Three lessons from Mandate 2011

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Bengaluru: Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress ended the 34-year hegemony of the Left Front in West Bengal, while Jayalalithaa's AIADMK scored a landslide victory against the DMK in Tamil Nadu. These verdicts have left the losers stunned.

The Congress scored a spectacular hattrick in Assam, bagging a near two-thirds majority. It managed to wrest power from the Left Democratic Front in Kerala by a wafer-thin majority. In Puducherry, it lost to a party rebel.

So what is the larger picture today? What lessons can we draw from Mandate 2011?

Lesson #1

The Left has made itself irrelevant

There was a time when the Left front had substantial clout; it was even talking of coming to power independently at the centre in 2009. It now lies decimated. Two of the three states the Leftists ruled are gone; they are left only with Tripura.

So how did this happen? The blame has to be shared by the party bigwigs, but if you had to name one man for the mess, it would be Prakash Karat. His stubbornness has cost his party dear in West Bengal and Kerala.

From being a brute majority in Bengal, Leftists are now a lame opposition in a bastion that had remained with them for 34 years.

It is difficult to see where the slide began. Was it when they opposed the passing of the nuclear bill? Was it when party bigwigs like the late Jyoti Basu started to disagree with Karat? Was it when Somnath Chatterjee was expelled from the party for not abiding by the politburo decision to step down as Lok Sabha speaker on the eve of the nuclear debate?

Karat didn't pay any heed to party members opposing the sacking of Somnath Chatterjee in 2008. The general elections of 2009 and the assembly elections of 2011 show the Left Front racing downhill. Most decisions that Karat took have taken the party farther away from the people.

His lack of understanding of ground realities was again in evidence when he barred V S Achuthanandan from contesting the assembly polls. A popular upsurge later forced Karat to give him a ticket. With better support from his party, Achutanandan, who had earned a good name as chief minister, would probably have retained Kerala for the Left.

As veteran leader Somnath Chatterjee pointed out, the Left Front has no connect with the masses. Karat failed to read what the people wanted.

Lesson #2

Aam aadmi is king

Good governance pays and bad governance is rejected. This is one clear learning from the last few elections both at the state and the centre. In Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, good governance has been richly rewarded.

Take also the example of Narendra Modi, voted to power for three consecutive times in Gujarat. The anti-incumbency sentiment does not come into play when a state is governed efficiently.

In spite of the ghastly riots durring Narendra Modi's tenure, he has been voted back to power time and again. Why and how? Modi's administrative vision has turned the state's fortunes around. He streamlined the governance structure and cut costs. In short, he did whatever it took to force observers to prefix 'vibrant' with Gujarat. A good chief minister wins votes.

Take also the examples of Assam's Tarun Gogoi and Puducherry's N Rangaswamy, both of whom have become chief ministers for the third consecutive term. Gogoi's success in getting the violent ULFA to the negotiating table has impressed the Assamese voter, who wants peace.

It looks like netas can no longer grab votes on the basis on caste and religion; they have to govern well. Such is the frustration against bad governance that even Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, the Left Front's only coherent voice in Bengal, had to pay a heavy price. This is hard to believe, but he has lost his Jadavpore seat.

Lesson #3

BJP is no longer a national party

From a party that prided itself on being different, the BJP is now a party of indifference and infighting. And it is losing its grip on national affairs.

The BJP has not won more than 10 seats in the five states that went to the polls this year. Baffling that the national opposition party has no qualitative or quantitative presence in most Indian states.

BJP's Hindutva agenda has lost its currency; it is something no one cares about any more. Except in Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Karnataka, the BJP has seen nothing but a downward slide.

How can we expect democracy to flourish when the nation's principal opposition party is a sitting duck? The Congress has been making gains in states like Uttar Pradesh, Kerala and West Bengal, while the BJP has little say in many states.

The BJP comes across as a hardline party, but it is also true that it gets blamed for any hardline action by any random group (the Mangalore pub attack was attributed to a group that allegedly had the party's backing).

The party does not have a young leader who can infuse confidence among young voters. While a Rahul Gandhi has been making inroads for the Congress in hostile states like UP, a Varun Gandhi with his hate speeches is scaring people away, and reinforcing the party's hardline image.

Hindutva played a major role in the BJP's rise as a national party but that ideology had a limited shelf life. The party is foolishly sticking to it when it has lost its appeal among the people.

So how is the BJP a national party? It needs support from regional parties even to be considered a force at the centre. And it isn't doing anything to strengthen the National Democratic Alliance, which it led, either. Where are its new leaders?

The BJP has to swallow its pride and think of a strong NDA. It has to portray someone clean like Nitish Kumar as an alliance leader, even if he is not from its own ranks. That is highly unlikely, with leaders like the power-hungry Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj dreaming big.