Professor John Galbraith once indicated the weakness of the Planning of the Indian state. He called it Therapeutic Targetry. What that meant was that whenever there was a big gap between where you are and where you ought to have been you announce an even higher target, bigger than the gap. In many ways our political system is also afflicted by the same malady. The BJP’s goal of increasing its vote share by ten percentage points is in many ways a case of Therapeutic Targetry. Given the juncture at which Mr. Gadkari has assumed captaincy the criticality of the call cannot be denied but the call in itself deserves a cathartic regression to understand the feasibility of the objective.
The BJP with its Ayodhya focused agenda doubled its vote share from ten percent to twenty percent between 1989 and 1991. The BSP achieved a similar feat of Uttar Pradesh with its Dalit focused agenda between 1995 and 1996. However both the parties did not make it to power finally till they built a broader coalition which increased their vote shares by significant but smaller amounts in their final quest for power – significant because the new floating voters constituted the last mile between the parties extant positions and the pedestal of power.
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The key question today is whether the BJP can go this uphill climb again given the fact that today its vote share is even lesser than in 1991. It was the absence of a charismatic Congress face in the nineties and the decline of the Janata Leaership which paved the way for the growth of BJP in the post Babri phase. The scenario of the late nineties is unlikely to repeat itself again. Narsimha Rao and Sitaram Kesari brought the Congress unstuck to the extent that the party rendered itself ineffective in Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh - adding up to 160 seats in all. The decline of the Congress drove the urban voters to the BJP, created allies like Mamata and the Dravidian parties for the BJP; and the unending amoeba like splits of the Janata Parivaar created a vacuum that was filled by the BJP. The BJP got valuable space in Assam, Orissa, Karnataka and Bihar by virtue of the decline of the Janata Parivaar and the AGP. In Uttar Pradesh the split of the Janata Parivaar and the parties skilful blending of Mandal and Kamandal helped the BJP rope in the peasantry that helped it rule the roost in the state in the late 90’s.
With so many favourable factors it took the BJP seven long years (1991-1998) and three Lok Sabha elections to scale a gain of five percentage points from a twenty to twenty five percent vote share.
With so many favourable factors it took the BJP seven long years (1991-1998) and three Lok Sabha elections to scale a gain of five percentage points from a twenty to twenty five percent vote share. That is seven percentage points more than it is today. If the party’s vote share were to increase by ten percentage points it would mean that the party would need to reclaim its numero uno status as the non-Congress party in several states where it has right now been relegated to junior partner status or simply the third force. Importantly the party needs to reclaim its numero uno status in Uttar Pradesh, which now seems a tall order. In fact Uttar Pradesh was one of the states where the party had the weakest base; a peak vote share of 36.5% in 1998, but gifted the party an unusually high number of seats by virtue of the first past the post system. That however made the BJP complacent. Given the overall declining trend of the BJP, it is the reversal of this trend that will be the bigger and the first challenge rather than scaling up by even two percentage points.
If you eliminate West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa and Andhra Pradesh that effectively means the NDA alliance is out of reckoning in 224 seats or would win only a handful of these 224 seats. Add to these the seats in states like Kerala and other North eastern states and it is quite clear that the NDA is in the reckoning in not more than 300 seats. Of these seats the states where the party is in direct contest with the Congress add up to just 137 seats: Delhi, Himachal , Uttarakhand , Rajasthan , Gujarat , Madhya Pradesh , Chhattisgarh , Goa and Karnataka. That leaves a huge 163 seats where the party is going to be dependent on its allies to secure seats. This means that the chances of the NDA forming a government given the current configuration are weak. However if the BJP were to cobble up a coalition with a melange of pre and post poll alliances that would be equally feeble.
Remember the March 2000 elections in Bihar, the party secured more votes and seats than the Samata Party, however not confident of having the mandate by itself the party decided to vacate the space in favour of the Samata Party that saw Nitish Kumar making his first bid for Chief Minister ship in the state. The party had 67 seats and a vote share of 14.64% as against 34 seats of the Samata Party with a vote share of 8.75%. It is this weakened BJP that most NDA allies, pre and post poll, would be waiting for, and the current set up leaves space for such manoeuvres. Jharkhand should therefore be seen as indicator of the times to come and not as an aberration. In such a situation the BJP could have a very weak Prime Minister of its own or even one from its allies if their numbers overwhelm the BJP’s. The sweeping mandate for the Congress has not buried the ambitions of regional leaders but only muted them temporarily. The current dispensation has left very little of the spoils of power for the regional chieftains. A weak BJP is their best bet to replace the Congress, and our recent experiences suggest that the BJP might well bite that bait.
Unless there is a tectonic shift in the landscape the process of acquiring power itself is likely to subvert the BJP’s objective of growth. Through innovative social schemes the party may look like the “good boy next door” but it has already lost the brand initiative to its rivals. The goal of a ten percent gain in strength therefore looks ever more elusive.
(Writer Jai Mrug is a psephologist with twelve years of experience in the field of electronic and print media, he has been an avid tracker of elections in India and has worked with leading Television houses in the country and has analysed elections for a number of leading newspapers in the country.)
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