Why 2014 could be like 1996: NDA is in with a chance

By Jai Mrug For an avid student of politics, RK Laxman was more than a mere cartoonist. His cartoons often had simple, even subliminal, messages that spoke more articulately than those verbose editorials. One cartoon from the early nineties remains etched firmly in memory. It depicted Ram Jethmalani as a push-cart vendor hawking evidence of all sorts of scams involving ministers in the then Union Cabinet as well as the late Prime Minister, PV Narasimha Rao. The reference was to the allegations made by the late stockbroker Harshad Mehta, who claimed he paid a bribe to Rao. This allegation was followed by a string of many others against the Prime Minister in the years to come. An important milestone was a famous press conference at the Taj in Mumbai in July 1993, where Jethmalani and Harshad Mehta demonstrated how one could stuff Rs 1 crore into a suitcase to validate Mehta’s allegations against the Prime Minister. Jethmalani claimed that one such suitcase was indeed used by his client Harshad Mehta to bribe Rao. Given his image as an indecisive PM, Rao was vulnerable to allegations made by all and sundry, from pickle vendors to stock market racketeers. In many ways it was this mélange of alleged scams that laid the foundations for one of the worst-ever debacles in the Congress’ political history — the 1996 Lok Sabha elections. But it was not the mere lack of credibility of the ruling party that resulted in the 1996 waterloo. There are three primary drivers in national elections. One is the very credibility of the ruling dispensation. Second, how it manages the arithmetic of alliances and/or fragments within itself. And third, how it manages the anti-incumbency factor it faces in many states. Though the other two drivers work independently as well, the party’s credibility quotient readily multiplies or whittles down its performance on the other two counts.  That is precisely the ground that Anna Hazare has laid for the Opposition. That is what various surveys are pointing to – the mood. However, it is the latter two factors which will define how the mood translates into votes and seats. Two contrasting polls bring out interesting attributes that could shape the 2014 mandate. [caption id=“attachment_80625” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“The situation in 2014 may not be radically different from the situation in 1996. Fayaz Kabli/Reuters”]  [/caption] The CNN IBN-The Hindu State of the Nation poll conducted in August predicts urban losses and a credibility crisis for the Congress. On the other hand, an India Today poll predicts a precipitous decline for the Congress. The former poll correctly identifies the onset of anti-incumbency against the Central government – its record on tackling corruption, price rise and fighting terrorism is viewed with deep scepticism. According to the CNN IBN poll, the UPA may get around 38 percent of the votes while the NDA would poll 26 percent votes. While the India Today poll identifies the same issues, its translation of the popular sentiment into vote shares is different from the poll conducted by CNN IBN and so is its projection of seats. According to the India Today poll, the difference between the NDA and the UPA is a mere two percentage points. The Congress-led block polls 29 percent of the votes, followed by the BJP-led block which polls 27 percent of the votes. Perspectives from history can help synthesise data points from both the polls to make possible inferences on the mandate of 2014 – assuming the mood holds. The ensuing configuration for 2014 is, in many ways, uncannily similar to the developing situation before 1996. In 1996, the BJP had just three state governments — Rajasthan, Gujarat and Delhi — and it ran a coalition government in Maharashtra that had just voted the Congress out of power a year ago. Thus there was very little state-level incumbency that the BJP had to face in the 1996 general election. The situation in 2014 may not be radically different from the situation in 1996. Much like the allegations of corruption engulfing UPA-2 within two years of being re-elected with a bigger mandate, the first wave of allegations struck the Narasimha Rao regime in 1993. Similar to 1996, the Congress faces incumbency challenges in 2014. Three states that returned a handsome 49 Congress MPs in 2009 (Andhra Pradesh, Haryana and Delhi) now face the prospect of a two-term or greater anti-incumbency. Continues on the next page Incumbency factors, along with numerous splits in 1996, ensured that the Congress party was the biggest loser in the first-past-the-post system, irrespective of its vote share. The string of allegations and the low credibility quotient of the government served as necessary catalysts to ensure widespread damage to the Congress. That explains why with a very negligible gain in vote share (0.8 percent) the BJP inched past the Congress in the Lok Sabha in 1996. The Congress ended up with 140 seats while the BJP ended up with 162 seats. This gave it the lead to form a coalition headed by Atal Behari Vajpayee. If we go by the mere construct of local anti-incumbency, states where the Congress was already ruling or was ruling till recently, constituted more than 266 seats in 1996. In 2014, the Congress would be the incumbent force in states adding up to as many as 210 seats. Importantly, the party is threatened with severe reverses in Andhra Pradesh, where it faces a rebellion from within and the rising crescendo for a separate Telangana. If the current trend persists for three more years, regional incumbency and factionalism will set the stage for a 1996-like mandate in 2014. With the response to Anna Hazare’s campaign, the first toll gate towards such a mandate could have been crossed. A critical issue is the anomalous relationship between vote share and seat share – something the 1996 election amply establishes. Thus, though the final vote shares of the two fronts could be approximately in the same range as anticipated by the CNN IBN-Hindu poll, the results could very disproportionately favour one of the fronts, as was the case in 1996. On the other hand, the vote share projections for the BJP-led NDA by the India Today poll are unusually high and a little hard to imagine in the first-past-the-post system. The BJP is projected to poll 33 percent of votes in a national election. This is hard to imagine given that the peak vote share of the BJP in 1998 was a tad higher than 25 percent, after which it has never regained that stature. Bihar is a case in point. The poll projects a 77 percent vote for the BJP-JD (U) combine in the state in the event of a Lok Sabha poll and 10 percent for the Congress. It is hard to imagine that Lalu Prasad and Ram Vilas Paswan put together would poll less than 13 percent of the vote, leaving aside some for the smaller parties and independents.. The final outcome could, therefore, lie somewhere between that suggested by the CNN IBN poll and the India Today poll. More than once in the past, an electorate yearning for change has voted for a leaderless, and even sterile, opposition. [caption id="" align=“alignleft” width=“200” caption=“Jai Mrug”][/caption] Anna Hazare has readied the foundation; the Opposition will now need to get its act together to put the scaffoldings in place. Even if the Opposition chooses a docile role for itself, anti-incumbency at the regional level could gift it surprising victories. It is now a question of orchestration of votes through a systematic campaign. Whoever takes the lead in this will emerge the winner. Jai Mrug is a political commentator and a close watcher of the election scene in India.