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| A K Bhattacharya: A tale of two mandates | | The collective message that voters sent out in 1977 and 2009, as reflected in results then and now, has the same tonal quality |
| A K Bhattacharya / New Delhi May 20, 2009, 00:11 IST |
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Is the outcome of the 2009 Lok Sabha elections comparable with the verdict the Indian electorate delivered more than three decades ago in 1977? Those of us who can recall the sheer euphoria over the comprehensive defeat of Indira Gandhi’s Congress in the 1977 elections are likely to agree with this comparison. Of course, the situation that prevailed in 1977 is not comparable with that in 2009. Nor are the numbers or the voting share percentages in favour of the victorious party similar. But the collective message that the voters sent out, as reflected in the election results then and now, has the same tonal quality.
In 1977, the voters threw out Indira Gandhi and her Congress to punish her for the manner in which she had banished democracy from the country for about 19 months. It is, however, important to recognise that the electorate, by voting Indira Gandhi out of power, had not necessarily endorsed the Janata Party or its brand of politics. The larger message it sent out with its ballot was that it disapproved of Indira Gandhi’s attempt at destroying institutions, her arrogance and disrespect towards dissent.
The nature of the verdict in 2009 was no doubt quite different. Indian voters had a choice in a group of smaller parties which had got together in the hope of forming a government with the stated intention of keeping both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party out of power at the Centre. An alternative was a coalition led by the BJP, which made no attempt to distance itself from its controversial Hindutva agenda that had made the country’s minority communities feel a little insecure about their rightful place in India.
It is in this context that the Indian electorate’s verdict in 2009 has to be seen. The 205 seats the Congress won is a reflection of the voters’ desire to retain in power a Congress-led coalition that has rejected fundamentalist and religion-based politics and raised a vision of a new India that could remain peaceful, prosperous and united in spite of its diversity of caste, creed and religion. If 1977 conveyed to us the Indian voters’ clear preference for an open democratic society, 2009 reiterated the same message in addition to comprehensively rejecting divisive politics based on either caste or religion.
It will not be appropriate to look at the 2009 verdict only from the voting shares perspective. Yes, the changes in voting shares do not indicate a sharp swing in favour of the Congress or against the BJP and the Left parties. But sticking to such an argument would be missing the larger message from the voters.
One might also argue that there were other general elections in between 1977 and 2009, where the popular verdict was decisive. The 1980 elections, for instance, was a clear indication of the voters’ disgust with the Janata Party’s dithering and misgovernance. The voters, therefore, brought Indira Gandhi back to power. But remember that the 1980 verdict was a rejection of the Janata Party experiment and not a clear endorsement of Indira Gandhi.
In 1984, the electorate gave Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress a record win, but that was largely because of the sympathy wave he got in the wake of Indira Gandhi’s tragic assassination. In 1989, the mandate was clearly fractured. VP Singh’s National Front could form the government only with BJP’s outside support, even though it did raise hopes of a cleaner administration to root out corruption that had embroiled Rajiv Gandhi’s government in its last phase.
The mandate in 1991 again led to the formation of a minority government headed by PV Narasimha Rao, who used the skills of a politician to garner more support to complete the full five-year tenure. The successive mandates—in 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2004—were not as comprehensively in favour of a single party as to lead to a durable and stable coalition government as it is now in 2009. The governments during that period, including the one that was led by Manmohan Singh from 2004 to 2009, were always vulnerable to threats from small coalition partners and the government’s stability seemed always in doubt.
This is what makes Manmohan Singh’s victory special. In spite of being a coalition government, Manmohan Singh’s second stint as prime minister will not be constrained by the inherent weaknesses which an unstable government always suffers from. This is also an opportunity for Manmohan Singh when he starts a new innings in his political career. He can now make his choices, without the troubling thought of an unstable government and the compulsions of making compromises. Hopefully, he can choose the ministers he wants in his cabinet and of course the finance minister he would be comfortable with.
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