India After Modi

by Ajay Gudavarthy

  NOTA has no electoral value in our system. Even if the maximum votes are polled in favour of NOTA, the candidate with the largest number of votes, which could theoretically even be just one vote, will still be declared elected. The Supreme Court is of the opinion that despite NOTA not having an electoral value, it is still a very significant tool for citizens to express their discontent which will, in turn, it hopes, cleanse the system. It is also seen as a tool for the marginalized groups to highlight their issues that would not otherwise find space in the mainstream electoral discourse. For instance, women activists in Kerala campaigned for the use of NOTA if no women were fielded as candidates. Similarly, youth activists in Tamil Nadu campaigned for the use of NOTA as a protest against growing corruption. More recently, in the context of elections in Gujarat, parents threatened to vote NOTA as a protest against growing fee hikes in schools and colleges.20

  Civil Disobedience or Liberal Constitutionalism?

  This rather unusual nature of protest that NOTA allows for raises interesting questions for us to understand the changes in Indian democracy, the way it is being perceived and practised. NOTA presents a paradox for Indian democracy. It signifies participation in the electoral process but also allows growing discontent with all that it entails—political parties, politicians, and their politics. This paradox between participation and discontent is important to understand in some detail to know how NOTA is being used and perceived by voters and by political representatives. What do the voters seem to trust in their willingness to vote, and what are they unhappy about in opting for NOTA? Who do they think will correct the maladies that they wish to highlight by choosing NOTA? NOTA is a provision for protest within the limits of liberal constitutionalism, unlike the other modes of protest, such as the boycott of elections that has been used mostly in conflict zones such as Kashmir, the Northeast or by the militant Left wing parties such as the Maoists in Central India. For instance, in the last elections in Jammu and Kashmir, the maximum number of voters who opted for NOTA was in the Banihal constituency (2,405 voters), followed by 1,641 voters in Bandipura, Kashmir. While the lowest use of NOTA was in Nubra assembly segment of Leh district. Further, the number of voters using NOTA option was higher in the assembly polls than in the parliamentary elections of 2014. While 31,550 voters used NOTA in the Lok Sabha polls, 49,000 voters used it in the assembly elections. During the parliamentary elections, Udhampur-Doda constituency in Kashmir witnessed the highest number of voters who used NOTA, followed by Anantnag constituency, while Ladakh witnessed the lowest use of NOTA.

  A Boycott of Polls or NOTA?

  What do we make of this pattern? Can NOTA become an effective alternative to boycott of polls in Kashmir and other conflict zones? Does providing the option of NOTA, therefore, strengthen the interest of the voters in Kashmir in the electoral process? Or does it provide too weak an option, given the insurmountable problems that people face in conflict zones or elsewhere?

  Does it not make more sense to empower NOTA by cancelling elections in constituencies where NOTA polls the highest votes, to be followed up by other deliberative processes to highlight the corrective measures to be put in place and to make the representative process more robust and effective?

  If such amendments to the electoral process are not to be made, then the Indian democracy will be more susceptible to the phenomenon of strongmen that we are currently witnessing, where voters are compelled to depend on individual personality cults to deliver where institutions are failing them. There will be more calls for ‘direct democracy’, undermining the representative process and relying more on bureaucratic interventions of unelected and self-appointed representatives, which could also include judicial overreach.

  Instead of expanding the efficacy of such provisions as NOTA, what we are witnessing are strategies such as the Gujarat Local Authorities Act (Amendment) 2009, where voting for the local bodies was sought to be made compulsory at the pain of penalty for not doing so. Thankfully, the Gujarat High Court stayed the legislation, arguing that ‘the right to vote itself provides the right to refrain from voting’.21 Instead of a deliberative process, such provisions seek to criminalize discontent and protest. And without protest, as we have witnessed, liberal democracies are barely responsive and functional in our part of the world.

  Towards 2019: Opposition Needs to Rally Behind Mayawati

  Gorakhpur by-elections have set the tone for 2019. The results are important not only for the SP and the BSP coming together but this alliance has also thrown up the feasibility of a united opposition and lent it credibility. However, the opposition lacks both a credible leader and a sustained narrative that makes the opposition more than merely anti-Modi solidarity. This is where the opposition needs to rally around Mayawati as the face of the opposition. This will offer both a credible leader and a narrative that has the potential to push the BJP on the back foot.

  A united opposition with Mayawati as the face offers a narrative of social justice with the possibility of electing a woman-Dalit leader for the first time as the possible Prime Minister of the country. Having Mayawati will negate the criticism that opposition is either merely an anti-Modi brigade or a mumbo-jumbo without any clear direction. Further, with Mayawati in opposition to Mr Modi, Modi would not make it a presidential kind of contest as he can no longer make a claim to belonging to a lower caste as against the dynasty-based entitlement of Rahul Gandhi or any other leader from the upper echelons on the society. Most importantly, this will rob Modi and his entourage of the oratory advantage by creating a strong rhetoric against the opposition, as any attack personal or otherwise will work against Modi. He will necessarily have to be guarded in the choice of his words or claims he makes. Consider the facts that while the story against Manmohan Singh in the Gujarat elections might have earned Modi some brownie points even though it was a botched-up claim but hidden beneath it was a rhetoric against Muslims and also Lutyens Delhi.22 Contrast this with the rhetoric of Yogi in referring to the alliance of SP-BSP as one of ‘saap and chechunder’ clearly went against him. It made him look, whether intended or not, as casteist and undoubtedly helped ease the unity between backward classes and the Dalits.23 A strategy that Modi used when Mani Shankar Aiyer referred to him as Neech but which Modi extrapolated to mean Neech Jaatyi. Given the motor mouths in the BJP, it would be difficult for the BJP to hide the caste prejudices that exist amidst them. With Mayawati as the face of the opposition, Modi will be denied both the gift of the gab and the advantage he wishes to have in a Presidential kind of a contest.

  Unity with a Face

  Further, projecting Mayawati will provide the Opposition a credible narrative for deepening democracy in supporting a Dalit leader. This will work to the advantage of various regional parties in consolidating the Dalit voters in their own states. Especially for the Congress, which often reminded of the respect it offered Ambedkar, including the fact that Nehru invited him to join the cabinet and head the Constitution-making process in spite of his differences with the Congress. This will be the second watershed moment for the national party that will go down in history for enabling the process of making a Dalit woman for the first time the Prime Minister of the country. This will, to some extent, also checkmate Amit Shah’s strategy of drawing on Dalit voters in different states. The Congress Party and Rahul Gandhi may not be a serious contender for the top post as the Congress may not get the required seats and for Rahul to head a government with a large coalition may not work to his advantage in emerging as a formidable leader. The Congress already has the precedent of Sonia Gandhi offering the post to Dr Manmohan Singh which in fact consolidated her hold over the Congress and blunted BJP’s criticism of a ‘foreigner’ taking over the reins. This move will, in all probability, have similar impact in making over the image of Rahul Gandhi as a leader with purpose and concern for social justice. For all other regional parties, including the Left accepting Mayawati as a leader will be far more feasible than any other leader. For the Left, this will
provide them with the historical opportunity to prove to the Dalits their preparedness to work under the leadership of the Dalits, which has been a long-standing grouse of various Dalit groups against the Left. It will also provide the Left a credible reasoning for joining the opposition that they are currently hesitant about with the Congress at the helm of the affairs. Left-Dalit unity becomes a far more realistic programme with the Left actively supporting and campaigning for Mayawati as the leader of the opposition. For the various regional parties, Mayawati poses a far less of a challenge than any other leader. She has no presence in the states that regional parties would contest, unlike the Congress with whom they have a direct competition in many of the states. The key for the opposition unity this time around, unlike the previous times, needs a leader rather than look like a loose coalition of parties that would start bickering soon after forming the government. The memory of the Janata government after the Emergency and later in the 90s still haunts the coalition politics. A unity under a single leader with a strong social justice motive will also lend the necessary image of stable governance. Stability continues to be an important issue that opposition needs to factor in; otherwise Modi can well make it a strong point of his campaign and the electorate might prefer to give Modi a second chance rather than take a chance with an unstable government that would have impact on the economy and also a repeat of the ‘policy paralysis’ witnessed under The UPA-II.

  With the Telegu Desham Party (TDP) pulling out of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and Yuvajana Shramika Rythu Congress (YSR Congress) moving the no-confidence motion, the possibility of an exodus from the NDA had gained momentum. Instead of a non-Congress and non-BJP alternative, that is far riskier in terms of electoral arithmetic, a unified opposition that many parties are looking for in order to get reprieve from the current regime that has not hesitated to target the various regional leaders who have opposed the current regime stands a much better chance. Adversity can create its own set of opportunities—and the current impasse with grave threats to democracy itself with the undermining of institutional autonomy and opposition of every kind the alternative of rallying behind a more palpable alternative—makes it far more realistic. Indian democracy has been robust in terms of its political dynamism, which has not often translated into social mobility or cohesion between various castes and religious groups. While a united opposition rallying behind Mayawati may not as yet bridge that yawning gap between the political and social dimensions of democracy, it will nevertheless provide an entry point to revisit that question, and this alone can effectively counter an otherwise popular strategy of creating a unified Hindu nation that in essence means a halt to institutionalizing the lived diversity of India, which necessarily undermines the autonomy of the regional players and the diversity they represent.

  BJP’s Strategy for 2019

  As we move closer to the next general election, BJP seems to be refashioning its strategy to gear up to the challenge of 2019 with a much-reduced credibility. For 2014, it employed a more Congress-style accommodative politics within the larger grid of a populist strategy, creating a narrative of ‘us’ versus ‘them’—essentially to target the religious minorities and portray them as the outsiders. This was coupled with the credibility crisis facing the Congress. The party also had the advantage of Narendra Modi’s image, who at the time, was seen as a decisive leader who could deliver dramatic results.

  Many of these advantages are now on the wane. Modi is no longer considered infallible, even if his abilities to deliver are suspect. Congress—even if half-heartedly—is gaining momentum and finding a foothold in creating a narrative that can hold some interest. BJP realizes it cannot repeat the magic figures in much of north India, and also perhaps in the west. The initial strategy was to compensate the loss with some compensation in the east, spreading to Bengal and other parts of the northeastern states. Similarly, BJP wished to spread its hold in the southern states too. Both of these strategies proved to be non-starters.

  Southern Sojourn

  BJP failed to gain credibility in the south. In Tamil Nadu, the fiasco that followed the death of J. Jayalalitha and the witch-hunting of Congress leaders hasn’t yielded much result. In Kerala, the presence of the RSS hasn’t converted into votes, and with the falling apart of the Hadiya case after court intervention, BJP has failed to find an alternate entry point in the state. Though initially a relatively brighter spot, after the installation of the new coalition government, the political mood in Karnataka now seems to be uncertain.

  Andhra Pradesh boomeranged after BJP backtracked on special status. And Jaganmohan Reddy did not gain anything from his nonchalant padyatras. Nor did the silent launching of Pawan Kalyan to attract Kapu voters do much good. In fact, Telangana is the BJP’s only hope to get additional seats in the south, with a possible post-poll alliance with the Telangana Rashtra Samithi that wishes to stay close to the Centre to keep in check the rise of the Congress, which might impact the state assembly elections that are close to the Lok Sabha polls next year. BJP’s own organizational growth has remained stunted due to K. Chandrasekhar Rao’s deft management of minorities. He has also appropriated the symbolism of Hindu identity by performing yagnas and liberally funding Hindu temples in the state.

  The prospect of notching up even a simple majority looks to be a herculean task at the moment for the BJP. Going by the shift in its political discourse in the recent past, they seem to have decided to give up the old kind of accommodative politics in favour of a new kind of polarization—which involves more than othering of Muslims. What is new is that the BJP has given up on Dalit votes too. The BJP will continue to practice the policy of sub-dividing Dalits in order to gain votes of smaller Dalit sub-castes that have remained unrepresented.

  New Political Cocktail

  Krishna Madiga, a robust Madiga leader from Telangana has been campaigning nation-wide to put the issue of subdivision of scheduled castes on the national agenda. This may yield some results, but more crucial seems to be the strategy of combining Dalits, Muslims, and Left-liberals as the new combined other.

  The new narrative wishes to consolidate upper-caste and OBC votes rather than cater to a more loosely knit social engineering. BJP garnered just about 31% of votes in the previous general elections, and the party is of the view that in order to maintain that figure, it is more important to consolidate Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya and OBC votes.

  In order to achieve this, it is beginning to draft a new narrative that is more explicitly critical of the Dalits, along with the Muslims. Bhima-Koregaon was the first salvo they fired to consolidate this narrative. Further, the projected link between Dalits and jihad Islam is the next layer of this new polarization. As part of this, they have claimed that Jignesh Mevani received funding from Islamic groups and now, it is Rohith Vemula’s mother who is being condemned for allegedly receiving help from the IUML. These two layers are then being used to suggest links between jihadi Islamic groups, Dalits, and the Maoists to symbolize the Left.

  The recent claims of a possible Maoist attack being planned against Modi further reinforce such an implication. The Maoist and jihadi link has been mentioned in the case of the Bhima-Koregaon incident. All of these will be now be stitched to the Kashmiri separatists and militancy in the Valley. With the pulling out of the government in Jammu and Kashmir, BJP is attempting to entrench the image of Muslims as essentially being ungrateful and unreasonable in spite of the repeated attempts of the party to appease them—Modi offering development aid and visiting Nawaz Sharif in Pakistan, Kashmiris performing well in the UPSC (one of them even represented the Indian cricket team—another symbol of jingoistic nationalism), and the declaration of ceasefire during Ramzan. This, BJP feels, has set the stage to consolidate the sense of violation among the majority Hindus, alongside consolidating the upper-caste vote-bank by isolating the Dalits.

  Further, the party is projecting Rahul Gandhi as the representative figure of this new ‘historic block’ of Muslims, Dalit
s, and Maoists. Congress is being projected as being soft on Muslim fundamentalism, Dalit aggression, and a national threat from the Left-oriented political groups such as the Maoists. These three groups, along with the Kashmiris represent the impending national security threat, tacitly supported by the Congress.

  BJP’s strategy hinges on the way in which the OBCs will vote. Changes in the reservation policy, as well as growing joblessness, have hurt the interests of OBCs. It is no secret that these groups are precariously located in terms of their relation to the Dalits at one end and the Muslims at the other. In the last three decades, OBCs have been at the forefront of regional parties, one of the core reasons for the Congress’ terminal decline in many of the northern states.

  With the saturation of leadership positions in the regional party, smaller groups among the OBCs have steadily moved to the BJP and remained a potent force. OBCs have become increasingly drawn into the communal anti-Muslim rhetoric for various reasons, including the need to fit into hyper-masculine claims that figuratively draw them closer to the way Kshatriyas self-represent themselves. Hyper-nationalist discourse allows space for these not so visible cultural traits to find a legitimate social narrative.