IN the run-up to the fifteenth general elections in India that are scheduled for April-May 2009, a question that is frequently raised is whether or not anti-incumbency sentiments would be pronounced. Such sentiments against the party or coalition in power in specific states in the country depend not only on the responsiveness and the quality of governance provided by the incumbent regime, but also on the extent to which the opposition party or alliance is united, that is, free from divisive factionalism. The factors that contribute towards pro- or anti-incumbency sentiments were amply illustrated in the outcomes to the assembly elections that took place in six states in November and December 2008.

There are many in India who are somewhat sceptical about a political phenomenon that is often loosely described as ‘anti-incumbency’. While the phrase is often bandied about rather carelessly, its importance cannot be ignored. Over the past decade and a half, a proportion varying between 40 per cent and half the Members of Parliament and Members of Legislative Assemblies in the country were not re-elected. The overwhelming majority of such MPs and MLAs were rejected by the electorate and only a small number of them failed to get elected because they were denied ‘tickets’ to contest by their respective political parties. In each one of the last four Lok Sabhas that were constituted in 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2004, there were approximately 250 new faces in the lower house of Parliament with 543 members.

 

Let us first look at the arguments that are put forward to support the claim that anti-incumbency is an irrational and unpredictable aspect of the reality of Indian politics and that the real reasons why voters elect or defeat candidates of political parties are many, complex and often defy simple explanations. Congress leader Salman Khurshid once explained to this writer that the expectations of the electorate are excessively and ‘frighteningly’ high and unrealistic and, therefore, next to impossible for a candidate standing for election to fufil. He added that the money that is made available to MPs or MLAs under schemes like the MPLADS (Member of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme) is quite small in comparison to the funds that could be spent by a district magistrate. The happiness gets spread rather thinly, Khurshid said, adding: ‘You may be able to build a road in a village but in the process also alienate those living in a neighbouring village who will then not vote for you.’

Those who subscribe to this point of view further point out that if indeed it is difficult for an elected representative to live up to the aspirations of ordinary voters, what then should this person do under the given circumstances? One course of action would be to do absolutely nothing. Alternatively, elected representatives could become corrupt and greedy, arguing that since politics is a rather risky business and there is a distinct chance that an MP or MLA will not be re-elected five years later, it is best to utilize every opportunity to milk the system and earn as much money as quickly as possible. This phenomenon is often described as ‘pork barrel’ politics – a quaint American term defined by the dictionary as ‘a government appropriation, bill, or policy that supplies funds for local improvements designed to ingratiate legislators with their constituents’ which is not very different from the MPLADS and its equivalent scheme for state legislators.

 

To believe that anti-incumbency breeds inaction if not corruption on the part of an MP or MLA, would perhaps be an excessively cynical contention, although one must acknowledge that there is more than an element of truth in such a viewpoint. One could equally argue along lines that are diametrically opposite. If elected representatives intend improving their chances of getting re-elected, they should instead spend the funds made available to them in an efficient and equitable manner, promote good governance by reducing the incidence of corruption and ensure the development of the area’s social infrastructure (shiksha and swasthya or education and health care) as well as physical infrastructure (bijli, sadak and paani or electricity, roads and water). It may also be contended that most voters in the country do not, in fact, have exaggerated expectations of their elected representatives at either the national or the provincial level. They only expect their MP or MLA to listen to them, be a bit responsive and not make tall promises before elections that they do not intend to keep.

 

While anti-incumbency sentiments have indeed been pronounced in most parts of India, it is crucial to understand why such sentiments have not been operational in specific states at particular points in time. Consider, for instance, the Left Front in West Bengal and Tripura, the Narendra Modi government in Gujarat or, more recently, the government of Delhi (led by Sheila Dikshit who won for the third time in a row) or, for that matter, the state governments of Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh headed by Chief Ministers Raman Singh and Shivraj Singh Chouhan respectively, both belonging to the Bharatiya Janata Party.

An important factor that has helped counter anti-incumbency feelings in the three states that recently went to the polls (Delhi, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh) as well as in West Bengal, Tripura and Gujarat in the past, was that tickets were denied to a substantial proportion of the sitting MLAs (more than a third in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh). In other words, if incumbent regimes are astute enough to remove those legislators who are considered ‘inefficient’ or ‘non-performing’ before elections take place, anti-incumbency sentiments can be countered to a considerable extent.

Sheila Dikshit’s victory in Delhi also underlined an important consideration that influenced voting behaviour. If the BJP could have replicated its performance in the April 2007 elections to the Municipal Corporation of Delhi – when it won 168 out of 272 wards with the Congress winning in only 64 wards – the party should have won the 2008 assembly elections hands down. But that did not happen. What damaged the prospects of the BJP was internal bickering: the party’s general secretary, Arun Jaitley, was first selected as its chief ministerial candidate for Delhi but since he was reportedly not interested in the post, the choice fell on veteran Vijay Kumar Malhotra – who had, incidentally, defeated Manmohan Singh in the 1999 Lok Sabha elections from South Delhi by 30,000-odd votes.

 

In 1993, the BJP had won 49 out of the 70 seats in the Delhi Assembly while the Congress had won 14 seats; in 1998, the Congress won 52 seats and the BJP 15, while in 2003, the Congress won 47 seats and the BJP 20. The number of Congress MLAs in the Delhi Assembly has now come down to 42; the party’s vote share declined from 48.1 per cent in 2003 to 40.3 per cent in 2008. The number of seats won by the BJP went up by three to 23; the party’s vote share rose from 35.2 per cent to 36.4 per cent in this period. In other words, there were indeed anti-incumbency feelings among Delhi’s voters – these sentiments were, however, not strong enough to dislodge the ruling Congress government.

In December 2003, after assembly elections were held in the newly-formed state of Chhattisgarh for the first time, the BJP swept the polls with 50 seats; the Congress obtained only 37 seats. The BJP was able to repeat its performance thanks to the chief minister’s relatively non-controversial image. What certainly helped the incumbent regime was the government’s decision to provide rice to poor families in the state at Rs 3 per kg – the public distribution scheme was strengthened considerably. Raman Singh urged ordinary villagers to be vigilant against corruption and to bring directly to the notice of his officers any instance of non-implementation of the subsidized rice scheme. This was an instance of a government ensuring that its promises were fulfilled, with Raman Singh emulating the example of Kerala while making the state’s PDS work efficiently.

 

The number of BJP MLAs in the Chhattisgarh Assembly remained constant at 50 between 2003 and 2008, with the party’s share of the total votes cast going up marginally by one per cent, from 39.3 per cent to 40.3 per cent. The number of Congress MLAs in Chhattisgarh went up by one, from 37 in 2003 to 38 after the 2008 election, although the party’s vote share rose by nearly two per cent from 36.7 per cent to 38.6 per cent.

But what helped the BJP in Chhattisgarh the most was factionalism in the Congress – former Chief Minister Ajit Jogi did not see eye-to-eye with former leader of the opposition in the Chhattisgarh Vidhan Sabha Mahendra Karma on the issue of supporting the ‘Salwa Judum’ in the Naxalite-dominated southern part of the state. Unlike Karma, a former Communist who spearheaded the formation of the Salwa Judum and who lost the assembly election, Jogi agreed with the view of civil rights activists who argue that the way this group functions is a manifestation of the failure of the state administration to enforce law and order and curb left-wing extremism in the tribal dominated Bastar division of the state. Eventually, the BJP gained by winning a number of assembly constituencies in this division.

After the December 2008 elections, the number of BJP MLAs in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly fell from 173 to 143; the party’s vote share came down from 42.5 per cent to 37.6 per cent or a fall of almost five per cent. The number of seats won by the Congress rose from 38 to 71, although the party’s vote share increased by less than one per cent from 31.6 per cent to 32.4 per cent. The ‘Ladli Lakshmi’ scheme to provide education grants to young women helped Shivraj Singh Chouhan return to power.

Similar schemes had been initiated in different states, including in Uttar Pradesh during the Mulayam Singh Yadav government, but the difference was that the scheme was possibly implemented more effectively in Madhya Pradesh. Chouhan took a leaf out of the book scripted in 2004 by Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy by making direct contact with people in rural areas. In the process, many voters chose to ignore the scandal involving purchase of road rollers and dumpers by a firm close to the chief minister’s family.

 

The BJP in Madhya Pradesh under Chouhan could not have performed as well as it did had it not been helped greatly by deep divisions in the Congress that had various factions led by former Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh and Congress General Secretary Digvijay Singh, Union Commerce Minister Kamal Nath, Lok Sabha member Jyotiraditya Scindia and Ajay Singh, son of Union Human Resources Development Minister Arjun Singh. As if these factions were not enough, Congress President Sonia Gandhi and her confidantes ‘parachuted’ Suresh Pachauri to Bhopal from New Delhi to head the party in the state.

Pachauri, a former Minister of State in the Union government in New Delhi and member of the Rajya Sabha for four six-year terms, could not rejuvenate the Congress in Madhya Pradesh and acknowledged responsibility for his party’s poor performance. Though considered a lightweight in MP, it was alleged that Pachauri had been chosen because of his proximity to Sonia Gandhi. The fact that the Central Bureau of Investigation administered by the Ministry of Personnel (then headed by Pachauri) decided not to appeal against the decision of a court in Argentina to extradite controversial Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrochhi in the Bofors case, could have brought him closer to the Congress ‘high command’.

It is interesting to recall that Digvijay Singh had served as Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh for two successive terms between 1993 and 2003. He was re-elected in 1998 on the plank of ‘development’ and he had claimed that his government had done much to enhance primary education and health care facilities in the state, besides improving the quality of roads. However, these claims were not backed by performance and failed to impress voters. The BJP came to power riding on strong anti-incumbency sentiments and despite the fact that the party nominated three chief ministers in five years (Uma Bharti, Babulal Gaur and Chouhan), anti-Congress sentiments have persisted in the state.

 

The electoral contest in Rajasthan was neck-to-neck. The Congress did not obtain a majority in the 200-member state assembly – it won 96 seats – and depends on the support of a number of independent MLAs. The party’s vote share went up by a little over one per cent, from 35.7 per cent in 2003 to 36.8 per cent. The number of BJP MLAs in the Rajasthan assembly declined from 120 to 78; the party’s vote share came down significantly by nearly five per cent from 39.2 per cent to 34.3. The BSP’s vote share rose from four per cent to 4.6 per cent while the number of its MLAs went up from two to six.

In the Rajasthan Assembly, the Congress had won 76 seats in 1993, 153 seats in 1998 and 56 seats in 2003, while the number of BJP MLAs were 95, 33 and 120 respectively in these three elections. Former BJP Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje was evidently perceived as ‘feudal’, ‘haughty’ and ‘imperious’ in her style of functioning. She apparently sought the support of BJP veterans in the state, Jaswant Singh (former External Affairs and Finance Minister) and Bhairon Singh Shekhawat (former Vice President of India and former Chief Minister of Rajasthan) rather late in the day. Besides factionalism in the state BJP, what made Raje’s government unpopular was the fact that police fired on members of the Gurjar community and farmers in the state on more than 20 occasions during her tenure as chief minister. Large sections of Gurjars had disrupted normal life in Rajasthan during 2007, agitating for Scheduled Tribe status for the community.

The pattern of voting during the last round of elections in Rajasthan seems to have cut across what is often described by political analysts as ‘vote banks’. Whereas political parties put up candidates belonging to particular castes and communities in specific constituencies, social formations like the Brahmins, Rajputs, Jats, Yadavs, Gurjars and Meenas did not vote along party lines in Rajasthan. This is a clear indication of voters becoming politically mature.

 

After the June 1986 agreement between the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and the one-time underground Mizo leader Laldenga, Mizoram has been relatively free from the influence of violent insurgency that has prevailed in most other states in north-eastern India. Mizoram is also among India’s most literate states. The Congress had dominated the polity of Mizoram from the mid-1980s till the late-1990s. In December 1998, Zoramthanga of the Mizo National Front became the state’s chief minister after his party won 21 out of the 44 seats in the state assembly. He was re-elected five years later.

The 2008 assembly elections in Mizoram saw the Congress return to power with an impressive majority obtaining 32 out of 40 seats with the party’s vote share going up from just over 30 per cent to nearly 39 per cent. The decline in the vote share of the MNF was relatively small, from 31.7 per cent to 30.6 per cent, but the number of MLAs belonging to the party fell drastically from 21 to three with former Chief Minister Zoramthanga himself losing the elections. The current Chief Minister of Mizoram, Lalthanhawla, had earlier held the position on two separate occasions between May 1984 and August 1986 and again between January 1989 and December 1998.

 

The situation that prevailed in Jammu and Kashmir, India’s northernmost state and the only state with a Muslim majority, was more complex. The state’s relationship with India (or with Pakistan) remains a live and often contentious political issue. The National Conference (NC) has always adopted an aggressively pro-autonomy posture while distancing itself from those demanding secession of the state (if not the Kashmir valley) from India. In July 2003, NC President Omar Abdullah pulled his party out of the NDA and its government. In July 2008, the NC aligned itself with the UPA and helped the Manmohan Singh government win a confidence vote in Parliament.

In the December 2008 assembly elections in the state, the NC managed to retain the number of seats it had in the state assembly and forged an alliance with the Congress to form a government in Jammu and Kashmir, replacing the earlier coalition government – between the People’s Democratic Party and the Congress – that had ruled the state since 2002. The son of NC head and former J&K Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah, Omar Abdullah took oath as Chief Minister of J&K on 5 January 2009 and at 38, he is the state’s youngest-ever chief minister.

 

The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) led by Mufti Mohammed Sayeed and his elder daughter Mehbooba Mufti, now has 21 members in the J&K legislative assembly instead of 16 in 2002; the party’s vote share rose from 9.3 per cent to 15.3 per cent. (Unlike the rest of India, elections in Jammu and Kashmir are conducted once in six years, not five.) Following the communal polarization in the state in the wake of the agitation relating to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board, the BJP made impressive gains in the Jammu region of the state, increasing the number of MLAs belonging to the party from just one to eleven – the BJP’s share of the total votes cast went up from 8.5 per cent in 2002 to 12.4 per cent this time round. Yet, ironically, the legislators owing allegiance to both the PDP and BJP are sitting in the opposition benches in the assembly.

The other unusual aspect to the recently-concluded assembly elections in J&K was that 62 per cent of the electorate exercised its franchise (despite a relatively low 20 per cent voter turnout in the capital Srinagar) against 44 per cent six years ago. The hold of separatists – those who want Kashmir to be a separate nation-state, independent of both India and Pakistan – appeared to have diminished. Whereas it would be foolhardy to argue that many of those who voted are no longer in favour of an independent Kashmir, yet it is difficult to deny that a growing section of Kashmiris today seem to prefer the ballot to the bullet and seem to have more faith in the ability of the democratic process to resolve their day-to-day problems relating to governance and development. In these elections, the NC lost vote share (from 28.3 per cent to 23.1 per cent) but managed to retain the number of seats it had in the assembly (28) while the Congress saw a decrease in both its vote share (from 24.3 per cent to 17.8 per cent) and the number of its MLAs (from 20 to 17).

Theoretically, the Congress could have attempted to form a government with the PDP with the support of independent MLAs and those belonging to smaller parties. But relations between the former Congress Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad and Mehbooba had been excessively strained after the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board land controversy that also polarized the state’s population.

 

The outcome of the elections in Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram and Jammu & Kashmir sends out an unequivocal message. Anti-incumbency can be countered by good governance, which on occasions, can transcend political ideology. A divided opposition and ineffective leadership are also important considerations that influence voting patterns. As for the proverbial ordinary voter, they may be poor and illiterate but have demonstrated over and over again that they cannot easily be fooled nor swayed by emotive issues, including issues related to religion or terrorism. Many political observers tend to divide the heterogeneous population of India into conveniently clubbed ‘vote banks’ based on caste, community and religion. The reality of the country is, however, far more complex. India’s voters are certainly becoming increasingly intelligent and mature with each passing election.