Delhi votes for development

India’s cities and its middle class have, unfortunately, played an enabling role in the rise of the BJP and its divisive religion-based politics.  (As an astute observer I admire said, “India’s middle class has degrees, no education.”)  Even so, they are marginal players, in broad terms, notwithstanding their explosive growth over the past 20 years.  This was evident in 2004 when the country’s predominantly-rural electorate rejected the NDA’s “India Shining” thesis.

Delhi was no different – and once the strongest of BJP bastions – but has become an interesting laboratory for the “development versus ideology” experiment over the past decade.  In 2008, Delhi’s voters returned a Congress government for the third time making Sheila Dikshit the country’s first longest-serving woman chief minister.  Over the past 10 years, Dikshit has zealously pursued a single-minded agenda transforming the crumbling capital into one of the world’s most livable cities.

In 10 years, Dikshit’s Congress government has doubled power generation (quadrupling it by 2011), water supply, and hospitals; tripled sewage treatment capacity; built (or is building) more than 130 flyovers and underpasses; switched over its bus transportation fleet to clean-burning natural gas dramatically reducing pollution; and implemented a world-class city-wide rail commuting system amongst other things.  This development track record has trounced the BJP’s ideological posturing in three consistent elections.

This is a heartening story because it shows that the strongest of ideological bastions can be stormed (and retained) with sustained political action emphasizing governance and development.  The validity of this political emphasis will be tested again in Delhi’s seven Lok Sabha seats.

Who will win in Uttar Pradesh?

As Uttar Pradesh goes to the polls today, the big question is – as in all general elections – “Who will win Uttar Pradesh?”  Historians and psephologists may cite several reasons but it is UP’s contribution of 80 seats (even after Uttaranchal’s separation) to the Lok Sabha that makes it a “decider” for Indian elections. 

Let me begin with a conventional version of UP’s political history.  Congress dominated the state until the mid-1980s by consolidating the Brahmin, Dalit, and Muslim votes.  Caste-based political outfits – the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) – wedged the Dalit vote out of the Congress coalition.  In the past 20 years, the SP has further segmented the Dalit vote retaining the Other Backward Castes (OBCs) and consolidating Muslims alienated by poor leadership of their issues by an ineffective Congress (e.g., December 6, 1992). 

During the same time, the BSP consolidated the Dalit vote and came to power twice – first with the help of the SP and the BJP and, most recently, by clever division of the Brahmin votes.  The BJP, until, recently stewarded the Brahmin votes by leveraging Hindutva.  However, unlike caste, Hindutva has run out of steam and is no longer a vote getter.

This, however, did not happen by chance and my theory is the political leadership played a far more crucial role than most analysts will credit it with.  Until the mid-1980s, the state’s several powerful Congressmen – e.g., Govind Ballabh Pant, Kamlapati Tripathi, Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna, Chaudhary Charan Singh, Vishwanath Pratap Singh, and Narayan Dutt Tiwari – in concert with the charisma of the Nehru-Gandhi clan ensured electoral successes.  Growing dissidence within the party along with Indira and Rajiv Gandhi’s frequent replacement of chief ministers and state party leadership eroded the political base allowing SP, BSP, and the BJP to make inroads. 

Kalyan Singh created BJP’s presence in UP, Kanshi Ram and Mayawati built the BSP, while Mulayam Singh Yadav has led the SP.  Of these, Kalyan Singh left the BJP, Kanshi Ram passed away, and Mulayam Singh Yadav is held hostage by advisers besotted by movie stars.  As a result, Mayawati remains the only state politician who understands UP and its ground realities.  This became spectacularly evident in 2007 when she secured a simple majority against all odds and expectations by amplifying BSP’s Dalit base with a large number of Brahmins and Muslims (akin to the Congress coalition until the 1980s).

Rahul Gandhi was pitched in that election as Congress Party’s primary campaigner but the party fared worse than the previous election.  Media reports, however, suggest that he has continued to work the grassroots in the state and is “hopeful of a surprise.”  For the first time in almost 30 years, a single Congress politician will be leading the party into a second consecutive state election.  For that reason alone, the Congress must be hopeful.

The BSP is certainly suffering some anti-incumbency.  The SP is regretting its “informal” alliance with Kalyan Singh.  The BJP is fighting dissidents and rebel candidates.  The Congress is relying on Rahul Gandhi who has been distracted by campaigning elsewhere.  State reports are suggesting that it is not the typical two- or three-sided fight in most constituencies in an election that is bereft of any single pan-state issue.  Instead, most constituencies have turned into a four- or five-sided contest making any sort of trend-reading unreliable.

One electoral outcome will beget an interesting question.  If the BSP does well by retaining its Brahmin-Dalit-Muslim coalition, would its two consecutive electoral victories signal casteism’s diminishing influence?