IN one of the extreme ironies of the parliamentary system, parties that lost votes get to govern and those who increased their support sit in opposition. Just such a scenario has unfolded in Jammu and Kashmir with the coming together of the Congress and National Conference to form a coalition government. Both parties lost their vote share in the recently concluded assembly elections, while that of the Bharatiya Janata Party and People’s Democratic Party increased in rather dramatic fashion. Retaining the same number of seats, however, has allowed the NC to occupy the driver’s seat in the government.

This preamble does not take away from Omar Abdullah’s achievement, or the significance of his ability to lead the NC to primacy in the hustings. As party president he ensured that the NC was the single largest party last time around as well, even as a new PDP was clawing at the opinion of the Kashmir Valley. This time it has upstaged the NC on that front. The BJP’s surge outside of the valley paradoxically allowed the NC to make up valley losses in the Jammu division. This is indeed a classic example of the wonderment of parliamentary politics.

There are many amongst the chattering classes in India who favour a presidential form of government. They find it much easier to identify with an individual rather than an ideology or a party structure. For them the parliamentary system produces a far too messy outcome, from a totally bizarre political process. They find it difficult to visualize the country from the sum of a collection of constituencies; for them it is a neat television debate that should set the flavour of voting.

 

India is yet, thankfully, not so sanitized. Its politics continues to throw up a marvel of results that defy conventional wisdom, and seriously challenge preordained destinies. Within these results are pointers toward some major alterations happening in the political field. For the isolated, the results appear as yet another example of standard Indian politics of caste, community, regionalism so on and so forth. This understanding is based on the tendency to believe the instant analysis propounded by the telespecialists. However flimsy it may be, but the first analysis invariably takes on a momentum of its own, and continues its orbit long after its utility has expired.

This phenomenon was repeated after the recent round of assembly elections. For a foot-soldier, the results speak for themselves in a most glaring manner. But for the specialist, they invoke completely different pictures. The images were coming in from Mumbai just as elections were entering their last lap. The results, and Mumbai, were conjoined by one basic axiom that has crept up the charts. It is identifiable, but remains an intangible in the campaign. It is the essence of statecraft; yet it gets short-changed when major analysis is invoked. It is a coalition of subjects, but has its own stand-alone value. It is the common denominator along which people vote, across the spectrum. In the 2008 assembly elections it came to determine results, just as it epitomised Mumbai and why it happened. And it is the quiet catalyst behind the changing landscape of politics, since it goes by the broad term we all accept – governance.

The importance of governance has been lost on soothsayers, as well as the stakeholders. And yet it is the determinant of results in its own peculiar way. For far too long governance has come to be analyzed in terms of development, progress, et al. The identifiable stuff – schools, flyovers, malls, canals and health centres. But the last few years, and elections, have ably demonstrated that development is not enough to win elections, for the simple reason that development alone does not set the agenda for the voter.

The voter has made it apparent time and again that the decision rests on more than the schools or hospitals provided. It is in the manner of that providing. To put Indian pointers to governance, it is a coalition of all that constitutes development with an ample sprinkling of aacharan, sanskaar and charitra. These elementary features are not decipherable in a conventional political science class. But it is through a prism made up of these three that the voter looks daily, not just at the political leader but also the government.

 

The political leadership is expected to set the tone of governance as far as the voter is concerned. This is as true for India as it is for any other democratic society. What the voter then also wants is that governance be reflective of these essential human values. And this factor has been amply underlined in the various state assembly electoral results. In fact this issue has been hovering in the margins for a while but, with the results of 2008 assemblies laid bare, it is safe to assume that governance is the pivot around which the results revolve.

The Mizoram polling was the most unusual of all the states, but this is not to take away from the unprecedented turnout of Jammu and Kashmir. While the former has demonstrated the success of a reformed insurgency, the latter is still in the throes of fighting one. The Mizoram figure is almost like that of a panchayat election. Unknown to most, it is the panchayat election in India that witnesses the highest voter turnout. The Jammu and Kashmir vote did not quite match that but it was high enough to make a number of prominent personalities ponder over their own analytical abilities, and directions. And this list of prominent types includes those within the valley as well as those outside, most notably those in Delhi running a successful ‘Kashmir business’.

 

All of these are pointers toward a churning that has been underway with the voter in India. Whether it is Kashmir or Kutch, Jammu or Jorhat, the voter is opting for those who are perceived to be better at delivering on governance. There are of course some final touches to be made, in terms of the fine details from various constituencies and so on. There is almost always a little bit left undone owing to the nuances of each constituency, the factor of personalities of the candidates. It, however, doesn’t detract from the larger emerging picture that in the ultimate analysis it is the factor of governance that determines voter choice.

This phenomenon is pushing the politician into positions and policies unthinkable some time ago. These are the subterranean changes underway in the mind of the Indian voter. The higher polling percentages are testimony to that. What is also happening is a spread of this phenomenon across the entire class spectrum. Low polling is a price to be paid for affluence. This is the governing mantra across the democratic world. And this has been most pronounced in the affluent constituencies of India, the urban seats. But within this feature a further change is apparent.

It is a fact of Indian governance that the daily life of an ordinary citizen in the country is influenced more by the state than the central government. From the villager and his gram sewak and patwari issues to the urban resident and the various municipal concerns. All of these are within the realms of state governance. And this explains the surge in voting during the state assembly elections. The stakes are greater at the local level and therefore the higher polling. For the ordinary Indian, the central government is a largely esoteric entity, in place only to receive foreign guests and pay the armed forces.

 

Politically another phenomenon is pushing this process of empowering the state government. As the splintering of the political process produces various sets of coalitions, it is at the state level that a sense of stability ensues. Notice how various states have given decisive results. This, in a sense, underlines the reasons behind the empowerment of the chief minister in India. A combination of control over the ubiquitous patwari and the quasi-independence from the mess of Delhi’s national politics has allowed states to throw up very interesting leadership options.

The clearer the image of the chief minister vis-à-vis power, control and authority, the deeper is the message about autonomy rather than sycophancy. The traditional process of making chief ministers in Delhi durbars appears largely over, whichever party may govern whichever state. Being pegged in the districts is now far more important than power pegs in Lutyens Delhi. All of this, thus, produces a very interesting phenomenon of the empowerment of the chief minister. It is now assumed that the authority of the CM is so powerful that is can deliver a state on a platter. And if this empowerment lends a sense of swagger to the CM, the people of India have an antidote to that too!

India’s very strong political DNA works in its own peculiar way, unknown to most non-participants. Since the roots are in the panchayat sense of self, identity and participation, the process begins from there. And today the contest for the panchayat is the hottest race in India. The panchayat-obsessed minister in Delhi may well have dreamt it, but it is the increasing devolution of authority to the panchayat that has aided this process. Proportionally, the largest chunk of development funds go to the panchayat. It is a source of much envy for me, as an MP, that most of my panchayats have a larger National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme budget than I have for the whole constituency from the MP Local Area Development Scheme! And once the panchayat courts are in place, the stakes are going to be even higher. As it is the polling percentage, and per capita expenditure, already makes it the most contested and expensive election in India.

 

India’s roots being in the panchayat and further transition in that direction inevitable, it is safe to say that the corrective will also come from that route. No matter how much the English language media may want India to wish for its own Obama, it is not going to happen. India’s strong sense of self, and the peculiarity of its political DNA, just do not allow it to copy some other people’s steps. In any case India has already had its Obama election way back in the mid-1980s.

The combination of India’s democratic diversity, and its roots, will produce an evolutionary sense of transition. The current debate on youth angst and politics is not dissimilar to what Amitabh Bachchan addressed in his early movies in the 1970s. The prevailing analysis then was exactly the same as now. To suggest, as a number of experts tend to, a newness to it only underlines ignorance and political illiteracy.

 

The catch, however, remains in how the structure of governance is addressed. There is nothing to suggest that the political class, or the society it represents, has woken up to the challenges faced by the edifice of governance. Decontrol may be a good thing for economics, so why should it be a bad thing for politics, or administration? Even as politics and people have given the states more autonomy vis-à-vis the Centre, there is a need to address this phenomenon from a structural perspective. In daily talk it is called Centre-state dynamics. But in this case the dynamic is unidirectional as the Centre ceases to grasp the imagination as do the states.

The entire edifice of the Centre-state relationship is under strain. The image of a CM meeting with the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission may not be carried in the English language media, but it is in the states. And the caption is always the same – seeking an increase in outlay for the state. This pleading before Delhi, and the handouts issued, as the Planning Commission grant appears, is antiquated, to say the least. It is the epitome of this governance structure. It is creaking; renovation and restoration is the order of the day. But it cannot be done through the issuing of the traditional Indian sarkari tender process. This is the 21st century and it will require modern methods moulded with India’s political DNA.