DEMONETISATION’S POLITICAL IMPACT YET TO BE ASSESSED
By Harihar Swarup
Contrary to propaganda by the BJP, the party has not gained in recent bye-elections; neither is it an endorsement of demonetisation. Bye-elections constitute a very limited test of the popular mood post demonization. In any case, the BJP is not a major player in West Bengal, Tripura, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and results in these parts of the country cannot be construed to be a vote against the Prime Minister.
On the other hand, the BJP has failed to dislodge the incumbent parties from any of the state. The solace for the BJP is that it has retained the Lakhimpur seat (in Assam), though with a steep fall in margin. Similarly, it has won the Shahdol (Madhya Pradesh) seat, but again, with a markedly reduced margin. The party can take comfort from the fact that it has retained the two Lok Sabha seats in Madhya Pradesh. The Opposition may be entitled to feel that it has made inroads into the ruling party’s strongholds.
Ruling parties enjoy an inherent advantage in bye-elections. Voters see little point in antagonizing their rulers when there is no immediate prospect of a change in government. West Bengal, Assam, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry had gone to polls in April-May, this year and the recent bye elections were not expected to deviate from the general election trend.
It is, obviously, too early to suggest that the BJP has scored spectacularly well with the voters with the “surgical strike” on black money. The real referendum will come in a few months time in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab, by which time the RBI-induced dislocation would have sorted itself out—one way or the other. By that time also the Prime Minister would have finessed his “pro-poor, pro-rich” argument, and, it should be an interesting contest between a pan-Indian political posturing and regional articulation of sub-nationalist aspirations.
It would be curious to watch how the demonetisation experiment impacts other political parties’ capacity to spend huge amounts of money in these two crucial states. The ruling party at the Centre believes that it is in the safe zone because it only uses “clean” money while the rivals would be sunk without a prayer because they rely exclusively on tainted money, which now has become “raddi”. Whether the BJP’s self-serving calculation works to its advantage or not, the citizen would like to believe that demonetisation drive has cleaned, at least, temporarily, the electoral system. The integrity of the electoral process needs to be restored.
With just a few months to go for assembly elections in Punjab, the ruling Akali Dal-BJP alliance confronts a double whammy. Not only does it face grave anti-incumbency due to poor governance record and perception of heavy corruption, it now has to deal with effects of demonetisation particularly on farmers. The latter have been greatly hampered by lack of access to new currency as they mostly deal in cash to meet the costs of such as seeds, fertilizers and diesel during the sowing time. Reports suggest that only three-fourths of wheat sowing has taken place in the state this year due to cash crunch.
Congress hopes to take advantage of that and turn the page after a disappointing performance in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, and the AAP is looking to shed its tag of a Delhi-centric party. After losing momentum due to infighting, AAP is trying to seize the initiative by playing up its image as a crusader against corruption. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has announced that MP and comedian Bhagwant Mann will contest against Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal. AAP also received a shot in the arm when two independent MLAs who earlier supported cricketer-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu – have now signed a pact with them.
This development has put a question mark on Sidhu’s new political forum—Awaaz-e-Punjab– now left with just his MLA wife Navjot Kaur Sidhu and former India’s hockey Captain Pargat Singh. Congress may have made former Chief Minister Amarinder Singh the chief of their campaign committee but shied away from declaring him to be its CM candidate. If Congress now seals the deal with Sidhu, that will enhance its prospects in face of AAP’s disruption of bipolar politics in the state. (IPA Service)