What The 5 Assembly Poll Results Mean For The Future Of BJP And Congress

If the exit polls are right, the recently-concluded elections to five state assemblies will lead to a Trinamool victory in West Bengal, an LDF sweep in Kerala, a BJP win in Assam, and two possible DMK romps in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.

Before we analyse what this means for various players in the game, it is worth making a few broad points, especially since commentators will sing the praises of democracy or decry its limitations, depending on which side of the political divide they are.

#1: These elections are one more sign of political decay than a rejuvenation of the democratic spirit. The mere right to vote in free and fair elections does not necessarily a modern democracy make. The huge usage of cash to buy votes in Tamil Nadu, the regular churning of governments between UDF and LDF in Kerala, the use of muscle power in West Bengal, and the dog whistle politics of minority and majority communalism in Assam are hardly indications of democratic maturity.

Far from making informed choices that will benefit everybody, the cynical voter is using a warped political system to extract concessions of a private and personal nature – what Francis Fukuyama calls “patrimonialism”, “neopatrimonialism” or “clientelism” in his book Political Order and Political Decay. In a patrimonial state, the elites run the state for their own benefit and purchase client groups through targeted benefits to voters. In neopatrimonialism, “political leaders adopt the outward forms of modern states – with bureaucracies, legal systems, elections, and the like – and yet in reality rule for private gain. Public good may be invoked during election campaigns, but the state is not impersonal; favours are doled out to networks of political supporters in exchange for votes or attendance at rallies.”

If this is not a perfect description of the UPA regime or the AIADMK/DMK regimes in Tamil Nadu, what is? Even in Kerala, the regular turfing out of one coalition in favour of the other every five years suggests that voter wants to keep both fronts on tenterhooks. The unstated assumption is that keeping one party in power for too long, even if has done no wrong, will weaken their bargaining powers with politicians. The UDF is nothing if not a bunch of identity-based parties seeking benefits for their constituents; the LDF is less identity-driven but serves as a useful alternative to the UDF. Voters can choose it whenever they want to tell the UDF they have options.

India’s perennial election cycle and the first-past-the-post system ensure that the voter will always remain cynical and demand group benefits for delivering bulk votes. When elections can be won with 30-35 percent of the vote in multi-cornered contests (as in Tamil Nadu or UP), voters see more gain in the patronage system than in issues that benefit all. The idea is to win elections to extract private benefits for groups (job quotas, freebies) rather than focus on public goods – like law and order, better education for all, et al.

#2: The second point worth making is that psephology is far more difficult in the Indian context, where extreme diversity even within states can make seat predictions risky. Barring wave elections, a small difference in vote shares, which cannot easily be captured by exit poll samples, can make results go one way or the other. This is why barring Kerala and West Bengal, where the results are unidirectional, the pollsters have offered divergent trends in Tamil Nadu and Assam.

In Tamil Nadu, two polls (Axis-India Today and Chanakya) give the DMK-led alliance a clear victory; but C-Voter swings the other way, giving AIADMK a majority with 139 seats (halfway mark: 117). In Assam, three polls give BJP the crown, with 80-90 seats in a 126-member assembly, but C-Voter gives the BJP only frontrunner status, with 57 seats – well short of a majority.

Even in Kerala, the LDF’s victory margin in a 140-seat assembly varies from pollster to pollster, ranging from a low of 75 (Chanakya, just five seats more than the halfway mark), to an upper limit of 101 (Axis-India Today).

Clearly, in this media-driven frenzy for exit and pre-poll surveying, where cost considerations may keep sample sizes limited, pollsters are making their own guesses on how a directional change in voter behaviour will impact the final seat tally. My guess is their seat predictions are partly guesswork, and not real calculations based on random or stratified sampling techniques in a diverse electorate.

One, the results have been a disaster for the Congress, which loses Kerala and comes out a poor second in West Bengal, that too as an appendage of the Left. It may get a consolation prize in Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry, but again only by playing second fiddle to the DMK. The Congress footprint across the country is shrinking under the Dynasty’s fading charisma. Rahul will preside over a declining Congress – but that won’t affect his coronation, as defeats are usually attributed to unnamed factors unrelated to the Dynasty.

Two, the BJP has something to cheer in Assam, allowing it to erase the bad memories of 2015, when it saw two stunning defeats in Delhi and Bihar. Its emergence in Kerala as a third player should be interesting to watch, especially if the LDF victory is seen as being the result of BJP taking away UDF votes, or causing the minorities to swing in favour of LDF rather than UDF. The expected victory in Assam, apart from establishing a strong BJP presence in the north-east, is a signal that the party is learning from its mistakes in Bihar, where it tried to use Modi’s charisma to win an election – and lost badly. This lesson ought to be taken to heart in the forthcoming elections in UP and Uttarakhand in 2017, apart from Gujarat towards the end of the year – which will be even more crucial for BJP than 2015 or 2016.

Three, the Left has reason to be happy for its Kerala performance, but its third consecutive defeat this time to Trinamool shows that it is as vulnerable to shrinkage as the Congress. A third force can up-end it in the coming years.

Four, in Tamil Nadu, the emergence of multiple coalitions appears to have forced the electorate to concentrate its votes among the two possible winners – DMK and AIADMK. The voter does not seem to care for bit parties that won’t be a part of the power structure.

Five, the BJP’s main rival will be regional parties in most states. It is, therefore, vital for it to develop strong local leadership. In states where the Congress is its main opposition, however, the current strategy will work well enough.

Beyond the decline of Congress, this mini general election outside the cow belt will have a limited national impact. 2017 is the crunch year for the Modi government – and his opponents.

In 2019, all bets are off. The logic of limited Congress footprint and the strengthening of regional parties suggests that the challenge to Narendra Modi will be strongest if a regional leader is formally the head of a new anti-Modi alliance. This points to Nitish Kumar’s candidacy, but it needs Congress acquiescence.

Modi needs the Congress to exist in order to grow his own party.