Every election is presidential

Actor Shatrughan Sinha summed it up correctly when he said that it was a victory of the Bihari over the bahari (outsider) in the elections to the Bihar legislature. But, then, most State Assembly elections over the past two decades and more have been contests between local alternatives. The days of national leaders overpowering regional ones in State elections are long gone. Some recent exceptions prove the rule.

It is surprising, therefore, that Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi chose to ignore this fact — that elections in parliamentary India have become presidential. After all, Mr. Modi’s own victory in Gujarat and New Delhi symbolised this reality.

Belated recognition
It appeared that there was a belated recognition of this shift in political sentiment when the BJP national leadership named Kiran Bedi the candidate for Delhi Chief Minister against Arvind Kejriwal. Her defeat only underscored the importance of credible local candidates. Mr. Kejriwal’s victory was his, not that of his party. Even a political scientist and psephologist like Yogendra Yadav did not want to concede this reality when he challenged the bossism of Mr. Kejriwal. But Mr. Kejriwal ran a presidential campaign to win an essentially mayoral election.

More than development or the caste and communal loyalties of voters, or the simple arithmetic of pre-election alliances, the Bihar verdict was shaped by the fact that the voters had to make a choice between local leaders and no one else in particular. Regional and caste-based parties may have initially been voted to power on the strength of their ideology and manifesto, but their fortunes have become increasingly linked to the popularity of their leaders.

True, the core support of any political party is composed of its loyalists, of those who share the party’s ideology and programme. But elections are not won and lost on the basis of the size of the core. It is the swing vote — the accretion to the core — that makes all the difference.

In 2009, while loyalists of the BJP and the Sonia Congress might have voted for their party of choice, the floating voter took a call on who he or she wished to see as the Prime Minister of India — Manmohan Singh or Lal Krishna Advani. Both the BJP and the Congress went into that election having named their prime ministerial candidates. The votes that made a difference were cast in favour of Dr. Singh.

In 2014, the voter opted for Narendra Modi over Rahul Gandhi. Both national parties ran presidential campaigns, seeking votes for their chosen or perceived candidate for the top job. What has been happening at the national level over the past decade and more has been happening at the State level for some time now, cutting across parties and States. Consider the record.

In the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, the victory of the Congress was defined by the impressive gains it made in Andhra Pradesh under the leadership of the late Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy. It was Dr. Reddy’s sustained grassroots campaign that unseated the Telugu Desam supremo, Nara Chandrababu Naidu, and gave the Congress a decisive edge over the BJP. The National Democratic Alliance led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee lost also because in Tamil Nadu the Congress ally, M. Karunanidhi, ousted J. Jayalalithaa. Dr. Reddy repeated his performance in 2009 with his highly personalised campaign and helped Dr. Singh return to power.

In most other States where the Congress won the elections, the vote was as much for its chief ministerial candidate as it was for the party — Oommen Chandy in Kerala, Tarun Gogoi in Assam, Shiela Dikshit in Delhi and Siddaramaiah in Karnataka. The Karnataka voter punished the BJP because of B.S. Yeddyurappa’s tenure and rewarded Mr. Siddaramaiah.

All regional or caste-based parties have long approached the voter in the name of the leader. Which is at least one reason all of them have become family controlled parties. The phenomenon of ‘dynasty’ in Indian politics began with Indira Gandhi’s personalised campaign of 1980, managed by her younger son Sanjay. The natural consequence was the feudal succession that was staged after her death when Rajiv Gandhi was made party leader and Prime Minister. The leader’s family slowly took possession of the party.

In his recently published memoir, The Chinar Leaves, Indira loyalist Makhan Lal Fotedar reminds us that even as late as in the early 1980s, party leaders such as R. Venkataraman, P.V. Narasimha Rao, Pranab Mukherjee and even Madhavrao Scindia were viewed as potential prime ministerial candidates. Once the family domination of the Indian National Congress was complete, regional parties followed suit.

Thus, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam transformed itself from being a normal, ideology-based party to a party dominated by the leader’s family. The All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the Telugu Desam Party, as indeed the many Congress breakaway groups, began as ‘leader-oriented’ parties rather than cadre-based parties. The Lohia Socialists of the north imitated these examples. Coming to power on the strength of an ideology and in pursuit of a cause, they all became ‘leader’ oriented.

Even in ideology-based parties like the BJP and the CPI(M), elections have been fought in the name of the leader with a mass appeal. In 1998 and 1999, the BJP’s Lok Sabha campaign revolved around the personality of Mr. Vajpayee. The turning point came, as BJP observers pointed out at the time, when the crowds came to hear only Mr. Vajpayee speak and thinned out when Mr. Advani rose to speak.

In Gujarat, Mr. Modi became the BJP’s face, as did Vasundhara Raje Scindia in Rajasthan, Shivraj Singh Chouhan in Madhya Pradesh and Raman Singh in Chhattisgarh. Mr. Modi’s attempt to secure control of his party in these States has been refuted by the assertion of State leaders. Mr. Modi’s success in Maharashtra and Haryana in ‘nominating’ State Chief Ministers after the elections were fought in the name of the party, a la Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, may have encouraged him to overreach in Delhi. He failed to learn the lesson in time for Bihar.

The experience of the Left only underscores the point. In West Bengal, the CPI(M) was made invincible by the personality of the late Jyoti Basu. It was only when a dynamo like Mamata Banerjee arrived on the scene, and Basu was followed by a less charismatic figure, that the CPI(M) lost power. In Kerala, the victory of the Left Front in 2006 was defined by the personality of ‘Comrade VS.’ It remains to be seen what alternative the Left will present in West Bengal and Kerala to the popular incumbents — Mamata Banerjee and Oommen Chandy — in next year’s elections.

Many political analysts made the point in the 2012 State elections in Uttar Pradesh that the Congress would have repeated, or even improved upon, its 2009 Lok Sabha performance had the voters been given the choice of electing Rahul Gandhi their Chief Minister. In many ways, Mr. Modi repeated in Bihar the mistake Rahul made in U.P. — seeking votes for a party rather than an individual.

‘Winners’ preferred
Bihar shows that the era of centrally nominated Chief Ministers is over. Even national parties have to pick ‘winners’ now as CMs. Going forward, therefore, the Congress ought to know that victory in Assam would depend on whether the voters in Assam want more of Mr. Gogoi or would like to see him go.

All this is not to suggest that party loyalties and ideology do not matter. Of course, they do for a large majority of voters who remain loyal to their party. That forms a party’s core support base. But elections are not won and lost due to major shifts in the core. It is the ‘non-core’ voter and the first generation voter, with no firm loyalty to a party, who defines the final outcome.

The ‘floating’ voter opted for Manmohan Singh in 2009 and for Narendra Modi in 2014. The challenge for the prime ministerial candidates of 2019 will be to retain the loyalty of the core constituency while gaining new voters — both from rivals and from first generation voters. It is a race in which Mr. Modi still remains leagues ahead of all potential rivals, and there are so many of them among the self-made CMs around the country!