The Verdict: A long view of Assembly polls

New Delhi: The Congress-NCP combine retains Maharashtra for the third term, Raj Thackeray's Maharashtra Navnirman Sena does the damage for the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance. Haryana throws up a hung house as the Hooda-led Congress is short of majority and Om Prakash Chautala's INLD says they have the numbers to form the government and its a clean Congress sweep in Arunachal Pradesh as the party it takes 42 of the 60 seats. CNN-IBN's Battle For States gets you the long view on the Assembly elections as well as an assessment of what they mean in terms of national politics.

On the show to debate the verdict were CNN-IBN Editor-in-Chief Rajdeep Sardesai; Editor-in-Chief Loksatta Kumar Ketkar; senior journalist and Editor Rural Affairs The Hindu P Sainath; senior columnist Swapan Dasgupta; Political Editor Hindustan Times Vinod Sharma; political observer Sudheendra Kulkarni; CNN-IBN National Affairs Editor Diptosh Majumdar; MP and Congress Spokesperson Manish Tewari; author and columnist Shobhaa De; and BJP leader Smriti Irani.

Is State Verdict 2009 A Mandate For The Congress?

The state Assembly elections so close on the heels of the 2009 Lok Sabha elections were important because they were a referendum on the Manmohan Singh Government at the Centre. Now that the results are out and the Congress has emerged victorious in two states and is leading in the third, it seems as if the Manmohan Singh-Sonia Gandhi combine has become a successful brand.

Vinod Sharma agreed that they indeed were a successful brand, but disagreed about the three-state verdict being a mandate on UPA II. "I think the Opposition has lost this election, the UPA has not won it. They were badly divided, failed to factor in their strategy a whole lot of factors. Haryana has been the worst dampener in so far as the Congress is concerned. Congress was 67 in a House of 90 last time and today they are just 40. I think morally it's tough. If I were leading the state Congress in Haryana, I would not stake a claim, but the fact remains that the Opposition there was divided. Om Prakash Chautala has staged a good comeback with 32 seats and there is truth in his claim that in Haryana it's 50 versus 40," he said.

He added that the Congress had no reason to rejoice but instead needed to introspect and reflect.

However, there was no getting around the fact that there have been big wins for the Congress in Maharashtra - in Marathwada and Vidarbha especially - and the reasons may well include the image of the UPA II as well as the farmer loan waiver, apart from a divided Opposition.

Kumar Ketkar agreed saying, "We look at a divided Opposition only in terms of the MNS in Maharashtra and in the Mumbai-Pune-Thane-Nashik belt where there are just 40 per cent of the seats. The divided Opposition factor worked primarily in this belt. The loan waiver factor definitely worked. Congress-NCP were opposed but all the Opposition was divided into smaller units like the Third Front, Republican Party, Parallel Republican Party of Prakash Ambedkar, and many others. Also, one of the main reasons was the fact that the BJP-Shiv Sena combine could not act together and highlight the fundamental failures of the Congress-NCP regime of the last 10 years."

"The victories are all very small margin victories for the Congress-NCP combine in Maharashtra and if you put together all the victories which are under a 3000-vote margin, you may actually question the victory itself," he added.

P Sainath added a line here saying, "Sharad Pawar advanced the thesis that people rewarded the Congress-NCP combine in Maharashtra for good work in the agriculture sector. This raises the question of whether all that work happened in the last five months because the Congress took a drubbing in the rural sectors in Maharashtra in the Lok Sabha elections in May. The Congress did not win a single seat in the cotton belt of Vidarbha in the Lok Sabha elections but has now won seats from there."

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He went on to talk about the importance of the MNS in the Maharashtra elections saying, "The significance can be seen in a single indicator and that is that it has pushed the Shiv Sena to party number four in Maharashtra. This is astonishing because the Sena was just about a year ago eyeing the number one position in the state."

He added that he agreed with Kumar Ketkar about the marginal victories in many areas in the state and then went on to say, "I have read the manifesto of 2004 in which many promises were made by the Congress-NCP combine in Maharashtra including generation of 1 crore jobs. Sadly, 34 lakh jobs have been lost in the last four years. The Sri Krishna Commission recommendations have not been implemented in letter and spirit as promised. Hardly any old age homes have been developed across the state for senior citizens, 33 per cent reservation for women in government jobs is still a distant dream. Instead of raising the cotton procurement price as promised they actually lowered it by Rs 500, they have not made good on their promise of 30 per cent subsidy for farmers working on infertile land and they have still to act on the 'health for all by 2005' scheme."

"It's a unique manifesto in the sense that not a single promise has been fulfilled by the state," he stated.

BJP Failed To Make Use Of Anti-Incumbency

Political observers feel that the BJP failed to make use of anti-incumbency and failed to make use of an opportunity ripe for the picking.

Smriti Irani responded to this saying "Taking from where Kumar Ketkar left off, I would like to say that there have been victories with the smallest of margins. Yes, we did fall short and did not acquire the requisite numbers for a victory. But at the end of the day all I can say to our supporters and cadre that we begin this very moment for 2014."

Many observers also feel that on the eve of the 25th year after Indira Gandhi's assassination, the Congress could be becoming inclusive and cohesive in a way that it hasn't been in a very long time.

Swapan Dasgupta joined in at this point saying, "The Congress under Indira Gandhi was a dominant one-party system, which it isn't anymore. It has lost a tremendous amount of ground. Maharashtra used to be a Congress bastion but today they are sharing power with the NCP in the state. What is important that these elections are not so much a mandate for the Congress as much a Congress victory. They have managed to exploit the first past the post system quite effectively. I think this victory - as Sainath pointed out - was on the back of a relatively known performing record. That also goes to show why there is no enthusiasm behind this victory."

However, he added that this victory coincided with the secular decline of the BJP and its associates in all the three states.

"In Maharashtra the decline has not been very steep but it has precipitated in Haryana and has been quite dramatic in Arunachal Pradesh. And if we talk of the arrogance of the Congress in Haryana, then we should also see the stupendous arrogance of the BJP that it actually broke off an alliance with Om Prakash Chautala demanding a 50-50 share of the seats. In other words, the BJP actually wanted to just break the alliance and possibly believed they were in a winning position in 50 per cent of the seats in Haryana."

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Did Congress Misread Mood of The Voters in Haryana?

Political observers feel that the Congress went ahead with an India Shining kind of campaign in Haryana and have thus faced a result where they only won 40 out of 90 seats with INLD getting a whopping 32 seats.

Manish Tiwari joined in here, saying, "Over the last 25 years, the Congress has gone through its share of highs and lows but if you see the situation in India today, there is one major party - the Indian National Congress - and then there is a large number of other parties. The metamorphosis of the Indian political structure over time is that it has moved from an effective bi-polarity to a situation where there is one major party and then there is a large number of other parties."

Coming to Haryana, he said, "Ever since Haryana came into existence in 1966 after the trifurcation of Maha Punjab, this is the first time that a government has been repeated in a state. In 1987 Congress got only five seats in the state - those are the kind of swings which Haryana has been producing."

But the fact is that the Congress won the 2004 elections with Bhajan Lal at the helm, then the party disassociated with him and got in B S Hooda and then the Congress outsourced these elections to Hooda.

Tiwari defended his party saying, "How can you outsource an election to your own chief minister? That is stretching the analogy of outsourcing a bit too far. But having said that I want to clarify that in 2005, we never projected anyone as chief minister, just like this time around in all the three states. To say 2005 was Bhajan Lal's victory and 2009 Hooda's failure, then I don't agree. Smaller states produce more intense verdicts and if you look at the history of Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh (all of which came out of Maha Punjab), they have never really ever repeated a government."

Sudheendra Kulkarni reacted to this saying, "If we take it from a 25 year perspective, 1984 was certainly a high-water mark for the Congress but in these 25 years, BJP achieved something very remarkable and that is making India's polity a bi-polar polity. But now the BJP has suffered such reverses that there is a question of whether the Congress may come back to that position of uni-polarity it enjoyed so many years ago. Elections are coming up in Jharkhand and Rajasthan and there is every possibility that the Congress may make gains even in North India where it suffered huge reverses and gave ground to BJP and the Janta Parivar."

Diptosh Majumdar interrupted here saying that this was a mandate that could not be studied really.

"This mandate is a half-hearted mandate and that happened only when the public is unsure. When people stop voting for a party at 144 and don't give it a majority (as the Congress saw on Thursday in Maharashtra), when people stop voting for a party at 40 and don't give it a majority (as the Congress saw on Thursday in Haryana) means the public is unsure whether there is a proper Opposition out there which is ready to form a government. That uncertainty is being reflected here."

He added that this ideological debate had been taken to the right of the center in the '90s but the debate in the last five years is being brought back to the left of the original center again by the Congress.

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P Sainath intervened at this point stating that he was not entirely sure the Congress misread the mood in Haryana. "I am pretty sure had the Haryana elections been held in February, it could have been a drubbing for the Congress. The issues - like price rise, unemployment etc - seem to be lagging six months behind."

Is Bal Thackeray's Legacy Now Split Wide Open?

The big story of the elections in Maharashtra has been that of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena and Raj Thackeray.

Ketkar said that it was an overstated case.

"In 1999, Bal Thackeray was active, he campaigned and Uddhav Thackeray had just entered as executive president of the Shiv Sena. Even then the BJP-Shiv Sena combine lost despite the fact that the NCP had split from the Congress and they had an advantage. I think that because Balasaheb Thackeray and his party campaigns from Mumbai, their image is inflated in the media as is their so-called campaign. The rest of Maharashtra is not bothered about the Shiv Sena or the issues it holds fundamental - which is Marathi Manus. Suddenly the MNS comes on the scene with absolutely the same campaign, no economic agenda and no social agenda and yet it steals away 13 seats. They have made a mark only in Mumbai and Thane where there are only about 2 crore people - approximately one-fifth of the state's population. Only the people who are revolted and disgusted with the way things are happening have voted for the MNS," he said.

He added that MNS could not become a party of economic grievance and a magnet of cultural grievance even after the aftermath of the developmental process was over.

Sainath agreed saying, "It could become a magnet of the aggrieved but it does not articulate economic grievance."

Ketkar added, "MNS only articulates the frustration and aspiration of the Marathi community in the areas where it has won. It does not articulate economic grievance even in these areas. Without any affront to the Marathi people, I would like to say that the Shiv Sena and the MNS are a reflection of the inferiority complex and frustrations of the Marathi people in the Mumbai-Thane belt where they feel over-whelmed by the so-called migrants."

Shobha De joined the debate here saying that she agreed with Ketkar but disagreed on one very important issue.

"Ketkar said that MNS came in with the same agenda as the Shiv Sena but what is new here is that the generation which is coming into the Marathi Manus controversy is new. The people MNS is talking to - disgruntled, frustrated, urban, unemployed youth of Mumbai and Thane - are those who were not even born at the time when Balasaheb reigned over these areas. The generation gap and the attention span of people is such today that for them history is something that happened maybe two years ago," she said.

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"It appeals to a completely different and new set of people. It is something that gives them a sense of hope - maybe false hope. It is a party that's tapping into insecurity and frustration and more than anything else into rage. And Raj Thackeray is using that rage and despair to his own advantage," she added.

Ketkar did not entirely agree saying that the frenzy which Raj Thackeray generated had little to do with the new generation because Raj himself was only two-years-old when the Shiv Sena was formed and Uddhav was only eight.

"The Sena was formed in 1966 and in 1995 - almost 30 years later, Shiv Sena came to power. So the generation gap could have been that time as well. It is not a question of new youth joining MNS, it is a question of Mumbai losing its identity completely. It is only the small, disbanded communities of Marathis who are culturally aggrieved, have been uprooted, who support Raj Thackeray. But they are not completely jobless so let us not assume that only the jobless are joining him. There are some from the middle class and even women who are joining in with him," he said.

However, he said that Raj Thackeray would have to introduce an economic agenda in there somewhere otherwise he would go, as he would if this economic agenda would concentrate only on Marathis. He added that this was an election which marked the waning of Uddhav Thackeray and the rise of Raj Thackeray which could mean an exodus from the third and fourth rank activists of the Shiv Sena to the MNS because they look forward to the charisma of Raj Thackeray.

"It could be the beginning of the decline of the Shiv Sena," he stated.

Kulkarni added his two bits here saying, "I think there is going to be a metamorphosis of the MNS. Raj Thackeray is young, charismatic, highly popular and leads perhaps the only party which did not bring in people to attend rallies by paying them money. But 13 seats is not very remarkable. If he wants to be the future leader of Maharashtra, he has to expand his agenda, devise a new strategy and I think he is intelligent enough to know where his future lies."

Vinod Sharma said here that he thought that Bal Thackeray was never a pan-Maharashtra leader and neither could Raj Thackeray be for the simple reason that anyone who does sectarian politics cannot become a pan-state leader unless he expands his constituency. "That is how Mayawati and Om Prakash Chautala have played their cards," he stated.

Swapan Dasgupta said, "Raj Thackeray today represents a certain form of regional xenophobia and he cannot become a mainstream regional party."

Ketkar agreed saying, "He cannot become a mainstream regional party simply because Maharashtra does not have one uni-lingual or uni-cultural character at all. The only region where he and before him Bal Thackeray could make an impression was the Konkan, Mumbai, Pune and Thane belt which was Shivaji Maharaj's raj formerly. Raj Thackeray will never get full scale support in Vidarbha, North Maharashtra and Western Maharashtra even if Shiv Sena withers away. Shiv Sena and MNS have not created a single institution in the last so many years of their existence unlike what the Congress and the NCP did by creating a vast resource of wealth despite whatever condemnation we may hold for them. They only depend on rabble rousing."

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Vinod Sharma said that the Shiv Sena-BJP combine could never use the crowds they drew in to their advantage because they have a lack of intellectual wherewithal to transform an emotion into an ideology or policy.

Can BJP Recover From The Disaster of 2009?

A BJP member on Thursday had said that Electronic Voting Machines were faulty and were causing the Congress victories. Some feel this shows the bankruptcy of the BJP in trying to deal with the fact that it simply cannot discover an identity with which it is going to win elections.

To this Smriti Irani said, "Manish Tiwari very large-heartedly proclaimed that Congress is the only national party and the others are insignificant in the Indian political system. Ironically, they fight in Maharashtra with the NCP and have not got a clear mandate in Haryana. What is even more ironical is that you have panelists who were on our side of the fence and are discussing the Parivar. What is even more ironical tonight is that while you discussed Raj Thackeray and MNS, most panelists have agreed that Maharashtra is going through a crisis in terms of unemployment, in terms of farmer suicides, power shortage etc. Yes, we were not able to capitalise on all the issues and problems that ail the state."

She said that as far as the arrogance of the BJP goes in Haryana in breaking off an alliance with Chautala - as pointed out by Swapan Dasgupta - it was not correct to blame an individual because the decision was taken at the state level. "If the BJP had performed better today in Haryana, people would have possibly been kinder. Introspection will happen and consequently action," she stated.

Swapan Dasgupta responded to this saying, "The beginning of the journey has to start with acknowledging that there is a crisis and it's not just a defeat and that the politics which took the party so far in the '90s has passed itself by date and that just as various political parties reinvent themselves, the BJP must too and not fall back upon certain ideological certitudes which are non-negotiable because everything in politics is negotiable."

Kulkarni responded to Smriti Irani in turn saying, "For India's vibrant polity, we need two strong national political parties. The BJP has to endear itself and embrace all sections of society. In Maharashtra, they didn't field a single Muslim candidate. The BJP has to represent the Bharatiya janta (public) which means every section that constitutes the Indian society. What should differentiate it from other parties is the credibility of the leadership, the calibre of the leadership, the quality of governance. Today there is no national opposition to the Congress and so the BJP has to reinvent itself."

Vinod Sharma interrupted here saying what Kulkarni was talking about was a centrist party, right of the centre.

Kulkarni responded saying, "There are a large number of people in the BJP who know that they have to expand the agenda."

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Dasgupta intervened saying that there was yet another section in the party which believed that old things must be resurrected which marked it at the time of its birth. "What's remarkable about this crisis is that no debate has frontally taken place. It's been done by proxy and there has been a lot of shadow boxing. Someone like Smriti Irani to my mind represents a very very progressive section of the BJP," he said.

Sharma said, "I see BJP in its present state as not being able to resurrect itself. It doesn't have to reinvent, it has to re-gather. BJP lacks the human resource today to re-invent itself."

Majumdar added here that history shows that when there is an empty political space, someone will fill it sooner or later.

Shobha De said that what the BJP really needed at this point was someone like a Rahul Gandhi. "There is no charismatic figure and the party is hell-bent on a path of self destruction because there are too many egos and too much confusion and there is no effective leadership leading to internal problems. Sometimes it seems that people seem to be sabotaging the party from within. The future rests in the hand of sober and intelligent people like Smriti Irani."

"If you cannot appeal and reach out to the largest and most influential section of India - the youth - then your party needs to re-create itself. Much more vitality is needed," she stated.

Can The BJP Resurrect Itself?

Ketkar made a very important that the Congress party under Manmohan Singh is poised not just to get the middle class votes but also as a pro-poor party.

"Dr Manmohan Singh represents certain pro-poor policies and that is why there was a big problem for the BJP of whether or not to condemn him. Manmohan Singh was carrying forward a policy which BJP had been advocating for sometime between 1995 and 1997. When Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi campaign in poorer areas, they give out a message that the Congress is concerned about the poor. When it comes to policy and approaching the middle class, then Manmohan Singh is the face of the party. I think this balancing works especially well," he said.

He said Manmohan Singh had done what Tony Blair did to the Labour Party and later on the Conservative Party, which had to subsequently reinvent itself.

Kulkarni said here that the BJP had accumulated a lot of experience of governance and that it has performed well in many states for example Gujarat, which had the highest growth rate in India.

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"At the Centre, the Vajpayee government had accelerated the pace of growth as well as the space of growth. What is required for the BJP is to show that it is superior to the Congress in economic policy so a lot of thinking needs to go there based on its experience and accumulating all the ideas and for understanding what is good for the people of India," he added.

Sainath said, "I think it is very tough for the BJP to resurrect itself, but possible and very likely. Incidentally, I don't see many differences in the economic policy of the BJP and the Congress and possibly the biggest the BJP will get in resurrection will be from the Congress party, which is now thoroughly convinced that there is nothing out there."

Majumdar said it came down to revenue and expenditure. "Both parties have the same revenue, it is how you spend the money available to you and what growth model you follow."

Vinod Sharma in his turn said that the major problem was that the BJP lacked a de-facto leader, it will have to discover one. "Congress has a de-facto leader in Sonia Gandhi, possibly in Rahul Gandhi and parallely in Manmohan Singh. At the state level too there is no de-facto leader. The leadership crisis is from the top to bottom. They must be able to forge a leadership within the party and then forge an ideology for that face to project."

Dasgupta concluded the debate saying, "I think the obituaries are pre-mature but at the same time I think the BJP is guilty of non-application of mind and drawing wrong lessons from their Lok Sabha defeat. I think the problems have arisen from a wrong selection of personnel and it is not an inherently deep-rooted problem. The instincts of the BJP as far as the economic problems are concerned are broadly correct. It hasn't fallen into a quicksand, it can resurrect itself."

Ketkar concluded the debate by saying that unless the party threw out the agenda of Hindutva, it could not reinvent itself. "They don't know whether they are Bharatiya Janata Party of the Hindu Janata Party. That has to resolved first," he concluded.