Column

One of the most frequent clichés of Indian democracy is that the voter is not as stupid as everyone assumes. This is indeed a fact, to the extent that the “voter” — whoever that may be — does not always think the same way as those who take part in drawing room conversations. But I might hazard a guess that people may not always vote the way they talk, whether at tea stalls or fancy dinner parties. When that moment of responsibility comes upon you, you try to behave responsibly.

The message that this mysterious but omniscient voter seems to have sent emphatically this time round is that he or she is tired of divisive, hate-filled politics. Political parties who thrive on this have not won as much as they would have assumed. The subjects that made for exciting chats, fights and arguments — whether in real life or in cyberspace — didn’t translate into voting patterns.

The Congress, it is generally accepted, is a good for nothing, self-serving, dynasty-driven party of sycophants. There are people who shake like jelly fish after an electric shock when you mention the Congress Party. And what does the Indian voter do? Give the Congress the best numbers it has got in a very long time.

Maybe not everyone sees the Congress as a good-for-nothing, self-serving dynasty-driven party of sycophants since it looks like some people decided to repose their faith in this party. Maybe they benefited from its policies, maybe they felt safe, maybe they felt it does not favour one group over another or maybe it was a combination of all that.

But the voter did say that it wasn’t too fond of those who tried to create disharmony or to divide them. Mayawati swept the assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh but could not deliver for the Bahujan Samaj Party in the Lok Sabha. All the Dalit votes in UP, it seems, did not go to the BSP. She is now angrily blaming the Muslims, but would be better served re-examining those cynical attempts to deliver her concept of
“social engineering”.

Narendra Modi promised all of Gujarat to the BJP. He could not deliver more than 15 seats. According to analysts, wherever he campaigned outside of Gujarat, those candidates did not do well.

His hate-filled invective did not go down well with his party’s allies either and the Shiv Sena reacted sharply to his derogatory remarks about Maharashtra, asking him to stay away. Nitish Kumar hugged him in Ludhiana but kept him out of Bihar. The Ludhiana seat, incidentally, went to Manish Tewari of the Congress.

But Mayawati and Modi are not necessarily to blame. Like just about everyone else, they may have misread the mood of the electorate. The clues were small, like all of Mumbai not coming out to vote because they were excited and angry after the Mumbai terror attack last November. Delhi very emphatically voted for the Congress, as did Punjab to some extent. This could well be interpreted to mean that the attempts to rake up Sikh pain over the 1984 riots did not work.

People are aware when they are being cynically manipulated — all that bluster about supposed weakness and terrorism. When the upswing of rage is genuine, it comes from the people. Indira Gandhi learnt this lesson in 1977. And you might say that the Left, particularly the CPM, very bitterly this year — its “bastion” of West Bengal was breached by the Mamata Banerjee-Trinamool combination.

It paid the price for its high-handedness, for its appalling behaviour in Nandigram and Singur and for taking the voter for granted. Consider, its first effective government was in 1977 — 32 years is enough to make anyone tired. Flying around jabbering about American imperialism and the nuclear deal did not seem to have made up for other misdemeanours.

Sic transit Gloria mundi.