India began on Monday what has turned into the biggest single electoral exercise in the world, and the result, which will come after 10 phases, in five weeks, will be completed on 12 May, when counting can finally begin for the 543 Lok Sabha constituencies. It must be noted that while electors in the six constituencies of Tripura and Assam cast their ballots on Monday and thus started the process, the counting only takes place which will occur on May 12, when six constituencies in Chhattisgarh, 18 in Uttar Pradesh and 17 in West Bengal, will vote, thus completing an exercise in which a single election will have been held, involving 814.5 million voters. The cost, of an estimated Rs 35 billion for the government and Rs 305 billion for the parties, is the second highest in the world, about $5 billion, after the $7 billion spent to conduct the 2012 US presidential election.
This election is why India likes to call itself the world’s largest democracy, and why it makes its links with the US. However, though the election is, like a US presidential election, about who is to be the country’s chief executive, it is also not presidential, but for the Lok Sabha. The present Lok Sabha, the 15th, will complete its tenure on May 31, by which time the 16th must be ready to take oath. This Lok Sabha has not been dissolved prematurely on the advice of the Prime Minister, but has run its full term.
The reason for this prolonging of the election is not the inability of the Indian Election Commission to conduct elections on a single day, but its inability to conduct free and fair elections on the same day. Ever since the 1951 election (when the 1st Lok Sabha was elected well before the Constituent Assembly completed its tenure), the Election Commission has tried to ensure the fairness of the election.
It should not be forgotten that Indian elections are messy affairs. One element of chaos has been the criminalization of politics. Back in 1991, one party strongman is reported as having said: “Hum nay bola kay Pappu Yadav ko ticket do. Pappu Yadav chaar paanch sau booth capture karega, Pappu Yadav jeet jayega.” His complaint against the party was that Pappu was not given the ticket. On the other hand, there is a strong current of opinion that believes that the system had become dysfunctional because of the Pappu Yadavs of the world. Inducted as useful allies by the Congress, they had spread to all political parties, and were demanding tickets and the mainstreaming and respectability thus implied. The 1992 election was also the one in which Indian newspapers published pictures of then Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav, father of current Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, engaged in booth capturing. Nothing happened to Mulayam Singh.
While the Indian election is an example of the extremes to which democracy can be subjected, the results of the election are significant. Most prominent is the impending swing of the electoral pendulum to the BJP, after Congress, which spearheaded the Independence Movement, was returned to office in 2004. It is widely expected that the BJP will win, and that its flagbearer, Narender Modi, will become Prime Minister. Modi is appreciated as Chief Minister of Gujarat. Apart from the 2002 massacre of Muslims, he is supposed to have run a business-friendly administration. This brings both of the BJP’s strengths up: Being pro-business and anti-Muslim.
This support of business combined with fundamentalism meshes well with the ethos of the US, especially its military. The BJP is considered pro-American, and its fundamentalism is attractive to the Indian military, which has seen a number of senior retired military officers join its ranks in very public fashion.
Modi is very different from the other prominent political Gujaratis, whether the Congressites Gandhi and Vallabhai Patel, very different men, but both Hindu supremacists, or the first Janata Dal Prime Minister, Morarji Desai, also an old Congressite. Modi came up the ranks through the RSS, not Congress, and represents a very different style of politics.
It could be argued that Modi represents a more ‘Indian’ tradition of politics, based on caste and religion, not just on group solidarity, such as that shown by Pappoo Yadav and his like, but on hatred of ‘the other,’ (in this case, the Muslims). However, that means a bad time for ‘the other.’ There is also the problem that the BJP is perceived as being part of the bad old corrupt political system. One of the latest developments in India since the last election was the anti-corruption movement led by Anna Hazare, and the surprise victory in the Delhi State Assembly of the Aam Aadmi Party. Hazare is an ex-soldier, while the AAP includes old Janata Party people, including the son of Desai’s Law Minister. Clearly, elements against corruption which had opposed Congress, and which had found themselves in the old Janata Party, out of which the BJP was born, are moving back, because Modi claims that his Gujarat government had low corruption.
The US clearly values Modi not just for his claims of honesty, but because of his nationalistic extremism, which seems to be coming at the right time for the American drawdown in Afghanistan. India has sought a role in Afghanistan in all the years since the ouster of the Taliban, a role which the US has tried to foster. Modi’s ascent can be explained by the cycle that brings the BJP to power, but it is also worth noting that the electoral cycle also brought Mian Nawaz Sharif, at the head of his PML(N), to power last year, and that a new Afghan President is going to emerge from the presidential elections there.
Pakistani policymakers should view Modi’s elevation with calm. Pakistan has gone through a BJP government before. More importantly, the BJP is not going to be worse than a Congress government, because Congress has shown that it is quite as chauvinistic and hegemonistic as the BJP. It should not be forgotten that Congress fought all three wars with Pakistan, and is quite as much part of the Indian establishment. However, a BJP government may well mean that the US tilt towards India will increase, if such is indeed possible. That is probably not the right combination to solve the outstanding issues between the two countries, with solutions unlikely to be lasting.
The writer is a veteran journalist and founding member as well as executive editor of The Nation.
Email:maniazi@nation.com.pk