A vote for inclusive India

As television channels began beaming election results from 8 am on Saturday, the reactions of many politicians went from surprise to disbelief, and finally shock.

The Congress, dismissed as a party desperate for allies who were gradually deserting it, started winning seat after seat, while the others – the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Left groups – began falling behind. By afternoon, it became clear that the Congress looked set to cross the 200 mark on its own, something it couldn’t do for nearly two decades.

The BJP and its allies, forming the National Democratic Alliance and till just yesterday confident of forming the next government, are over 100 seats behind at the time of writing this. The final figure could change, of course, but the overall picture is clear — Election 2009 belongs to the Congress, and the Congress alone.

Failure is an orphan, while success has many fathers. So who should take credit for the Congress’s victory? Some will say it is because of small players in states like Andhra Pradesh (Chiranjeevi), Tamil Nadu (Vijaykanth) and Maharashtra (Raj Thackeray) who, by cutting into the non-Congress vote, helped the Congress forge ahead.

But that does not explain the party’s performance in, say, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab or Rajasthan. Others will hail Rahul Gandhi as the man whose young visage was an effective counter to the old-looking BJP. But the BJP had young leaders too (Varun Gandhi, Narendra Modi) and the Congress had the 70-plus Manmohan Singh.

When the final results come in, it may become clear that the Muslims and other minorities (including dalits) have gone with the Congress because they sensed the danger of a BJP regime.

All these factors may have played a role in the victory, but the Congress has won because it has gone back to being the Congress — the Congress of old, of Indira Gandhi, of the larger Nehruvian agenda: inclusive in every sense of the term. It is secular, pro-poor, pro-rural but at the same time has a vision for India; the vision of a modern, forward-looking country that can carry every section of its populace with it.

At the same time, voters have rejected the forces of exclusivity, whether ideological, caste-based or communal. For that, one only has to see the loss of the CPM in West Bengal after three decades. Voters were angry with the party’s behaviour, not only in the state – Nandigram and Singur come to mind – but also at the national level.

In its arrogance, the CPM wanted to be a backer of the government and the Opposition at once, and instead of keeping the UPA afloat, almost brought it down. After professing secular ideals for decades, the CPM was ready to mix with the worst elements to form the third front; voters, however, were not willing to swallow this.

The BJP paid a heavy price for its double-speak on the communal agenda, its mealy-mouthedness on Varun Gandhi’s tirade against Muslims, the anti-Christian riots in Kandhamal and the beating up of girls in Mangalore for going to a disco. India is now a country of the young, and has little time for the Hindutva agenda of old. Attacking the prime minister all the time was a bad idea, too - beyond a point, negative campaigning does not work.

Thus, in rural areas, the populace benefited from rural employment schemes, farm-loan waivers and high prices for agricultural produce, while in urban areas, young and middle-class voters wanted a stable government that could once again get the economy going. The Congress, under Sonia Gandhi, seemed to promise that. She went by the old Congress book, the legacy left behind by her mother-in-law, and her son represents the next generation of that thought process. The people of this country are ready to invest in them, instead of in the negative agendas of divisiveness.