The success of the Congress and its UPA partners at the hustings have put it in a position to call the shots: fair-weather friends and many foes alike queued up to offer letters of support to the Congress. As we go to press, the Congress and UPA have formed Government; albeit not without some tensions within the UPA partners over ministries.

Let us take a closer look of the performance of the major political players in this election, and the implications of the verdict.

The Rise of Congress and the UPA…

...And the Fall of the BJP

The BJP’s seats in the Lok Sabha fell from 138 in 2004 to 116; and the party’s share of the national vote, unchanged since 1998, declined by 3.5% this time. Undoubtedly, the BJP is undergoing a massive crisis of identity and initiative. ‘Mission Advani’ ignominiously failed to take off, not just Varun but even poster-boy Modi turned out to be a burden for the BJP. Communal frenzy failed to be a national vote-getter in this election. Even in Jammu, the BJP’s candidate who led a frenzied campaign on the ‘Amarnath shrine’ issue, found it was not enough to propel him to power. Shivraj Singh Chauhan, CM of Madhya Pradesh, went on record after the elections to suggest that harping on the demand for Afzal’s hanging did not benefit the BJP. So the emotive issues like terrorism or Amarnath, deployed by the BJP in this election as a desperate bid to revive a ‘Hindutva’ plank, failed to capture the voters’ imagination. Shivraj Singh Chauhan and Raman Singh, successful BJP Chief Ministers though they may be, are not capable of vesting the BJP with some distinct identity.

Third and Fourth Fronts

Mayawati, ever since her spectacular victory in the UP Assembly polls of 2007, had projected herself as future Prime Minister. This time, too, she was wooed by the “Third Front” as its potential post-poll PM, and she spent much campaign time looking towards the national stage. However, the ground beneath her feet was shaken with the results, since her position in UP itself proved to be precarious. Here, while the BSP improved its 2004 tally of 19 by one seat, it actually trailed third in the State, behind the SP’s 23 and the Congress’ 21. While the SP’s seats came down sharply from 36 in 2004 to 23, this fact must be seen in context of the fact that after the SP’s drubbing at hands of a resurgent BSP in the Assembly polls, the SP’s performance is actually an improvement, in that it has actually remained ahead of the BSP.

Mayawati’s continued patronage of mafia and criminal politicians; the violent track record of her Ministers, elected representatives and leaders; the murder of a Dalit candidate from a rival party at the behest of an upper caste candidate of the BSP; the Mayawati administration’s preoccupation with statues of Madam rather than on fixing minimum support prices for farmers or ensuring land, dignity, rights for Dalits – all these have severely eroded her credibility and goodwill in the State. The BSP’s overall seat tally might have marginally increased since 2004, but the fact is that it did not retain many of the seats won by it in 2004. Even BSP’s well-wishers have been forced to concede that Dalits in UP are beginning to feel betrayed in the ‘bhaichara’ (Brahmin-Dalit ‘brotherhood’) deal, and have sent out the message that they do not like being taken for granted as a captive base. According to one journalist, “A CSDS post-poll study of the 2007 assembly elections had said that the BSP had got 80% Dalit votes – that is, 4 in every 5 Dalits. This time, the figures obtained by the BSP say that 62.2% Dalits voted for the BSP. That is nearly a 25% drop. It also means that other parties put together took away 38% of Dalit votes! This includes 12% to the Congress. The rest 26% or so has to be divided between the BJP, SP and the myriad Dalit independents and small parties. But this statistic is of the votes Dalits cast. There is no way of ascertaining what percentage of Dalits who voted in 2007 did not come out to vote at all this time, but most in UP agree it must be around 25%.” (Shivam Vij, ‘UP’s Dalits remind Mayawati: Democracy is a beautiful thing’)

There was also a visible shift in UP’s Muslim vote from the SP towards the Congress. Some have sought the explanation for this in Mulayam Singh’s tie-up with BJP renegade and Babri “demolition man” Kalyan Singh. A more likely possibility is that the SP sensed this impending shift and opted instead for a tactic of OBC consolidation via Kalyan Singh. Mayawati’s gimmicks like slapping NSA on Varun Gandhi did not result, as she hoped, in drawing this vote towards herself: perhaps such gestures were not enough to wipe out the recent memory of witch-hunt of Muslim terror suspects in Mayawati-ruled UP.

Perhaps the worst blow, however, was to the so-called ‘Fourth Front’ – the erstwhile UPA partners RJD and LJP, along with the SP. The RJD’s vote share in Bihar hit an all-time low of 19.3% from 30.7% in 2004 - a drop of 11%, it could win just four seats, and Laloo Prasad himself could win only one of the two seats he contested. Ramvilas Paswan, who has won repeatedly from Hajipur and had the dubious distinction of having been a Minister in every hue of Government since 1996, was ignominiously defeated.

The CPI-CPI(M)-led Left Front

The CPI(M) Politburo statement said that the party has won 16 seats with a vote share of 5.33 per cent which is marginally less than the 5.66 per cent it got in 2004. The decline in W Bengal is much more sharp – 5%, while in Kerala it shows a drop of 1%. In Tripura, where CPI(M) retained the two seats, the vote share declined from 68 per cent in 2004 to 61 per cent this time. The party Politburo has indicated both “national and local” factors for the debacle. “National” factors appear to be a euphemism for the central leadership’s decision to withdraw support from the UPA Government, and the decision to project a Third Front; while “local” appears to stand for issues like Singur and Nandigram, and factionalism in Kerala.

The “national vs local” debate within the CPI(M) is a case of “none so blind as those who will not see.” Both sections of opinion are willfully glossing over how and when the “local” and “national” sins converged over the last three years. Is it not true that when the Left Front Government in W Bengal aggressively embraced corporate land grab and shed the blood of protesting peasantry at Singur and Nandigram, the party Politburo, far from intervening to correct the course, supplied spurious theoretical justifications for it, branding the protestors as “Narodnik” and so on? Singur and Nandigram are not merely “local” factors – rather they took a national toll on the credibility of the CPI(M). Even where the Nuke Deal issue is concerned, it is not the withdrawal of support in itself that discredited the CPI(M). Rather, the full force and urgency of this belated but correct step got blunted by their own track record of the four and half years of support to the UPA Government, in which the CPI(M)’s ‘protests’ on a range of issues including price rise remained pretentious while it actually voted with the UPA to pass anti-people policies like the SEZ Act and Patents (Amendment) Act. The resulting cynicism about the CPI(M)’s postures of protest, as well as the way the CPI(M) used the Nuke Deal as a bargaining tool to buy Congress’ silence on Nandigram, further eroded the credibility of the CPI(M)’s eventual step of withdrawal of support.

Coming to Kerala, there are some who interpret the verdict as part of the “usual” pattern in the state, which rejects the UDF or LDF in turn. The extent of damage appears to be deeper, and cannot be reduced to the “usual” explanations. Even the attempt to blame the debacle on the severe factional fight within the CPI(M) in the state is misleading. The fact is that factionalism in Kerala is not of the usual variety – rather it reflects some deeper issues and concerns. In this election, for instance, the decision of the CPI(M) to brazen out the issue of corruption charges against the State Secretary Pinarayi Vijayan, by brushing it under the carpet and blocking the permission for CBI enquiry against him, seems to have boomeranged. The CPI(M)’s decision to try and attract disenchanted Muslim voters back to the fold by backing the controversial cleric Madani from Ponnani, also seems to have backfired. The continued severe tension within the LDF partners and even with the JD(S) were also a factor in the Left’s poor performance. And in Kerala too, tribal land issues and the CPI(M)’s loss at Pathanamthitta, centre of the Chengara land struggle, is significant.

The 2009 elections marked a rebuff for the communal agenda of the BJP-NDA, and also the marginalisation of a range of parties which had peddled an anti-people agenda under cover of identity assertion. Even the Congress victory, contrary to corporate media claims, is no blank cheque for unbridled liberalisation; rather, issues of livelihood, land, and justice are likely to grow in urgency in days to come. Another notable and encouraging feature in this election is the all-round rejection of criminals-turned politicians. The range of parties did not hold back from fielding such candidates or their proxies, but most of them were firmly rejected by the electorate. The way in which the mandate belied the hype about ‘celebrity politicians’ like Chiranjeevi or Vijaykanth is also welcome. The results show that unlike the MGR-NTR phenomenon of yesteryears, which articulated powerful Tamil and Telugu regional aspirations, Chiranjeevi or Vijaykanth have a fairly limited appeal after all, which does not transcend their narrow caste base and fan network, and could not truly champion even the anti-incumbency upon which they sought to bank.

Notwithstanding the present euphoria of the verdict amongst the ruling classes and its ideologues, the verdict in fact opens up new challenges and opportunities for revolutionary Left and people’s movement forces in the context of the impending intensification of the grip of pro-imperialist, pro-liberalisation policies on the economy and polity, and unfolding of greater vulnerability of all underprivileged sections.