- Anatomy of a tsunami
The clues lay all around us. The reasons for victory and defeat in an Indian general election are far more complex than any one factor, and yet an event or an incident can become a metaphor.
For Rahul Gandhi, it was the wink that finally lost it.
It was an unbelievable end to a bizarre speech in the Lok Sabha last year. Advised by foreign consultants and puffed up by a politically illiterate but socially vociferous elite, he vituperatively accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi corruption in the Rafale purchase without evidence or sense. Then, gauchely he tried to claim a higher morality by saying that he actually wanted to hug the PM. When he returned to his seat he promptly confirmed that all this was cheap theatrics. He winked at his at his cheerleaders in the galleries. This was caught by cameras and became the image of immaturity, cunning and childishness that confirmed he was unfit for office.
Rahul Gandhi was not winking at anyone on 23 May, after the results. He has not won a single seat for any Congress candidate, although he has ensured the humiliation of a generation of party leaders. Congress has got less than 10 seats between Maharashtra and Odisha; which means that Rahul has destroyed the credibility of three Congress governments which came to office less than six months ago. And his disastrous leadership has killed the alliance government in Karnataka. Congress numbers, such as they are, come from Punjab, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. In Punjab Congress has won only because of Captain Amrinder Singh. In Tamil Nadu Congress won only on the shoulders of a resurgent DMK. And in Kerala, Congress and UDF reaped the benefits of a tremendous anger, mobilised paradoxically by the BJP, against the Marxist government because of its decision on Sabarimala.
The alibis are already being cooked in some depressed Congress-consultancy oven. One is polarisation. Let me mention one seat in Bihar, Katihar; and four in Bengal, Malda. North and South, Jangipur and Burdwan, all dominated by Muslims. Congress lost everywhere. Trinamool won Jangipur, which is 75 percent Muslim, but the person who came second was BJP’s Mahfuza Khatun. Is anyone going to argue she did not get any Muslim support?
In Burdwan, the winner was the BJP’s S.S. Ahluwalia. This seat was once known as Stalingrad because the Communists called it invincible. Then Trinamool won Ahluwalia was dismissed as a non-serious candidate by his opponents when he filed his nomination.
Both the Malda seats were also in the “invincible” category, this time for Congress, as fiefs of the Ghani Khan Chowdhury family. Both have gone to BJP. In Katihar, the Congress candidate was Tariq Anwar. He won against the Modi wave of 2014 on Sharad Pawar’s ticket. Last year, he joined Congress. He lost.
Rahul paid the price for attacking Modi, and particularly corruption. The voter did not accept this charge made by a dynast with the Bofors deal behind him. Rafale boomeranged
Two factors, push and pull, control an election. Anti-incumbency is the slow accumulation of small or big resentments pushing away the electorate. This accelerates if there is a pull from a magnetic alternative, as Narendra Modi was in 2014. In the 2019 election, the equation was reversed. The incumbent pulled in voters, and Rahul pushed them away. Congress disappeared into thin air.
The Marxists disappeared into hot air. They became a victim of their own self-importance. Who would have believed that CPI(M) would have only one MP?
The signs of a Modi victory were clear. Even in Bangalore, Rahul Gandhi’s cavalcade was greeted with chants of “Modi! Modi!” There was no instance of any Modi rally being interrupted by any call of “Rahul!” When some desperate strategist, clearly reading the negative effect of Rahul, decided to rope in Priyanka, she did not become an answer to Modi; but for Rahul.
Another signal: when Congress stalwart Sushil Shinde sought help for his listless campaign. He did not ask for Rahul or Priyanka. He sent out an SOS to the proto-Shiv Sena leader Raj Thackeray.
The diminution of dynasty has been one by-product. Modi reduced the concept of dynasty into a leech that sucked opportunity and upward mobility away from the less fortunate. There was no automatic inheritance. The voter got the message. By the afternoon of 23 May a telling truism was in circulation:
Ashok Gehlot’s son is losing. Rajiv Gandhi’s son is losing. Madhavrao Scindia’s son is losing. Tarun Gogoi’s son is losing. Ajit Pawar’s son is losing. Murli Deora’s son is losing. H.D. Kumaraswami’s son and father are losing. The only son winning is Son of the Soil.
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Narendra Modi announced his manifesto from the ramparts of the Red Fort on 15 August 2014. Every Prime Minister had mourned poverty and then left it to economists. Modi remembered the talisman of Mahatma Gandhi: look at the face of the poor and check whether you had done something practical to ease that pain. Among the many memorable sections of that speech the one I will never forget is the trauma that women had to go through in the absence of a private toilet. He built over 75 million toilets and has now announced the next phase of this mission, which is ensuring clean water. Sanitation coverage rocketed from 38% in 2014 to 83% in 2018.
Five years after the Red Fort speech, do the math. Over 300 million new bank accounts were opened for those without money. Over 100 million took Mudra loans, with three-quarters of the beneficiaries being women and half from the Backward castes. Some 50 million gas cylinders. Over 10 million new homes. 125 million soil health cards. Crop insurance for 40 million. About half a billion benefited somehow. Why would they not want Modi back?
The hope of 2014 this had become trust in 2019. In one sense, this has been a 1971 election, but with a radical difference. Mrs Indira Gandhi also created a decisive constituency. The difference is that Indira’s promises remained promises. Modi improved the poor’s quality of life. Indira nationalised banks in their name; Modi took them into banks and gave them financial security.
Indira Gandhi divided hope into 20 points, and then left it all to an undernourished snail-government; Modi implemented a hundred-plus projects, shifting the focus from the languorous trundle of poverty alleviation to the hectic demands of poverty elimination by 2022. Confirmation of his success also came from a counterintuitive source. Why did Rahul never mention any of these schemes in his speeches? Because they were working. If they had failed, they would have topped his agenda.
On one subject, however, silence might have served the Congress President well. The bewildered voter had no clue what he meant when he kept insisting that he loved Modi. Even if you leave aside the cultural associations of a word reinvented in the flower-child era, the voter could not understand why Rahul Gandhi was using such vile abuse for the same person.
The Congress brand was fraying long before; Rahul ripped it into shreds. We should have asked why Mamata Banerjee decide to drop ‘Congress’ from all Trinamool publicity material.
This was further reflected in alliance politics. Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav rejected Congress; results showed they were absolutely right. In Bihar, Laloo Yadav was more generous, but Congress brought nothing. Rahul Gandhi’s scuttle from Amethi to Waynad said it all.
But the most fascinating contest was surely in Bengal, not least because Mamata was as shocked as her predecessor Buddhadev Bhattacharya had been in 2011. When Mamata attacked “Jai Sri Ram” the most effective answer came as a joke that went viral. A government can survive anger; not ridicule.
Sam Pitroda was a gift that went on giving. According to his close associates, he began to believe that he would become the Manmohan Singh of 2019, that Rahul Gandhi would not be prepared to take the office of PM himself, and would summon a consistent loyalist like Pitroda. Delusions have a diarrhoea effect on the tongue.
11: The surest evidence of a major Modi victory was provided by The Economist. Everyone should have become certain that he would win after it attacked him.
Congress has been reduced to a Kerala plus Tamil Nadu party, Rahul owes his own victory in Wayanad to the Muslim League, another dismal first for Congress: the only time its President has had to beg for votes from the League.
There is bad news for many family-dominated parties. Mamata Banerjee’s mojo has crumbled. This momentum will lead to her defeat in the 2021 Assembly elections. Naveen Patnaik has held on in Odisha, but his party is only embodies him. In the next five years, a lot of political space will open up. Since the only Congress reaction to this humiliation will probably be to elect Rahul Gandhi president for life, it will not be able to occupy this space. The contest will be between BJP and regional parties.
At the start of this election, I had mentioned that a ‘wave’ has become a trope in political discourse, but no one quite understands one. It is never visible until it reaches the shore. Only those who never believed a tsunami was on the way have been drowned.