Best bakery vs upper crust

Discourse on 2004 election has been about how the poor have spoken, created political space for poverty, & how the verdict is against policies inspired by World Bank, IMF and WTO.

File image of Muslim women showing their ink stained finger after casting their vote | Sheeraz Rizvi/Hindustan Times via Getty Images

A full fortnight after the results, you can’t be blamed for being confused as to what this verdict was about or what has brought this new coalition together. For the record, we’ve been told it was about communalism and Modi. At least that is the reason — to keep the BJP and its Hindutva parivar out of power — that these allies, particularly the Left, have joined hands with the Congress.

But how often in the course of the fortnight have you heard them mention Modi’s name? If you listen to them, instead, you’d think that this whole election was about Arun Shourie and his disinvestment ministry and the reason the Left has so willingly backed this coalition is to keep him, and his “ideology” out, not Modi or his brand of Hindutva.

Modi’s name actually surfaces again in our discourse — not from the leading lights of a coalition put together in the name of opposing communalism and bigotry — but by the members of the outgoing coalition. One after the other, the allies of the BJP, all of whom (except the Akalis and Biju Janata Dal) have been wiped out in this election, are now blaming Modi and Gujarat riots. The first to say so, quite stunningly, was Shiv Sena’s Udhav Thackeray.

Then came Mamata Banerjee, Digvijay Singh of JD (U), now even that token Muslim of the BJP, former textiles minister Shahnawaz Khan. Senior members of Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party have begun to speak their minds as well. At their two-day stocktaking, one of the central themes was the loss of the minority vote because of Gujarat, Babu’s silence after initial demands to remove Modi, and then some of the delegates were candid enough to even tell television cameras that he erred in sharing the platform with Advani during his rath yatra.

Finally, now, so evident has the liability of having Modi in their midst become, that it has even emboldened more than 60 of his own legislators to demand his head. How come, the only people who have still not taken notice of this are the partners of the UPA and, most notably, the Left?

Could it be that while Modi and the obvious threat of Hindu communalism were a useful justification for backing the Congress-led alliance, its value, in terms of ideology and future politics, was limited? So the Left and the entire “equal distribution of poverty” mafia quickly changed tack and redefined both, the electoral verdict and the post-election politics in terms of a rejection of economic reform.

The attack on Shourie, his privatisation, the markets and reform began within 24 hours of the election results and nobody, I repeat nobody, remembered to send even a thank-you card to the minorities who had come out to vote in large numbers all over the country with one single objective, to defeat the BJP and its allies. And why were they doing so if it were not to punish them for what Modi had done and, in the case of Christians, what some of the others were trying to do by enacting completely arbitrary anti-conversion laws? But over a fortnight nobody, particularly from the Left, has cared to say so.

The discourse, on the other hand, is about how the poor have spoken, have created political space for poverty, how this is a verdict against policies inspired by the World Bank, IMF and WTO. It’s even been said that the BJP has been wiped out in the urban centres because of joblessness caused by privatisation — in spite of the fact that not one PSU based in or around the two metros has been sold. You’ve also been told that it’s a revolt of the farmer, of the downtrodden, the marginal Indian who has asserted his will after watching this “so-called” reform in silent anger.

These are stirring thoughts. But you run into problems once you start looking at the facts. For example:

• If this is a case of the poor of India speaking out against the NDA and its economics, how come the poorest of all Indians, the Oriyas, have voted back the BJP and its most loyal ally, the Biju Janata Dal, so emphatically, even defying anti-incumbency?

• If it is an expression of the poor, drought-hit rural Indian’s revolt against NDA’s elitist, city-centric reform as “reflected” in the Andhra verdict, how come in the neighbouring, and drier Karnataka, the BJP has done so well?

• If it is the anger of the farmer against an MNC and FDI-centric economic reform that has allegedly pauperised him further, you can quite understand his rejection of the Congress in Punjab. But how do you the explain his equally emphatic endorsement of the same party in Haryana?

• If this verdict is the poor and downtrodden speaking out against lousy governance, insensitive politics, the deteriorating quality of their lives, the lack of bijli, sadak and paani, how come they have continued to vote back Laloo and Mulayam who, besides anarchy, have also given them the worst economic development or social indicators for any part of India?

• And, if all or many of the above are actually true, how come the voters in two of the poorest Bimaru states, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, have given the BJP such a clean sweep?

You can go on and on but the simple fact is that this verdict is more multi-layered than any in our history. Vajpayee had said repeatedly during the campaign that this looked like a most issue-less election. Now an election campaign abhors a vacuum even more than run-of-the-mill politics. So every region or state of the country chose an issue of its own and voted accordingly.

This election, therefore, became a series of 20 state elections and finally what settled the issue was the total rejection of the BJP’s allies in four states (Andhra, Tamil Nadu, Bihar, and West Bengal) and the losses it suffered in Uttar Pradesh (around 20) and the two metros (12).

The one common factor, wherever the BJP or its allies have lost ground, is the presence of the minority (Muslim and Christian) vote. Where it wasn’t the case, they did better (MP, Rajasthan, Punjab). Seething in anger over Gujarat, Muslims probably voted to take revenge the democratic way instead of taking to terrorism or rioting. Similarly, the smaller Christian population waited to punish the BJP for its anti-conversion mania which had affected even some of its allies, like Jayalalithaa.

The BJP’s allies have understood this. So, I suspect have the secular forces, the Left and its allies and the poverty club. It is therefore so utterly cynical on their part to paint this verdict as one against reform rather than against communalism and bigotry. The tragedy is, they have — hopefully temporarily — managed to confuse the Congress as well. What is worse, they are undermining the bravery, patience and wisdom of the minorities, as also the rejection of the BJP-type Hindutva by a growing population of secular Hindus. This brainwashing has to stop at some point soon.