Indian Electorate Seeks Stability

India’s election campaign may have been devoid of substance, but the results were not without surprises. Though many expected the Indian National Congress to emerge as the single largest party, few, including Congress supporters, predicted the party’s sweeping victory, in which it retained office with 206 seats, the most any one party has held in 25 years. Bucking India’s anti-incumbency trend, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government is the first in over 40 years to be reelected after serving a full term in office.

Election campaign: Devoid of big ideas

For some time, Indian politics has demonstrated show over substance, and the 2009 election is particularly notable for its vacuity and the parties’ lack of vision.

And the public has taken note. Indian democracy, for all its vibrancy, has long ceased to animate the electorate. Neither of the two main political parties – the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – articulated a vision for India in these crucially important early years of the 21st century. Instead, both parties relied on tactical gimmicks to stay afloat. There was no guiding philosophy, only a series of separate, discrete and seemingly unconnected positions that failed to make a coherent whole.

The two main parties’ failure to provide a national narrative created space in recent years for smaller regional parties to emerge, many of which are mired in their parochial positions, having failed to adopt a pan-Indian perspective. This at a time when the country needs to be reaffirmed of its unified identity and reassured that no interest, class or section is either separate or supreme above the interests of all.

India stands on the threshold of momentous social, economic and global change, yet its politics have become more banal than usual. This generation of political leaders seems to be failing to project any real sense of authority.

State of Indian polity

Five years back the Congress-led coalition government had begun with so much promise. The Congress had won against all odds and its leader, Sonia Gandhi, after renouncing the post of the prime minister, had emerged as its most powerful political figure. She had given the prime minister’s post to one of the most respected public figures of India’s last 20 years, Manmohan Singh. The post-election atmosphere was one of optimism with hope for political renewal.

But these hopes never became reality. Enthusiasm about the election of some young parliamentarians to ‘the Grand Old Party’ quickly waned when they were sidelined by the old guard. The political capital that Sonia Gandhi had won so painstakingly was quickly spent, as the party returned to its ‘grand old’ ways. And the government was crippled when the Communists, as part of the ruling coalition, refused to allow any meaningful governance measures to be taken.

The Congress party ruled as a patently undemocratic organization, thanks to Sonia Gandhi’s lack of vision at its helm. The prime minister, despite his noble intentions, could not counter her mistakes because of the deference shown to the Gandhi family by party functionaries. For the Congress, the collapse of courage was total – a failure that came from the very top. Surrounded by its feckless allies, the party appeared shallow and sterile following decades of compromise.

And yet Congress remained the front-running party this year because of the main opposition’s – the BJP - failure to offer a credible alternative. The leader of the BJP, Lal Krishna Advani had the opportunity to move the party in a center-right direction, away from the right-wing extremism that tends to dominate it. He could have made his party a modernizing conservative force by expanding its base, reinforcing the need for economic reforms and giving respectability to the word ‘nationalism’ by rescuing it from its Hindu variant.

But Advani never articulated a governing philosophy. His politics were all about tactics but provided no strategic framework. And so the face of the BJP today is that of Narendra Modi, who allowed with impunity the persecution of Muslims under his watch.

Indian voters speak

It was against this disillusioning political backdrop that India went to the polls in May over a period of three weeks. The Indian voter, disenchanted by the shenanigans of smaller regional parties, wanted a stable, coherent government at the center, and Congress was the only viable option. As a result, Manmohan Singh is now the only prime minister since Jawaharlal Nehru in 1961 to be voted back into power after completing a full five year term.

Singh returns to office largely unencumbered by the demands and conditions placed on his previous government by coalition allies. Given the Congress’ sweeping victory, the party now has a mandate not dependent on the goodwill of regional parties. This time around, Singh will head a government that does not need the support of the Left and other parties who weakened his government and hobbled policymaking.

Clearly, the Gandhi dynasty appears to have regained momentum. The electoral verdict demonstrates a significant change in the political presence of the two main parties, with Congress gaining significant traction and the BJP receding. The momentum has been fueled in part by the energy of youth, personified in the young, charismatic Rahul Gandhi, on whom hopes are pinned for a party revamp.

The main opposition party, the BJP, is facing a meltdown as party leader Advani steps down. The party’s debate between ideological purity and pragmatism has already begun, a dispute that will sap its energy and undermine its ability to function as the main opposition. Meanwhile, the BJP’s defeat might tempt the party to fully embrace the extreme right, resulting in grave repercussions.

The BJP - and the Indian Left parties - are facing a crisis unlike any before, as their very identity is being challenged by the Indian middle class. Congress’ victory – and the defeat of the Communists - underlines Indian voter’s antipathy toward parties that continue to cling to outmoded economic thinking. The new government will likely implement reform measures that continue to open up the Indian economy. While the new government will focus on economic reform, its priority should be the well-being of the nation’s poor and those who have not yet benefited from India’s economic expansion.

The challenges facing the Indian economy remain significant, with the Asian Development Bank warning that India’s large fiscal imbalance is a daunting economic management task for the country in the coming years. However, despite the global economic downturn, India will grow at five-to-six percent this year and is likely to bounce back earlier than the industrialized world. Meanwhile, rural India is doing extremely well with help from four successive years of good monsoons. Congress also benefited from the goodwill that the rural employment guarantee scheme generated for the party in the hinterland.

Industry and markets have also made clear their approval of the new government; the day after election results were announced the Indian stock market soared by 2111 points, the sharpest one day rise ever by any index in the world. In fact, the SENSEX has risen almost 50 percent in 2009, making it the world’s best performing stock market.

Voters also made clear that after several years of regional myopia, they now want a government with a national, pan-Indian perspective. The Indian middle class realized the problems created by a weak government over the last five years. The middle class was desperate for stability and coherence at the center, and Congress presented the only credible alternative. An increasingly shrill campaign by sections of the BJP also consolidated the Muslim vote behind Congress. The youth vote, drawn in by Rahul Gandhi, was equally significant. The hope now is that Congress will bring fresh faces into the government. In response, the other parties will also have to make changes in their leadership.

The biggest challenge for the new government will be in the realm of foreign and security policy. The past five years have witnessed an unprecedented decline in national and global perceptions of Indian security. India has yet to come up with a credible policy toward Pakistan since the Mumbai terror attacks last November. The entire South Asian region is in turmoil from Nepal and Sri Lanka to Pakistan and Bangladesh, and Indian influence in its immediate neighborhood is at an all time low, while China’s is on the rise. Growing terrorist violence and a deteriorating internal security environment will also require immediate attention. The new government’s ability to manage these issues will be the first test of its effectiveness.

Surely, the Congress party has a great deal at stake in the next five years; it’s now incumbent on the new government to perform. The Indian electorate has demonstrated time and again that it has a mind of its own, and it will not hesitate to show Congress the door should it feel the party has failed to live up to its rapidly rising expectations.