03-04-2007, 01:45 AM
http://www.indianexpress.com/story/24696.html
One side of two coins
Pratap Bhanu Mehta
Posted online: Saturday, March 03, 2007 at 0000 hrs Print Email
Pratap Bhanu Mehta
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To reform UP, trifurcate itOur Insecurity Syndrome Warm up the debateNo more dark spacesThe truth is not in the facts
It is tempting to over-analyse elections for their deep hidden meanings. But the beauty of messy political numbers is that each interpretation raises only further questions. If inflation was the key determinant, why did the BJP do better in urban areas? If the election is meant to tame the arrogance of power, whether in Amarinder Singh or the Lal Batti effect, why was the vote swing not more pronounced? If there is a quiet consolidation of upper caste votes in response to reservation, why are we not seeing more political traction for anti-reservation politics? Anti-incumbency as an explanation begs the question: why anti-incumbency?
The search for the deep wellsprings of electoral outcomes is, in many circumstances, difficult. The surface result is all there is. This does not mean that there are no reasons behind people voting the way they do. But interpreting the result is more complicated than we acknowledge. This is because voters are perhaps more ambivalent. They know what they want but do not know how to get it. Hence the results are a lot more tentative in their meaning.
These election results however raise an important question. Is it possible that both the Congress and the BJP may now experience less attrition of their votes to smaller groups than many had feared? It is still too early to tell, but the political space for consolidation by the two major parties seems to be somewhat more open. But whether this consolidation can happen will depend upon the ability of both parties to wrestle with some key issues.
The first is ideological. For good or for ill, the Congress and the BJP are still the defining poles of Indian politics. There are many other significant parties representing important social forces. But they donât set the terms of ideological debate. In a way the Congress and the BJP are, at least in image, the left of centre and the right of centre parties. They are supposed to act as checks on each otherâs excesses. Ideologically, the Congress has to guard against two excesses. In terms of economic ideology, it has to ensure that the defensible elements of its leftward turn, like greater attention to social sector, do not degenerate into an indiscriminate statism. And in terms of a conception of citizenship it has to ensure that its brand of secularism does not generate its own politics of divisiveness, where community identity becomes the axis of distribution. Its tussle is between secularism as principle and secularism as opportunism.
The BJP in turn paid the price for not being quite able to articulate an agenda for the social sector that can knit together a distributive coalition. It has to learn to distinguish between the proposition that community should not trump citizenship and the proposition that the minority community is always and the only one suspect; to distinguish between a genuine ideal of common citizenship and a Hindutva-inspired one. Its challenge is to keep fanaticism at bay.
In practice, at least at the central level, both parties converge more than their own self-representation would suggest. But neither has yet got the credibility to assure anyone but their core base that they have resolved their own internal tensions. They gain less credit for the good they do, and give succour to those who fear the harm they might inflict.
The Congress still has to overcome its crisis of credibility, and the BJP the taint of fanaticism. But these problems stem from their core weakness: in different ways their organisational structure is a handicap. Both have a crisis of leadership. Although Vajpayee was more of a mass leader than Manmohan Singh, he had the peculiar ability to not take a stand at crucial moments in the partyâs ideological evolution. And Manmohan Singh has a dual disadvantage of not appearing to be credible or his own man on a range of issues that are politically potent: constitutional morality, reservations, education. The good he does dissipates easily because of manifest lack of authority. Perhaps the Punjab elections are a testament to that. And neither leader has been willing to seize the ideological mantle, except oddly enough, in their foreign policies.
One could argue that this parallel is misplaced: Sonia Gandhi is the real leader in the Congress. But her function is peculiar. First, there is the oddity of her appearing to be more like the leader of the opposition rather than someone responsible for and part of the ruling party. But the one sense in which she is a liability is the sense in which the RSS can be a liability for the BJP. Both give their respective parties stability, but both also impose serious closure on their parties. Both give patronage to figures who do not bring their parties credit. But the form in which this is most manifest is organisational. Both the BJP and the Congress, like other parties, do not have the requisite degree of internal democracy. This acts as an insuperable barrier to attracting newly mobilised social groups. If there are no clear rules of how party leaders, representatives, candidates are chosen, at all levels, new groups will find it more difficult to join existing parties.
Most parties around the world solve the problem of their ideological orientation and their leadership issues democratically. The credibility problem, the ideological uncertainty and the leadership problem in both parties are irresolvable because there is no democratic procedure, built from grassroots upwards, to resolve these issues. Two-party systems typically emerge with a parallel development of intra-party democracy.
There is fashionable argument to the effect that we have more parties because we are a diverse country. This argument is deeply mistaken, because the diversity of parties is not a consequence of a diversity of views in the polity. It is a consequence of the fact that new social groups or ideologies do not have any means of orienting existing parties towards them, they fear being subverted by those with veto power in the party, whether it is Sonia Gandhi or the RSS. The disjunction between the parties that have the ideological base (Congress and BJP) and parties that are social groupings (BSP, SP) can be narrowed only through institutional reform of the Congress and BJP. The country is ideologically ready for a predominantly two party system. The lesson may be that both parties need to democratise to gain more authority in Indian democracy.
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I know CORRUPT CON men (servants of GNADHI dynastu would never approve democratisation of CON party). But it would be nice if BJP creates a PRIMARY elections to select party candidates. It would be a great change in India and I am sure Indians would love it. Not only that, CON party will DIE because once more and more CON men will start questioning the ITALIAN MAFIA. The DYNASTY will never allow such a thing because if Primaries decide the candidates, the DYNASTY will automatically DIE whereas, BJP will flourish since it is not ONE MAN's party.
One side of two coins
Pratap Bhanu Mehta
Posted online: Saturday, March 03, 2007 at 0000 hrs Print Email
Pratap Bhanu Mehta
Related Stories
To reform UP, trifurcate itOur Insecurity Syndrome Warm up the debateNo more dark spacesThe truth is not in the facts
It is tempting to over-analyse elections for their deep hidden meanings. But the beauty of messy political numbers is that each interpretation raises only further questions. If inflation was the key determinant, why did the BJP do better in urban areas? If the election is meant to tame the arrogance of power, whether in Amarinder Singh or the Lal Batti effect, why was the vote swing not more pronounced? If there is a quiet consolidation of upper caste votes in response to reservation, why are we not seeing more political traction for anti-reservation politics? Anti-incumbency as an explanation begs the question: why anti-incumbency?
The search for the deep wellsprings of electoral outcomes is, in many circumstances, difficult. The surface result is all there is. This does not mean that there are no reasons behind people voting the way they do. But interpreting the result is more complicated than we acknowledge. This is because voters are perhaps more ambivalent. They know what they want but do not know how to get it. Hence the results are a lot more tentative in their meaning.
These election results however raise an important question. Is it possible that both the Congress and the BJP may now experience less attrition of their votes to smaller groups than many had feared? It is still too early to tell, but the political space for consolidation by the two major parties seems to be somewhat more open. But whether this consolidation can happen will depend upon the ability of both parties to wrestle with some key issues.
The first is ideological. For good or for ill, the Congress and the BJP are still the defining poles of Indian politics. There are many other significant parties representing important social forces. But they donât set the terms of ideological debate. In a way the Congress and the BJP are, at least in image, the left of centre and the right of centre parties. They are supposed to act as checks on each otherâs excesses. Ideologically, the Congress has to guard against two excesses. In terms of economic ideology, it has to ensure that the defensible elements of its leftward turn, like greater attention to social sector, do not degenerate into an indiscriminate statism. And in terms of a conception of citizenship it has to ensure that its brand of secularism does not generate its own politics of divisiveness, where community identity becomes the axis of distribution. Its tussle is between secularism as principle and secularism as opportunism.
The BJP in turn paid the price for not being quite able to articulate an agenda for the social sector that can knit together a distributive coalition. It has to learn to distinguish between the proposition that community should not trump citizenship and the proposition that the minority community is always and the only one suspect; to distinguish between a genuine ideal of common citizenship and a Hindutva-inspired one. Its challenge is to keep fanaticism at bay.
In practice, at least at the central level, both parties converge more than their own self-representation would suggest. But neither has yet got the credibility to assure anyone but their core base that they have resolved their own internal tensions. They gain less credit for the good they do, and give succour to those who fear the harm they might inflict.
The Congress still has to overcome its crisis of credibility, and the BJP the taint of fanaticism. But these problems stem from their core weakness: in different ways their organisational structure is a handicap. Both have a crisis of leadership. Although Vajpayee was more of a mass leader than Manmohan Singh, he had the peculiar ability to not take a stand at crucial moments in the partyâs ideological evolution. And Manmohan Singh has a dual disadvantage of not appearing to be credible or his own man on a range of issues that are politically potent: constitutional morality, reservations, education. The good he does dissipates easily because of manifest lack of authority. Perhaps the Punjab elections are a testament to that. And neither leader has been willing to seize the ideological mantle, except oddly enough, in their foreign policies.
One could argue that this parallel is misplaced: Sonia Gandhi is the real leader in the Congress. But her function is peculiar. First, there is the oddity of her appearing to be more like the leader of the opposition rather than someone responsible for and part of the ruling party. But the one sense in which she is a liability is the sense in which the RSS can be a liability for the BJP. Both give their respective parties stability, but both also impose serious closure on their parties. Both give patronage to figures who do not bring their parties credit. But the form in which this is most manifest is organisational. Both the BJP and the Congress, like other parties, do not have the requisite degree of internal democracy. This acts as an insuperable barrier to attracting newly mobilised social groups. If there are no clear rules of how party leaders, representatives, candidates are chosen, at all levels, new groups will find it more difficult to join existing parties.
Most parties around the world solve the problem of their ideological orientation and their leadership issues democratically. The credibility problem, the ideological uncertainty and the leadership problem in both parties are irresolvable because there is no democratic procedure, built from grassroots upwards, to resolve these issues. Two-party systems typically emerge with a parallel development of intra-party democracy.
There is fashionable argument to the effect that we have more parties because we are a diverse country. This argument is deeply mistaken, because the diversity of parties is not a consequence of a diversity of views in the polity. It is a consequence of the fact that new social groups or ideologies do not have any means of orienting existing parties towards them, they fear being subverted by those with veto power in the party, whether it is Sonia Gandhi or the RSS. The disjunction between the parties that have the ideological base (Congress and BJP) and parties that are social groupings (BSP, SP) can be narrowed only through institutional reform of the Congress and BJP. The country is ideologically ready for a predominantly two party system. The lesson may be that both parties need to democratise to gain more authority in Indian democracy.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I know CORRUPT CON men (servants of GNADHI dynastu would never approve democratisation of CON party). But it would be nice if BJP creates a PRIMARY elections to select party candidates. It would be a great change in India and I am sure Indians would love it. Not only that, CON party will DIE because once more and more CON men will start questioning the ITALIAN MAFIA. The DYNASTY will never allow such a thing because if Primaries decide the candidates, the DYNASTY will automatically DIE whereas, BJP will flourish since it is not ONE MAN's party.