This election is all about the States
You may not have heard of Rammanohar Lohia, whose birth centenary year begins on this very day, and his brand of indigenous socialism. But the quotation reminds us of the importance of democratic accountability in between elections. It also invites us to go beyond the usual questions such as “Kaun banega pradhan mantri?” to ask a more profound one: “How does it matter?”
At this point, the electoral race may end up with any one of three possible outcomes: a Congress-led UPA win, a BJP-led NDA victory or a Third Front coming out ahead. Right now, the ruling UPA looks to be the frontrunner. But so did the NDA at this stage in 2004.
With each passing day, the NDA looks less and less likely to emerge the winner, but it is too early to rule it out. After all, the Third Front looked as good as dead till a fortnight ago. Today, it has bounced back into contention, perhaps ahead of the NDA. With the exception of 1996, it is difficult to think of an election as open as this one.
Yet this suspense is not born out of uncertainty. In fact, though the possibilities of government formation are wide open, the range of possible electoral outcomes is actually very narrow. You don’t need to be a psephologist to make some forecasts. Unlike the elections of the 1970s and 1980s, there will be no nationwide wave. The final outcome will reflect the sum total equilibrium of political forces at the State level.
This will result in yet another hung parliament, like every Lok Sabha election since 1989. You could also make bold to say that unlike 1999, no pre-poll alliance will secure a majority. With a little bit of risk, you can rule out a dramatic fall in the tally for the UPA, or a dramatic rise for the NDA. Not many would disagree if you predicted a sharp fall for the Left and a rise for other partners of the Third Front.
We may know all this and yet we don’t know enough. The difficulty is not that we are clueless about the outcome; the problem is that what we know doesn’t help us answer the simple question of who will form the government. It is not that there are too many moving parts in the majority equation. The challenge is that since there are too few parts that can move, and the slightest movement can tilt the balance. Even 10 to 20 seats changing hands can alter the equation dramatically.
There is no way to resolve the suspense at this stage. It would take a brave soul to forecast a precise outcome. What we can only do is to keep our gaze fixed firmly at the State level. This election is all about the States. Even though the election is at the national level, the voters will exercise their ‘principal’ choice at the state level, which is reflected in a derivative way at the national level.
No simple formula
In thinking about the States, we need to avoid any simple formula like ‘anti-incumbency’. There are many States (with 116 Lok Sabha seats, 72 of them held by the BJP) where the State government was elected in the last year or so and can look forward to an easy confirmation of its probation.
However, the largest category is that of states facing a mid-term review. This accounts for a little over a majority of the seats in the Lok Sabha: 55 in UPA-ruled States, 84 in NDA-ruled States and 142 seats in states run by third force formations like the Left and the BSP. And then there are 137 seats in States where the government awaits a final approval or disapproval of the electorate. But we cannot assume anti-incumbent outcomes in these states. The rate of rejection of state governments has fallen sharply over the last decade.
We can now do the sums and ask some simple questions:
—Will the UPA make up in Kerala, Rajasthan and West Bengal what it loses elsewhere?
—Will the SP and Congress come together in UP and, if they do, will the alliance work on the ground?
—Can the NDA’s gains in Gujarat, Bihar, Jharkhand and Assam make up for its losses elsewhere?
—How much can the Third Front partners damage the UPA in AP and TN?
Having done the sums, we can perhaps ask bigger questions: do these elections make a difference? How does it matter as to who forms the government? Some might say that in the last two decades we have moved closer to Lohia’s vision of citizens holding governments to account. Governments, MPs and MLAs lose elections much more often today than they did in Lohia’s time because of performance or really the lack of it.
Yet as the frequency of electoral accountability has gone up, the scope of accountability has actually narrowed. Since people vote for or against state governments in a Lok Sabha election, there is no real electoral forum for a popular verdict on the working of the Union government that still controls a vast range of powers and resources. Lok Sabha elections will come and go but we may not fully know what the people thought of the performance of this UPA government .
If we take Lohia’s agenda of social justice seriously, we might feel that elections have led to greater social inclusion. And we would be right about the last two decades. But it doesn’t take long to see that the inclusion of a wider range of political, regional, social and indeed ideological interests has not expanded the agenda of governance. Every small and big party is a part of the political establishment.
The voters can shuffle the establishment but they cannot throw it out. They can change governments but they cannot change policies. An apparent instability in government has been accompanied by a uniformity in the policies followed by all governments. Till the Lok Sabha election of 2004, we could say that something crucial was at stake: the election was to decide the fate of the idea of India and about who counted as a citizen in this country. It would be hard to pretend that the forthcoming electoral battle involves any such thing.
Remembering Lohia on this day reminds us of the deep irony in this election: the greater the suspense over who eventually forms the government, the lesser it matters.
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