by Subhash Agrawal & Dan Wagner
Even by India’s standards of political and ideological “easy accommodation”, there is a certain Alice-in-Wonderland quality to this election cycle. Previous positions, commitments, and loyalties among the leading parties seem to count for very little, and public memory seems equally dazed and confused, resulting in a business-as-usual affair.
A cynic would say that this year’s elections are just more of the same, with political accommodation being the ongoing rule of the day so that a party can claw its way into office. A realist would say that the impact of the global recession has made political accommodation necessary in order to reflect reality. The truth is perhaps a bit of both, but in the process, India’s voters are being left with precious little to distinguish one party from another.
All three of India’s political coalitions (the Congress, BJP, and the Third Front) are increasingly fluid regarding the constituent parties that comprise them, and also increasingly ambiguous regarding their positions on major economic and foreign-policy issues. It is as if a voter is being offered a box of chocolates, and the only thing to distinguish one party from another is the type of wrapping and bow.
The Congress party had a huge advantage just one month ago and looked sure to return to power, but that advantage has now largely been lost due to successive self-imposed goals and overconfidence. In fact, the BJP, which looked weak and imploding just a month ago, now actually has a fair shot at forming the new government. However, in our view, it still looks like the Congress may just return to power by the skin of its teeth, but only after negotiating hard (and compromising heavily) with parties on the Left over economic reforms, and even over the India-US nuclear deal, which of course still has not yet been made operational by either country.
For the Congress to return, it will have to re-negotiate some sort of altogether new quid pro quo with the Left parties, despite the anticipated dilution of power of the Left. This may just force Congress to drop Man Mohan Singh as its PM candidate, which would be an extremely inconvenient and bitter pill to swallow, especially given the high stakes which leading Congress voices (including Rahul Gandhi) have already placed on retaining Singh. In the end, such a bitter pill looks more and more likely as the only way to win Left support all over again.
The only other alternate scenario for the Congress is to sit in the opposition for a period of 1-2 years and support a Third Front coalition (in order to keep the BJP out of power), and to hope that, as was the case in the 1996-98 period, such a motley crew of rag-tag parties will collapse under the weight of multiple contradictions and ego contests. In fact, treating the current election as a semi-final, with the “final” to be played 2 years from now, and using this period to cleanse the party of dead wood, seems like a smart and sensible strategy for the Congress. But at this stage it does not look as if Sonia and her top advisers are reconciled to losing power. So a new “devil’s deal” with the Left over economic and foreign policy looks like the only way for Congress to sustain its hold.
Given all this, it looks as if we are very likely moving toward a period of not just political instability but also calculated compromise on key elements of economic reform. Already, in the ongoing election campaign, almost all major economic issues that rightfully ought to have been debated — such as growth, globalization, infrastructure spending, and public subsidies — have been ignored by almost all parties. In fact, populist promises that are either fiscally untenable or dangerous are at a record high.
In effect, India’s political parties are once again showing their amazing capacity to dumb down, distract and distort, more than to address the serious issues facing the real people. This election has become increasingly devoid of serious debates over serious issues, and is instead producing more than its share of weird and outlandish accusations about who said what against whom. Oddly, even the Mumbai terror attacks of November are not a major campaign issue in 2009, as, once again, everything seems to boil down to caste, religion and narrow primitive loyalties.
This is neither good news for India’s middle class, its liberal intelligentsia, its economic growth, nor for foreign investors. Unless the Congress or the BJP can somehow manage to craft a new resurgent wave in their favor imminently, the inordinate influence of Left parties (and/or Third Front parties) in a new regime is likely to prove detrimental to both economic governance and global confidence in India.
This recession has proven that India is no more immune to the vicissitudes of global trade and investment than any other country. Those pundits who imagined that India could simply reply on the strength of its domestic market to sustain it through the crisis have their tails behind their legs now. This is proof that India needs, and deserves, a political system that is much more responsive to the needs of its people and inspires confidence among foreign investors that India remains a safe place to invest. The current election cycle sends the opposite message.
The authors are political analysts, based in New Delhi and New York respectively, who focus on events in South Asia.
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