Revenge of the voter

The main point about the Assembly polls, which the political class can ignore only at its peril, is that no ruler can survive the pent-up rage of the people however docile they may seem. This is what lies behind the spectacular triumph of Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal and of J. Jayalalithaa in Tamil Nadu. Those that have used the word “tsunami” in this context are not off the mark.

Legitimate anger drove 80 to 85 per cent of voters to polling booths where they stood in queues for several hours, in scorching heat, to democratically settle scores with their tormentors. Most of them were poor and downtrodden. A parallel with what happened to Indira Gandhi in 1977 after the nightmare of the Emergency is not at all out of place.
Of course, in West Bengal, Ms Banerjee’s leadership was essential to mobilise the mass fury against the Marxist-led Left Front’s misrule, to put it no more strongly than that. In the southern state a viable alternative was available in the charismatic personality of Ms Jayalalithaa, who has already been its chief minister twice. The difference in the causes that destroyed the Communist bastion in the east and the family rule of Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) patriarch M. Karunanidhi in the south is also significant.
To take up West Bengal first. Were circumstances there normal, any party or combination ruling the state for 34 continuous years would have been voted out as a matter of course. But normalcy and West Bengal can’t be uttered in the same breath. The Left Front, led and dominated by the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), was routed not because of the longevity of its stay in power but because of its egregious errors and excesses. After its initial land reforms — Operation Barga in the late Seventies — it abandoned the rural folk, presumably expecting them to be grateful forever. Nor did it do anything to set up industries, small, medium or big, to provide employment to the swelling army of job seekers. When it realised this mistake, it swung to the other extreme, forcibly taking over farmers’ lands and handing these to the tallest of the tycoons. No wonder Singur and Nandigram followed.
What aggravated people’s woes was the Left Front’s almost criminal neglect of education and healthcare. From the top of the chart on education, together with Tamil Nadu, West Bengal has plummeted to third position from the bottom — just above Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. However, all this pales when compared with the Left’s crowning idiocy of imposing on the state something akin to Stalinist tyranny. It erased the dividing line between the party and the government. West Bengal went under the “Marxist cadre raj” — for the arrogant Marxist cadres, violence was the first instrument to enforce its will. This did invite counter-violence, especially from Ms Banerjee’s Trinamul Congress, with Maoists contributing their mite. But who can match the combined power of the state and the ruling party’s goons?
Authoritarianism and high-handedness did play a role in the deserved downfall of Mr Karunanidhi and the DMK. But it was rather limited, notwithstanding the shenanigans at Madurai of M.K. Alagiri, Mr Karunanidhi’s son and Union minister for chemicals and fertilisers. The DMK’s district secretaries also tended to behave like CPI(M) cadres in West Bengal. What made the five-time chief minister of Tamil Nadu bite the dust was corruption that was monumental and brazen beyond belief. It was also “in-house”, confined to Kalaignar’s extended clan. Nothing more needs to be said in view of the drama unfolding in the courts of law. But there is one more fact of which the country ought to take notice.
Was it purely coincidental that nobody, but nobody, foresaw the poll results in Tamil Nadu while almost everybody expected Ms Banerjee’s big win in West Bengal? The most pundits and psephologists would say was that either side could win. Exit polls even gave victory to the DMK. Why? It is worth pondering that, perhaps, the self-respecting Tamils were hurt by the assumption in what they call “Upper India” that they would, as usual, be happy with freebies and cash delivered to them with the morning paper, and would happily return the DMK to power. They obviously decided to decimate the DMK but disclosed it to no one. In Tamil Nadu it was a “silent wave”, obviously because of some kind of fear.
Has the Congress, the core of the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) at the Centre, read the election results right? To be sure, it has every reason to be proud of its achievement in the usually divided state of Assam where it has staged a hattrick. The credit for this goes primarily to Tarun Gogoi who will be Assam’s chief minister for the third time running. As a conciliator he thwarted attempts at polarising the state and has paved the way for a peaceful settlement with the United Liberation Front of Asom. It is also understandable that the Congress should feel happy about the pathetic plight of the Bharatiya Janata Party that contested almost all seats in Assam and Kerala and a great many in West Bengal. In the process, in the words of a usually sympathetic commentator, it has made itself a “joker in the pack”. For the rest, the Congress’ claims when not misplaced are exaggerated.
For instance, its boast that it and its UPA allies have won in three of the five states is a fact that obscures the truth. In West Bengal, the Congress is no more than a peripheral appendage to the victorious Trinamul Congress. As for Kerala, where every election has led to regime change, this time around the irony is that the winner came second. The United Democratic Front has a wafer-thin majority. In tiny Puducherry, the mighty Congress has lost two-to-one to a former Congressman. And if it goes on underplaying the issue of corruption in Tamil Nadu, it may yet again be singed by it.
The worst message to reach the Congress headquarters is from Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh where a single Lok Sabha byelection has proved more catastrophic than all other losses put together. Congress’ biggest bastion is now history.