Mohan Guruswamy
July 02, 2004

The outcome of the 2004 Lok Sabha elections was essentially determined in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Tamil Nadu. Of course the Congress improved in Maharashtra and Gujarat. But it is in these states that the Congress and its allies made spectacular gains and thus turned the tables on the NDA. Each of these states seems to have voted the way they did for different reasons.

In Andhra Pradesh the claim of a spectacular economic performance by the two term incumbent TDP government was emphatically rejected. In Bihar the allegations of bad governance and corruption came to naught and the RJD spearheaded electoral formation came through, despite its unbroken fourteen-year innings governing India's poorest and most poorly performing state. In Tamil Nadu, the state that had posted the best results in the South, the fastest growing region in India, the people blanked out the AIADMK. On the face of it, it would seem that corruption and misuse of political office had become an issue in Tamil Nadu. But the AIADMK government is headed by the very same lady who came to office quite spectacularly despite several cases of corruption pending against her.

It all gets very confusing. The CEO, Management Man of the Year, and Bill Gates' pal gets the boot in AP; the proxy government in bottom of the heap Bihar gets a pat on its back; while the Tamil Nadu government that generally was delivering the goods, is skewered and quartered with its fat still on the fire. Trying to make sense of this is going to be tough.

Quite clearly there is never a single reason for voting out a government. Reasons also seem to change all the time. Though there are several reasons that make for an adverse mandate, there is often a main reason. This could vary depending on the local conditions. But even this doesn't move as many people, as the results seem to indicate. People who write after election results come in seem to prefer conclusions like "rejected by the people" or "sent out packing" or "loss of confidence", but that's seldom the case. What happens is usually due to a marginal shift in support, and sometimes due to a realignment of votes cast to different formations. The erosion of support is never steep as most well established parties have a generally loyal base. It's a very small minority that makes the difference between winning and losing an election. If that is so then are issues all that important? Even the post Emergency mandate to the JP led coalition was less than 50% of the votes cast. Objectively speaking in terms of percentage of the total vote, the Congress didn't do all that badly then. But in a first past the post system such as ours, results get horribly skewed. But yet political analysts and writers come to sweeping conclusions. The truth is that we have never really understood how and why people vote one way or the other. We might even never be able to fully unravel voter preferences for the subject is much to complex with far too many variables that make even the largest sample sizes quite inadequate.

But certain electoral truths are universal. It's a well-known fact that governments are usually voted out, seldom voted in. People vote out governments on the basis of issues that affect core values - such as corruption - hence called valence issues, or over bread and butter issues or pocketbook (wallet) issues. Whatever be the reality it is perceptions that matter. But no perception can be created without any reality to back it up. Perceptions of mismanagement leading to economic costs to the populace are always difficult to overcome. The perception could be a result of the overall price rise or paucity of new jobs or a feeling of being left behind or all these and some more. When there is no dominant or overwhelming valence issue, like Bofors, then bread and butter issues dominate. This then brings us to the old adage of Tip O'Neill the former Speaker of the US House of Representatives, that "all politics are local." This seems to be true in India too. Local issues seldom go away, unless something truly overwhelming happens, as in 1984 when Indira Gandhi was assassinated or in 1977 when the Emergency excesses caused a wave of revulsion in northern India.

While the 2004 electoral calculus was favorable in Bihar and Tamil Nadu with the RJD and DMK being able to stitch together formidable new coalitions to successfully challenge the NDA grouping, in Andhra Pradesh it was not the case. The Congress and its partners went head to head against pretty much the same formation that triumphed in 1999, and with a much hyped performance card in its favor. Vajpayee and Chandrababu Naidu on the same side seemed much too big to beat. Yet the TDP was comprehensively beaten.

The evidence suggests that the reality was far different from the hype and this seems to have finally caught up with Chandrababu Naidu. For the actual Chandrababu Naidu scorecard was far different from what the pink papers, the CII and multilateral agencies made believe about him. The real shocker was that even a consummate and crafty political pro like Naidu didn't seem to realize that such endorsements were, in general, the kiss of electoral death as they only served to confirm the worst fears the general public came to have about him and the TDP government. In politics it is as important to have the right enemies, as it is to have the right friends. Having the fat cats, Indian and foreign, for enemies actually help as it then serves to define a leader as pro-poor, which is where the vote is. The problem for Naidu got compounded when perception began to coincide with reality. So it is necessary to delve a bit into the reality in Andhra Pradesh. In terms of overall performance Andhra Pradesh was last in the South. The CPAS study "Last in the South", a summary of which appeared in these columns amply established that the Naidu performance was mostly ill-deserved hype. Cyberabad is nothing more than a Potemkin village and enough people saw that and changed their minds about Naidu.

But performance was never the issue in Bihar. For fourteen years Lalu Prasad has politically towered over Bihar even as turmoil engulfed him from all directions. On the personal front things couldn't have been worse for him. He was charged with corruption and arrested for longish spells. Even now he remains free on a bail that has to be periodically renewed. The performance card of Bihar could not be worse. It comes last on almost all economic and social indices. The only bright spot on the Bihar record is that primary school enrollment is slightly better than the national average, but then this could be because it has more young people as a percentage.

Yet Lalu Prasad's RJD led alliance performed brilliantly. It came from behind and confounding all polls and conventional wisdom hit the NDA for a six. The NDA's campaign focused on the RJD government's failures and its Bihar campaign chief, the former I&B Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, incidentally brought out at GOI expense, a booklet highlighting these failures. But it did not work. Lalu Prasad had an antidote. He used a CPAS study "The Economic Strangulation of Bihar" to maximum advantage. The CPAS study highlighted the economic deprivation suffered by Bihar for many decades but which accelerated during the NDA's tenure. The RJD campaign posed a simple question. Bihar had thirteen ministers in the Vajpayee Government, yet why did it get so little? The NDA apparently had no answer.

Knowledgeable pundits will turn out reams about the caste consolidation in Bihar and how Ramvilas Paswan's dalit vote base tilted matters in favor of the RJD led alliance. But the little research that is available on how castes vote does not suggest that castes vote en bloc. Even in communally polarized Gujarat over 22% of Muslims voted for the BJP. Issues do shape perceptions and enough people vote according to their perceptions. This then makes the difference.