclear deal. Yet, this is a passing moment.</b>
<b>The Congress faces ferocious anti-incumbency for reasons as far apart as inflation and economic mismanagement, national security and a general sense of listless governance.</b> For the first time in 20 years -- since the Bofors election of 1989 -- a ruling party will go into a Lok Sabha election battling pointed unpopularity, rather than just indifference. How the Congress addresses this challenge will be a truer test of its capacities than the July 22 vote.
If the Congress needs to take its victory with sobriety, however, there is ample reason for the Opposition too to go back to the drawing board. What is the upshot of the confidence vote experience for the three major entities that led the attack on the Manmohan Singh Government -- the BJP, the Left and the BSP? Frankly, it's not all rosy.
<b>For the BJP, a certain momentum that had begun to build up following the victory in Gujarat in December 2007 and had gathered vigour after the Karnataka Assembly poll has been halted. </b>For a supposedly resurgent Opposition party to be unable to defeat a precarious, unpopular Government in its final year is an extraordinary setback.
The BJP saw desertions from its own ranks which it has chosen to explain as impelled by local, constituency-level factors. <b>More important, it did not see an accretion in its numbers. It expended precious time, energy and political capital in convincing allies in the NDA that they needed to stay together.</b>
At one level, this speaks for shortcomings in political management. However, the issue is far deeper than merely one of individuals or of removing personality X from position Y. <b>The fact is the BJP is gripped by an existential crisis. Many within the NDA sense the party, at least this version of the party, is past its prime, its platform is not inspirational enough for its target voter.</b> Despite successes in key states, there are question marks about its 'winability' in the 2009 election.
The BJP may believe that it can exploit the Congress's 'bribe-tainted' confidence vote, but does it have the political wherewithal and the credibility to run a sustained anti-corruption campaign? Second, at no point after 1984 has the disconnect between the urban middle class and the BJP been as sharp on the eve of a Lok Sabha election as it is today. <b>The party may still win a protest vote, but there is no positive identification with its goals, ideals and programme.</b>
<b>The divergence between the party's key electoral constituency and its spokespersons on the India-US nuclear deal is a symptom of this problem. In the past months the question was often asked: "Why is the BJP opposing the deal?" This was, really, shorthand for a whole host of other questions: "What does the BJP stand for? It's alright the BJP wants to come to power, but what does it want to do in office? Has the BJP figured out if the Congress is the bigger enemy or the Left?"</b>
There are six to nine months before the next election. <b>In this period, the BJP needs to move far away from the pointless and politically counter-productive nuclear debate -- which has got hijacked within the party and its related organisations by a small clique of pedants and hysterical hyper-nationalists -- and focus on stitching together social coalitions, tying up State alliances and deciding upon and articulating its programmatic content.</b>
Admittedly, not every party faces such hard questions from even natural sympathisers. Yet, the BJP's potential voter expects more clarity and consistency from it than, say, regional/caste party adherents do from their leaders.
<b>The Congress is a free-floating entity that, broadly speaking, believes in nothing at all-which is why Mr Manmohan Singh stands out and wins respect because, for all his failures, he appears to believe in at least the economic and strategic potential of the nuclear deal. </b>The BJP, however, is expected to be more anchored.
The outlook is scarcely better for the Left. <b>Irrespective of Mr Somnath Chatterjee's expulsion, the rift in the CPI(M) can no longer be wished away as bourgeois fiction. Power pragmatists who see themselves as an election-oriented regional political force in West Bengal will now seek to temper the Delhi-based apparatchiki who want to refashion the CPI(M) as a 21st century League against Imperialism.</b>
Even if a Third Front Government comes to power in Delhi in 2009, the CPI(M), with a possible 40-50 Lok Sabha seats, and with a diminished, impolitic general secretary, will not be able to control it. For four years, the Congress deferred to comrade Prakash Karat. The Mayawatis and Jayalalithaas are not going to be as accommodating.
<b>Finally, there is the BSP. On paper, Ms Mayawati has triumphed. She raided the Samajwadi Party and deprived it of half-a-dozen Lok Sabha MPs, networked with the UNPA leadership, and even embraced the world view of Mr Karat.
In the coming elections, she could damage the Congress's Dalit vote in Madhya Pradesh, Delhi and Rajasthan and perhaps elsewhere in north India. Nevertheless, her all-India appeal is constricted. She has had little impact in Maharashtra and Karnataka, for instance.</b>
That aside, she has to concede that an SP-Congress alliance in Uttar Pradesh will severely test her, and probably check her hopes of winning 50 or more of the State's 80 seats. If Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav's Muslim support stays true, the BSP will be in some trouble.
<b>Also, there are limits to a rainbow coalition. Ms Mayawati cannot incorporate the likes of Atiq Ahmed -- the SP rebel and criminal-MP from Phulpur -- and still hope to mobilise middle class/upper caste voters in, say, the Allahabad region, where Atiq is widely regarded as a gangster.</b>
Despite its decisive result, then, the confidence vote and attendant episodes have thrown open a bag of imponderables. Once again, like in the mid-1990s, India fears it is on the edge of political instability and a very confused mandate. Suddenly, 2009 looks a very grim year.
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