Prime Minister Narendra Modi has won the Uttar Pradesh election. It was, by all accounts, an individual’s victory relying on his personal standing with the electorate, created in part by a slick propaganda campaign which highlighted, in somewhat exaggerated fashion, the economic advances that had been made under his leadership in his home state of Gujarat and subsequently in other states where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had established its writ. With 312 seats won by the BJP and 13 by its allies, it has more than an 80% share in the 403-strong legislative assembly.
This margin of victory virtually duplicates the BJP victory of 1977 when the coalition party led by Morarji Desai—but of which the Jan Sangh (forerunner of the BJP) was a key member—won 352 of the then 425 seats in the UP Assembly. The key difference lies, however, in the fact that the 1977 vote was an anti-Indira Gandhi vote; she was castigated for the declaration of the Emergency and the draconian measures she subsequently took. This time the vote is pro-Modi.
In 1977, Morarji Desai took charge as Prime Minister after the Janata Party defeated Congress
For the next few years, the collegial style of governance that had characterised the BJP's stints in power under Vajpayee are now a thing of the past. One must accept that Modi will determine the course India will take without any checks on his power
Following the 1977 debacle, the Congress of Indira Gandhi came back with a vengeance in 1980, winning 309 seats compared to the 11 won by the BJP. Is there a possibility that something of the same nature is happening again? It would be naïve to believe that barring some catastrophe for the Modi-led BJP, there is a chance. The odds are that the victory in the UP Assembly elections will ensure that in the 2019 national elections Modi will emerge with an even larger majority or at the very least continue to maintain the comfortable majority in the Lok Sabha that he currently enjoys.
The president of the BJP, Amit Shah, has been credited with having chosen the best i.e. the most electable candidates in UP, but in many ways they represent no particular change. The number of crorepatis in the new assembly is 322 (80%) up from the 271 (67%) in 2012 and 143 of them have criminal cases pending against them. Eighty-two of them belong to the BJP. There has been no detailed reporting so far on how much money was spent. But there is no doubt in my mind that 30 to 40 times more has been spent over the Rs1.6 million ceiling fixed by the Election Commission for candidates, as was reported from Andhra Pradesh.
What is noteworthy, however, is that unlike the Jan Sangh of 1977 or the BJP of Vajpayee, Amit Shah chose not to field even a single Muslim candidate. And yet the BJP did garner votes in these constituencies and win seats for which Muslim candidates should have been seen as winning contenders. One will have to see what further analysis of voting patterns in these constituencies reveals, but on the face of it, there is a case to be made for the assertion that Modi was able to create his own rainbow coalition ignoring the communal divide.
What else can one expect? In April 2018 there will be elections to 58 seats in the Rajya Sabha where Congress currently has 59 members as against the BJP’s 56 and where the Congress, with support from other groups, can successfully block Modi’s legislative initiatives. From the 58 seats to be filled, 10 will be from UP on the votes of the state assembly and the BJP could, it is estimated, win eight of them. This along with the election from other states may ensure a majority for the BJP in the Rajya Sabha and enable it to ramrod through any legislation Modi wishes to propose.
Unlike the Jan Sangh of 1977 or the BJP of Vajpayee, Amit Shah chose not to field even a single Muslim candidate. And yet the BJP did garner votes in these constituencies and win seats for which Muslim candidates should have been seen as winning contenders
In July 2017 the term in office of the current president, Pranab Mukherjee, will expire and while the office is largely ceremonial, with most powers of the head of state being exercised on the advice of the prime minister, it can be quite important, in a political crisis, as is the case in our own system. It is not difficult to fathom that when the election is held in July with votes being cast by members of all legislative bodies in India, Modi’s candidate will be the new occupant of Rashtrapati Bhavan.
The point of dwelling on these details is to emphasise that at this juncture, and for the next few years, the collegial style of governance that had characterised the BJP’s stints in power under Vajpayee are now a thing of the past. One must accept that Prime Minister Modi will determine the course India will take without any checks on his power.
How should we perceive this victory? One Indian observer says that what “the latest round of assembly elections has established is that a good majority of Indians refuse to see Modi as a mere Hindutva leader who whips up raw communal passions to get votes. Instead, they perceive him as a man they can trust, as a man who can bring about development, as a man who can transform their lives for the better, and as a man who can bring in change. In short, they see him as a leader who can deliver.” Another view is that, “The victory in Uttar Pradesh will encourage the aggressive activities of the RSS and its outfits. The fusion of neo-liberalism and Hindutva will be cemented with more support from big business. This presages more attacks on secular values, freedom of expression and democratic rights. The growing authoritarianism, reinforced by electoral success, will have to be resisted and fought back through united movements in all spheres.”
Perhaps the most important thing we should learn is that Modi’s many flaws notwithstanding he is seen as incorruptible and not very tolerant of those who engage in this sort of activity. His apparent honesty has established trust. His demonetisation caused hardship and perhaps yielded little by way of expected results but the elections showed that even relatively unsuccessful efforts to curb corruption would be acceptable. Expect now that he will make further efforts at reforms, some good, some bad, but he will find a high level of acceptance with the electorate.
Modi has claimed that all he wants is to be able to serve the poor of his country. Does he continue, however, to be beholden or perhaps more accurately committed to the RSS and other extremist Hindutva preaching parties? During his campaign in the UP his party pledged that there would be no slaughter of cows in UP and instead they would focus on adding livestock so that rivers of milk and ghee could flow. Does this mean that this will be the principal part of his domestic agenda? One has to wait and see.
During his campaign in the UP, Modi made anti-Pakistan statements to bolster his call for nationalism. One particularly egregious example was that a train derailment in Kanpur, in which several people were killed and injured, had been planned across the border. The Indian media claimed that the reference was to Pakistan’s ISI. He also dismissed doubts about the “surgical strikes” that India claimed had been carried out across the LoC and which Pakistan has denied ever occurred. Should this be dismissed as election rhetoric designed to reinforce nationalist sentiment or is it indicative of future policy? One has to wait and see.
While no such comparison can be considered entirely appropriate it may be worthwhile to recall the visit of Vajpayee as India’s foreign minister to Pakistan in February 1978. The question then was can Pakistan deal with a hardline Jan Sanghi leader. It was decided that in the interest of regional peace a dialogue should be attempted and a hope was even entertained that contentious issues could best be settled by leaders seen as hardliners. The period of 1978 onwards did lead to some betterment in relations. The talks helped to resolve the problem Pakistan had with the design of the Salal Dam without resort to arbitration. India was at that time interested in establishing a precedent that all Indo-Pak disputes should be resolved bilaterally. Pakistan was quite willing to see one dispute resolved even while maintaining unchanged its position on invoking if necessary dispute resolution mechanisms envisaged in the UN charter. More people-to-people exchanges took place. India withdrew its reservations on Pakistan’s admission to the non-aligned Movement. Generally a better atmosphere prevailed.
It was long felt in policy-making circles that once the current cycle of state elections was out of the way, the prospects for a resumed dialogue—the comprehensive dialogue that Sushma Swaraj had proposed—would improve. Pakistan must now be ready for such a dialogue, which would be facilitated by the internal measures Pakistan is taking against extremist elements and which would ease the process of negotiating with both neighbours. It must bear in mind that Modi is the man we will have to deal with in the foreseeable future.
The writer is a former foreign secretary andhas served as ambassador to the US and Iran, among other key appointments. He lectures at NDU and has written extensively on Pakistan and international relations
