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Business News/ Opinion / Congress’s long goodbye
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Congress’s long goodbye

Another abysmal showing for the Congress might just be the last nail in the electoral coffin for the grand old party

Photo: PTIPremium
Photo: PTI

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its supporters are right to feel buoyed by the recent assembly election results. After a string of impressive election wins following its landslide victory in the 2014 general election, the BJP suffered embarrassing defeats in Delhi and Bihar in 2015. Those elections, arguably, were the BJP’s to win or lose—and the losses, therefore, were stinging.

The mightily impressive win in Assam, and a good showing (in votes if not yet in seats) in some other states, puts the BJP back on the electoral rails. And, equally importantly, it validates expectations in the lead-up to the elections, based both on polls and on prior beliefs, that, after a rough finish in 2015, 2016 would bode well electorally for the BJP.

In some ways, the reactions to election results are like the reactions of the stock market to earnings announcements—a result that is expected by the market is already factored into a stock price, so the price does not jump or fall after expected news. On the contrary, news that is a surprise—such as abnormally high or low earnings—do lead stock prices to jump.

By analogy, the BJP’s defeat in Delhi and Bihar caused a drop in its electoral stock, while its victory win in Assam is in the neutral to positive range. By contrast, a surprising defeat in Assam would have further dented the party’s stock. Thus, in terms of the electoral narrative, the results augur well for the BJP.

What’s more, the BJP’s good showing vindicates Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the party’s continued faith in Amit Shah, party president and de facto chief election strategist. Shah and party strategists evidently learned the right lessons from the Bihar debacle and retooled the campaign—yielding rich dividends in Assam and the possibility of future success in regions in which the party has historically not had much of a footprint, the south and the east.

Readers will recall that, in Bihar, in the long gap between the second and subsequent phases of the election, the BJP shifted gears, moving away from a platform based principally on development-oriented issues and towards one based on social and cultural issues. As it happens, the conventional wisdom, that this hurt the BJP electorally, is not necessary correct—as the party fared better in assembly segments with larger minority populations shares during the latter phases—a fact which suggests that the modified strategy was partially successful, if not successful enough.

Be that as it may, in elections, perception may differ from reality, but yet perception becomes intertwined with reality, both by shaping an understanding of past events and expectations of the future. It is thus significant that the BJP’s 2016 campaigns went back to the 2014 playbook and stressed development and governance, and steered clear of potentially divisive and sensitive social and cultural issues—of a type which might resonate in the Hindi heartland but would have little traction elsewhere. (Pushing for a beef ban in West Bengal or Kerala would be just about as popular as calling for a beer ban in Belgium.)

The asterisk in the Assam case is that, in addition to development, the BJP’s successful campaign highlighted security issues—in particular, entirely legitimate concerns about infiltration of illegal migrants from Bangladesh. It is widely acknowledged, although understandably difficult to establish with data, that such migration is rapidly changing the demographic composition of the state, which raises bona fide concerns of national security and of social harmony. Indeed, one could argue that closing the tap of illegal migration works in consonance with a development agenda, not against it.

It follows that it is an entirely mischievous and meretricious argument to suggest, as have some commentators sympathetic to the Congress, that a secondary focus on security issues in Assam represented a surrogate for wider social and cultural issues. It would be a bit like suggesting that Republicans who support curtailing illegal migration from south of the US border are necessarily xenophobic or racist—a politically convenient deflection for Democrats who benefit disproportionately from minority votes.

That apart, the broader message coming out of these assembly elections reinforces a narrative harking back to the general election in 2014—that the BJP has now replaced the Congress as the national party around which the political economy revolves. This ups the ante as the nation heads towards 2019.

Another abysmal showing for the Congress might just be the last nail in the electoral coffin for the grand old party and its faltering and flailing dynastic leadership. On the flip side, a successful re-election for the BJP and its allies would represent the first time in independent India’s history that a non-Congress government manages to be successfully re-elected (aside from the election following the dissolution of the short-lived 12th Lok Sabha in 1999, which saw the BJP under Atal Bihari Vajpayee win a five-year term in office).

Politically mature democracies tend eventually to outgrow the party in power at the time of independence or which dominated their early post-independence history. (Name the last Federalist president of the US.) Could India be living through the long goodbye of the Congress?

Every fortnight, In the Margins explores the intersection of economics, politics and public policy to help cast light on current affairs.

Comments are welcome at views@livemint.com. To read Vivek Dehejia’s previous columns, go to www.livemint.com/vivekdehejia

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Published: 22 May 2016, 11:32 PM IST
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