One of my very first thoughts after seeing today's election results were about what kind of votes consolidated to give this thumping victory to Narendra Modi (to Sushma Swaraj: it is indeed Modi's victory, howmuchever you try to convince yourself otherwise) and does it mean something fundamentally different to our politics.
1977 was something fundamentally different because it provided a first viable non-Congress option across the nation. Politics fundamentally changed since then.
1989-91 was something fundamentally different because the politics in the country where everybody else pitted against Congress ended. Congress was no longer the center-piece in the showcase.
1999 was something fundamentally different because there were two center pieces to which all other parties gravitated.
In that light, I again see something fundamentally different. There is only one center piece remaining and that is BJP.
For how long? That question led me to plot a Nolan chart for Indian political parties who have some reasonable presence in the current Lok Sabha. While trying to fit a few of the parties (mostly regional) with no defined ideology around either Culture or Economics is an absurdity by some proportions, I still went ahead, based on the limited judgement I could make from their history. So, here are the various political parties in the Left to Right spectrum of Economic policies and Cultural inclinations.
(The colors are not at all meant to represent the percentage of people in the spectrum)
What I see is:
1) The space for economic & cultural right (top right corner) is occupied by only NDA allies. In terms of the nationwide span, it is pretty much only BJP.
2) Congress pretty much occupies the Cultural Left-Economic Right (Top Left corner).
3) There are too many players in the Economic Left-Cultural Left (Bottom Left corner).
4) There are no parties occupying the Economic Right - Cultural Left (Bottom right corner). So, naturally, everybody who belongs to that category would either be disinterested in the elections, or would gravitate towards either Top or Left. If they go to Top, there is only BJP to choose. If they go to Left, their vote is split.
It will be interesting to see the actual percentage of voters in these quadrants. Ever since Babri Masjid is demolished, India has a very large number of people occupying the Right side of the cultural spectrum. This is pretty evident by the the capability of BJP to maintain a never-before presence in all the elections starting 1991. Adding to this, the Manmohan-delivered (ironically!!!) generation is more or less Economically Right. Which means that a large share of the electorate automatically chooses BJP.
So, what about the electorates on the other side? They just got divided among the multitude of parties. Essentially, the entire set of people on the Left side of the diagonal (if you draw one line from the far side of one axis to the far side of the other axis) simply scattered themselves. In an election, 10 divided by 10 is not one. It is Zero if you come up against a strong opponent. So, even though all these parties have some seats or the other, they do not mean anything cumulatively. This is different from the various coalition governments that was in power for the last couple of decades. The right side of the diagonal was too thin. All the horse-trading happened on the Left side of the diagonal. 2014 is different.
The intriguing question is: how long will that Right side continue to flourish? There is every probability for this to continue for a foreseeable future, unless:
1) The Cultural Right side is split. I don't see that happening anytime, unless RSS itself split.
2) The Economic Right shift to Economic Left. There is a slight probability for this to happen, especially with the Global economy under heavy weather and there is an overall Right-to-Left shift in the politics around economy worldwide. Is that going to impact the new generation in India? Chances are pretty slim.
3) Left side consolidate. That would be hilarious and excruciating at the same time. Imagine all the regional satraps and satrapees (if that's the feminine word for it) combined with Congress and/or AAP and/or Communists. Even if they consolidate, experience suggests that it would be fairly short-lived.
4) A single party from Cultural Left to emerge and attract the voters from the Right. This is the best bet Congress can hope for. This is what even AAP can target. But, the probability of this happening soon? Pretty slim. Remember that it took 10 years for BJP to oust even the fragile UPA.
5) BJP screwing up big time in governance ala UPA-II, combined with either 3 or 4. Option 5 with 3 would not be too bad for BJP, they just need to make sure that 5 does not happen with 4.
In a nutshell, the path is cleared for Modi to rule for as much as he want, as long as he does not cause himself some serious damage. Even an average performance from him would see him through for the next election (the Photoshop and Marketing skills of his cadre is well-proven in this election, so he can be rest assured that a couple of scams, some minor riots here and there or some crazies beating up a few girls and boys on Valentine's day are not going to hurt his prospects. As long as he ensures that things do not go out of control, that should be good enough). But, I truly hope that he would not choose the average path.
NB: If I don't commit myself to sit down and write another post with the election topic: to those Congress workers who, living in a parallel universe, agitated to have Priyanka Gandhi as the next leader- WHAT IN THE WORLD ARE YOU GUYS SMOKING???? GIVE A PIECE OF THAT TO RAHUL GANDHI, HE IS BADLY IN NEED OF IT....
1977 was something fundamentally different because it provided a first viable non-Congress option across the nation. Politics fundamentally changed since then.
1989-91 was something fundamentally different because the politics in the country where everybody else pitted against Congress ended. Congress was no longer the center-piece in the showcase.
1999 was something fundamentally different because there were two center pieces to which all other parties gravitated.
In that light, I again see something fundamentally different. There is only one center piece remaining and that is BJP.
For how long? That question led me to plot a Nolan chart for Indian political parties who have some reasonable presence in the current Lok Sabha. While trying to fit a few of the parties (mostly regional) with no defined ideology around either Culture or Economics is an absurdity by some proportions, I still went ahead, based on the limited judgement I could make from their history. So, here are the various political parties in the Left to Right spectrum of Economic policies and Cultural inclinations.
(The colors are not at all meant to represent the percentage of people in the spectrum)
What I see is:
1) The space for economic & cultural right (top right corner) is occupied by only NDA allies. In terms of the nationwide span, it is pretty much only BJP.
2) Congress pretty much occupies the Cultural Left-Economic Right (Top Left corner).
3) There are too many players in the Economic Left-Cultural Left (Bottom Left corner).
4) There are no parties occupying the Economic Right - Cultural Left (Bottom right corner). So, naturally, everybody who belongs to that category would either be disinterested in the elections, or would gravitate towards either Top or Left. If they go to Top, there is only BJP to choose. If they go to Left, their vote is split.
It will be interesting to see the actual percentage of voters in these quadrants. Ever since Babri Masjid is demolished, India has a very large number of people occupying the Right side of the cultural spectrum. This is pretty evident by the the capability of BJP to maintain a never-before presence in all the elections starting 1991. Adding to this, the Manmohan-delivered (ironically!!!) generation is more or less Economically Right. Which means that a large share of the electorate automatically chooses BJP.
So, what about the electorates on the other side? They just got divided among the multitude of parties. Essentially, the entire set of people on the Left side of the diagonal (if you draw one line from the far side of one axis to the far side of the other axis) simply scattered themselves. In an election, 10 divided by 10 is not one. It is Zero if you come up against a strong opponent. So, even though all these parties have some seats or the other, they do not mean anything cumulatively. This is different from the various coalition governments that was in power for the last couple of decades. The right side of the diagonal was too thin. All the horse-trading happened on the Left side of the diagonal. 2014 is different.
The intriguing question is: how long will that Right side continue to flourish? There is every probability for this to continue for a foreseeable future, unless:
1) The Cultural Right side is split. I don't see that happening anytime, unless RSS itself split.
2) The Economic Right shift to Economic Left. There is a slight probability for this to happen, especially with the Global economy under heavy weather and there is an overall Right-to-Left shift in the politics around economy worldwide. Is that going to impact the new generation in India? Chances are pretty slim.
3) Left side consolidate. That would be hilarious and excruciating at the same time. Imagine all the regional satraps and satrapees (if that's the feminine word for it) combined with Congress and/or AAP and/or Communists. Even if they consolidate, experience suggests that it would be fairly short-lived.
4) A single party from Cultural Left to emerge and attract the voters from the Right. This is the best bet Congress can hope for. This is what even AAP can target. But, the probability of this happening soon? Pretty slim. Remember that it took 10 years for BJP to oust even the fragile UPA.
5) BJP screwing up big time in governance ala UPA-II, combined with either 3 or 4. Option 5 with 3 would not be too bad for BJP, they just need to make sure that 5 does not happen with 4.
In a nutshell, the path is cleared for Modi to rule for as much as he want, as long as he does not cause himself some serious damage. Even an average performance from him would see him through for the next election (the Photoshop and Marketing skills of his cadre is well-proven in this election, so he can be rest assured that a couple of scams, some minor riots here and there or some crazies beating up a few girls and boys on Valentine's day are not going to hurt his prospects. As long as he ensures that things do not go out of control, that should be good enough). But, I truly hope that he would not choose the average path.
NB: If I don't commit myself to sit down and write another post with the election topic: to those Congress workers who, living in a parallel universe, agitated to have Priyanka Gandhi as the next leader- WHAT IN THE WORLD ARE YOU GUYS SMOKING???? GIVE A PIECE OF THAT TO RAHUL GANDHI, HE IS BADLY IN NEED OF IT....
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