By Indranil Banerjea
The UPA government has been reduced to a minority in Parliament. The Congress leaders appear to be, however, quite confident that the government will continue and there will be no need for mid-term poll. They must have already got promise of support from the BSP and SP for support in Parliament to sustain the government, in case; the combined opposition moves a no confidence motion.
Mayawati, the BSP supremo, did not participate in the Bharat Bandh — a clear indication of her pro-UPA plan. The big question, however, is whether the Congress can rely on her. In 1992, she had promised to support a motion on vote of confidence in Parliament, but she voted against the motion. She may not inflict a shock on the UPA right now, but she may do so in the very near future.
It looks like the Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav has distanced himself from the UPA: He participated in the “Bandh” and courted arrest. He wants an immediate rollback on the FDI in retail issue. There is a possibility, however, Mulayam Singh Yadav is a “pragmatic” person and may make an unexpected turnaround. To get even a thin majority, the UPA has to rely on unreliable leaders of parties like the BSP and SP.
In the meanwhile, the BJP and the Left may approach President Pranab Mukherjee and ask him to convene a special meeting of the Parliament for considering a motion of no-confidence in the minority government.
As it is, retrospectively, the Indian politics entered a new era at the beginning of the 1990s. The period of political domination by the Congress (I) branch of the Indian National Congress came to an end with the party’s defeat in the1989. The result of elections was more of a rebuff to the Congress (I) than a mandate for the opposition. Although the Congress (I) remained the largest party in Parliament with 197 seats, it was unable to form a government. Instead, the Janata Dal, which had 143 seats, united with its National Front allies to form a minority government precariously dependent on the support of the BJP (85 seats) and the communist parties (45 seats). Although the Congress (I) lost more than 50 per cent of its seats in Parliament, its share of the vote dropped only from 48.1 per cent to 39.5 per cent of the vote. The Congress (I) share of the vote was still more than double that of the next largest party, the Janata Dal, which received support from 17.8 per cent of the electorate. More grave for the long-term future of the Congress (I) was the erosion of vital elements of the traditional coalition of support for the Congress (I) in North India. Alienated by the Congress (I)’s cultivation of Hindu activists, Muslims defected to the Janata Dal in large numbers.
The Congress (I) simultaneously lost a substantial share of Scheduled Caste voters to the BSP in Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh and to the Indian People’s Front in Bihar. The 1991 elections returned the Congress (I) to power but did not reverse important trends in the party’s decline. The Congress (I) won 227 seats, up from 197 in 1989, but its share of the vote dropped from 39.5 percent in 1989 to 37.6 percent. Greater division within the opposition rather than growing popularity of the Congress (I) was the key element in the party’s securing an increased number of seats. Also troubling was the further decline of the Congress (I) in heavily populated Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, which together account for more than 25 percent of all seats in Parliament. In Uttar Pradesh, the number of seats that the Congress (I) was able to win went down from fifteen to two, and its share of the vote dropped from 32 per cent to 20 per cent. In Bihar the seats won by the Congress (I) fell from four to one, and the Congress (I) share of the vote was reduced from 28 per cent to 22 percent.
The Congress (I) problems in these states, which until 1989 had been bastions of its strength, were reinforced by the party’s poor showing in the November 1993 state elections. These elections were characterized by the further disintegration of the traditional Congress coalition, with Brahmins and other upper castes defecting to the BJP and Scheduled Castes and Muslims defecting to the Janata Dal, the Samajwadi Party (Socialist Party), and the BSP.
The Nehruvian socialist ideology that the party had used to fashion India’s political agenda had lost much of its popular appeal. The Congress (I) political leadership had lost the mantle of moral integrity inherited from the Indian National Congress’s role in the independence movement, and it was widely viewed as corrupt. Support among key social bases of the Congress (I) political coalition was seriously eroding. The main alternative to the Congress (I), the Bharatiya Janata Party, embarked on a campaign to reorganise the Indian electorate in an effort to create a Hindu nationalist majority coalition. Simultaneously, such parties as the Janata Dal, the Samajwadi Party, and the Bahujan Samaj Party attempted to ascend to power on the crest of an alliance of interests uniting Dalits Backward Classes Scheduled Tribes and religious minorities.
The structure of India’s federal structure creates a strong Central government but also has facilitated the concentration of power in the Central government in general and in particular in the office of the prime minister. This centralisation of power has been a source of considerable controversy and political tension. It is likely to further exacerbate political conflict because of the increasing pluralism of the country’s party system and the growing diversity of interest-group representation.
Whether or not developments in Indian politics exacerbate the continuing problems or give birth to greater democracy broadly hinges on efforts to resolve three key issues. How will political system, now more than ever based on egalitarian democratic values, accommodate the changes taking place in its hierarchical social system? How will the state balance the need to recognise the interests of the country’s remarkably heterogeneous society with the imperatives of national unity? And, in the face of the declining legitimacy of the state and the continuing development of civil society, can the state regenerate its legitimacy, and if it is to do so, how should it redefine the boundaries between state and society? India has confronted these issues throughout much of its history. These issues, with their intrinsic tensions, will continue to serve as sources of change in the continuing evolution of the polity.INAV