Leaders can’t win elections without party base
IT is an interesting outcome. The BJP, and mainly Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has won in Gujarat, the Congress in Himachal Pradesh and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the Delhi Municipal Corporation elections. Of course, the three cannot be compared. Delhi’s is a local body election, though it impacts nearly 2 crore people in an ever expanding urban habitat, which poses its own problems and challenges.
Himachal Pradesh is very large in area, though relatively sparsely populated. Gujarat is a relatively smaller-sized state compared to neighbouring Maharashtra and far-off West Bengal. But the election outcome in Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh and Delhi has shown that no party holds sway in all three. The BJP has held its own in Delhi, though it lost control over the national capital’s Municipal Corporation after 15 years, and it has not been swept aside in Himachal Pradesh, though it has been edged out of power.
Gujarat remains a unique case where the BJP continues to stay in power even after more than a quarter century, comparable to the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM)-led Left Front’s dominance in West Bengal until 2010, when the All-India Trinamool Congress ended its 33-year rule. What is obvious is that people are making choices, and they have not chosen the same party or leader in these three places — Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh and Delhi. And this is what democracy is all about.
The BJP had projected Prime Minister Modi as its mascot in all three places, and it is not reasonable to criticise the right-wing party for this because Modi has emerged as its icon in all places and on all occasions. It has no one else whom it can project. Whether it is good or bad for the BJP to depend on a single leader is an issue that has to be decided by the party itself. That Modi’s magic did not work in Delhi and Himachal Pradesh is no reflection of the Prime Minister’s charisma. The simple lesson is that not all elections are won on the basis of the charisma of a leader. And it is a good thing for a democracy that it is so.
In Gujarat, Modi had campaigned hard and put his popularity at stake. He worked in getting the BJP a huge majority. In any case, the BJP would have won as it did in 2017, with a simple majority. It would have been good for Gujarat if it had been so. But the huge margin is a bonus for the BJP. The statistics show that the 39 per cent-plus votes that the Congress garnered in previous elections were now split between the Congress — around 27 per cent — and the AAP — about 13 per cent.
The AAP has emerged as the rival of the Congress in the Opposition space in Gujarat. It would be futile to speculate today whether the AAP would replace the Congress as the main rival of the BJP in Gujarat. It has, however, become clear that in Delhi, it is a fight between the BJP and AAP, and it is difficult to spot ideological differences between the two. Both have emerged as right-wing parties, with emphasis on clean governance and majoritarian sentiment. The AAP is explicitly pro-Hindu in religious sentiment — Delhi Chief Minister and AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal has turned Hindu religious celebrations into official public events in India’s capital city — though the party doesn’t display pronounced hostility towards religious minorities as does the BJP. In Himachal Pradesh, the Congress and the BJP share the percentage of votes rather evenly, with the Congress getting 43.9 per cent and the BJP 43 per cent.
The debate that the Congress’s former president Rahul Gandhi should have campaigned aggressively in Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh and Delhi seems infructuous. The Congress would not have won despite Rahul’s presence, and the party has won in Himachal Pradesh without him. And he would not have made a difference in the Delhi Municipal Corporation elections. The problem with the Congress is not whether the party can survive without a Nehru-Gandhi as the party leader, but about how much it can fight at the ground level. The party leaders must look for the secret of the success in Himachal Pradesh, and compare it with the issues that the party faced in Gujarat and Delhi. Leadership is important, but leaders cannot win elections without a party base.
It is also necessary to counter the claim that the BJP under Modi is striding the Indian political scene like a colossus, and that there is no alternative. The people of this country are maintaining a vigil, and they are choosing parties and not leaders.
It would be natural for the BJP to celebrate the victory in Gujarat as an endorsement of PM Modi, which it is. But they would have to take stock of the situation in Himachal Pradesh and Delhi because the Modi factor did not help there. The party has to address the issues instead of looking for scapegoats. BJP leaders have rightly acknowledged that despite the 15-year anti-incumbency factor, the party did well in Delhi. It is indeed the case. And it is not surprising that the BJP lost the election to the Congress in Himachal Pradesh because that is how regularly the pendulum has swung in the hill state.
Thursday’s election results also have a lesson for the media and the political pundits. It is that there is a need to look beyond the leaders — Modi, Rahul and Kejriwal. Parties matter and what people think of these parties matters much more.
Whatever be the anomalies in Indian democracy, it shows a sense of steadiness, of keeping the country on an even keel. Politics is a more complicated affair and cannot be decided on the basis of ideology and leadership alone. The people of India are indeed the guardians of our democracy. They choose wisely between the many options placed before them. They know that there is no such thing as a perfect choice.
