The results are in

Upcoming election results won't determine which coalition rules us in a week from now, but will define our politics for many years to come.

Voters displays their inked fingers for a photograph after casting their votes at a polling station in New Delhi | Vishwanathan | Bloomberg

One remarkable feature of this election is how punditry has been entirely hijacked by pollsters, psephologists and statisticians. No quibble with that, particularly when nobody seems to be missing the old-fashioned heavy hitting analysis with confusing caste break-ups and deadly jargon like AJGAR, MAJGAR, KHAM, and so on. But you also can’t let the entire electoral phenomenon get reduced to mere — if intelligent — guesswork on numbers. So here is my take on the four results, or rather lessons, this election will — I repeat will, not may — produce. These will not determine which coalition rules us in a week from now. But these will define our politics for many years to come.

The arrival of the smart voter

If the results throw up a parliament not particularly different from the last one, it would be tempting to say nothing has changed, that people have continued to vote along old fault-lines of caste, region and religion. But that is not the truth. While the overall numbers may look similar, these will be made up of results from the states that will be radically different from the past, as particularly in the case of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Punjab and Haryana. In each one of these states the voter will be punishing his incumbent chief minister. So, this voter does not allow himself to be swayed by either charisma (in this case Vajpayee’s), or hype, as over India Shining backed by testosterone-laden advertisement campaigns.

The BJP and its formidable army of intellectuals will analyse these results and perhaps conclude that positive slogans do not work and therefore, it might be better to fall back on bitter negativisms of the past. But that will be a mistake. The lesson is, no matter how much media you buy, how well you misuse the media you own and how much noise you make, this voter will not vote on the idea of “feel-good” unless he is really feeling better than before. This is where the NDA went wrong in confusing the malls of Gurgaon, the software parks of Bangalore and Hyderabad, cheaper housing loans and easy gas and phone connections for some huge trickle-down effect of ten years of reform that might translate into a high index of voter satisfaction. It forgot that for an overwhelmingly large number of Indians, these things are merely in the realm of fantasy and that their lives are still untouched by the comforting winds of reform. That kind of a deep, and wide, feel-good wave would require five years of robust reform in economy and governance, not just one year of 8 per cent growth. This election marks the rise of this smarter voter who checks out your claims and he will redefine our politics.

Decline of negative politics

This is a risky proposition to make. But let me stick my neck out. This campaign will mark the decline of several negative issues that have dominated our electoral politics for nearly a decade and a half: Bofors, Ram Mandir, reservations, national security, a leader’s foreign origin and even the old leftist notions of pristine secularism. Actually, except Sonia Gandhi’s Italian origin, none of these issues has even been raised seriously by any side in this campaign. Even there, the BJP’s senior-most leaders were careful in keeping away from the foreign origin issue and concentrating on their own track record instead. In fact, when the NDA campaigners, particularly some BJP loud-mouths, strayed and the first exit polls indicated a swing away from them, a sharp course correction was applied. The prime minister himself never took up these issues and you can only see these declining further into insignificance by 2009.

No significant party promised fresh job reservations — the prime minister actually dared to ask his voters to stop waiting for government jobs and create local enterprise instead. If you read all the manifestos carefully, they all prescribe more or less the same solution for Ayodhya. An election is not exactly a dip in the Ganga so it cannot cleanse you of all your sins. But this one decisively marks the decline of negative issues that have blighted our politics since 1989. These issues were rooted in old prejudices and insecurities, had nothing to do with the quality of our lives or those of our children and, worst of all, demanded no tangible performance or results from our leaders. One consequence of the politics defined by these issues was the absurdity of the Third Front, a monstrosity created and sustained since 1989 (when Mandal and Mandir came to the fore) only on the negative notion of keeping either the Congress or the BJP out of power. The 2004 election is setting us firmly on the road to a durable bijli-sadak-paani agenda. Hopefully, as we become more intelligent, less cynical and thereby more demanding, we will add education and health to this.

Mixing foreign policy with domestic politics back-fires

One opportunity the BJP has totally failed to exploit in this election is peace with Pakistan. Nothing else would have created greater optimism and comfort. It was even believed, quite simplistically, that this mood combined with the exploits of our cricket team would create an irresistible feel-good swing. But two weeks into the campaign, most of its campaigners were not even mentioning peace with Pakistan. Why did they so quickly give up the one creative idea — and part-achievement — that even the Congress or the Left could not have questioned?

The BJP blundered by using this simplistically to seek Muslim vote. Its initial idea, that better relations with Pakistan were essential for better Hindu-Muslim relations here, is not fallacious. But it was wrong to say this in the elections. It angered the Muslims. Was the party making peace with Pakistan to make them happy? It confused many Hindus: was the BJP making concessions to Pakistan to get Muslim votes? Either way, the BJP squandered a great opportunity. The lesson is, do not enmesh issues of foreign policy and larger national interest in partisan, or worse, divisive domestic politics. The Muslims have still not voted for the BJP because the questions they raise — security, equity, justice (all heightened by Gujarat) — have nothing to do with what you are doing along the LoC.

The business of electioneering has changed

The era of the massive election rally has been long over. People now have work to do. This election was fought more in the media than in the streets. Television is now the new electoral battleground and, as with more developed democracies, will increasingly replace public meetings and door-to-door campaigns as the mode of campaigning. A recent India Today opinion poll had clearly shown that a large majority of the voters now make up their minds on political issues on the basis of what they learn from the media. So, much as they detest us, our politicians will have to learn to live with that reality. This voter is becoming more literate, smart and questioning. That is why, irrespective of which pollster is proven wrong or right, this election will mark a happy break from the past in our politics.