Indian Elections 2009 - OpenEdition Journals

South Asia Multidisciplinary AcademicJournal

3 | 2009

Contests in Context: Indian Elections 2009

Balveer Arora and Stéphanie Tawa Lama-Rewal (dir.)

Electronic versionURL: http://journals.openedition.org/samaj/1092DOI: 10.4000/samaj.1092ISSN: 1960-6060

PublisherAssociation pour la recherche sur l'Asie du Sud (ARAS)

Electronic referenceBalveer Arora and Stéphanie Tawa Lama-Rewal (dir.), South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal,3 | 2009, « Contests in Context: Indian Elections 2009 » [Online], Online since 24 November 2009,connection on 06 May 2019. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/samaj/1092 ; DOI:10.4000/samaj.1092

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction. Contextualizing and Interpreting the 15th Lok Sabha ElectionsBalveer Arora and Stéphanie Tawa Lama-Rewal

India’s 2009 Elections: The Resilience of Regionalism and EthnicityChristophe Jaffrelot and Gilles Verniers

Pre-electoral Coalitions, Party System and Electoral Geography: A Decade of GeneralElections in India (1999–2009)Bertrand Lefebvre and Cyril Robin

Electoral Politics in the Context of Separatism and Political Divergence: An Analysis of 2009Parliamentary elections in Jammu & KashmirRekha Chowdhary

Studying Elections in India: Scientific and Political DebatesStéphanie Tawa Lama-Rewal

South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, 3 | 2009

1

Introduction. Contextualizing andInterpreting the 15th Lok SabhaElections

Balveer Arora and Stéphanie Tawa Lama-Rewal

1 Most of the papers presented in this special issue of SAMAJ are the outcome of a

workshop organised by the Centre de Sciences Humaines in New Delhi in July 2009. By

then the results of the 2009 general elections had been largely commented upon already.

The workshop was therefore not meant to discuss electoral results per se, but rather to

have specialists discuss papers that considered elections as an analyzer of political

dynamics that most authors usually studied in more ordinary times.1 As Butler, Lahiri and

Roy (1995: 5) put it, ‘every election is a potential turning point in history and deserves a

full study as a contemporary event, an opportunity to observe politicians and party

organizations at full stretch, to examine the influence of press and broadcasting, to assess

the involvement of ordinary citizens’.

2 Indeed reading election studies over time shows how elections serve as landmarks in the

analysis of India’s political system.2 Each major electoral consultation offers an

opportunity to produce interpretations which also contribute to the evolution of the

polity. Thus the Fourth election (1967) marked the end of Congress dominance in the

states; the Eighth election (1977) marked the beginning of the end of Congress dominance

at the Centre; the Tenth (1996) and more decisively the Twelfth elections (1998) signaled

the opening of the era of coalitions. Elections, as events, crystallize ongoing processes and

highlight some major shifts even while they obliterate others.

3 The macro-perspective chosen by most authors in this issue aims to contextualize the 15th

elections to the Lok Sabha, i.e. the lower chamber of the Indian Parliament, with a view to

highlighting this production of interpretations of the vote, by different actors, for

different publics, with different objectives.


2

The interpretation of election results by politicalactors

4 One possible approach is to view elections from the way in which election results, once

declared, are interpreted by the political actors themselves. The search for meaning in

the analysis of electoral results and trends relies heavily on the interpretation of the

intentions of voters, both before and after the elections. Those who seek to understand

these intentions are, first and foremost, the candidates themselves, both the winners and

the losers. For the winners, staying ahead requires an accurate assessment of where their

strengths lie, while for those who failed to make it, it is important to have clues on

constituencies that can be won over. There are in addition interpretations based on

surveys, both pre- and post-poll.3 With all their analytical sophistication, the

interpretation of results remains problematic in terms of attributing rationality or

irrationality to it.4

5 Winning parties have their own networks of political intelligence, and have access to the

interpretations of professional analysts too. Their very survival depends on an accurate

assessment and interpretation of the mandate they have received from their support

base, since the vocation of a ruling party is to remain in power till the next round, and

beyond.

6 The party which loses power also proceeds to introspect on the reasons for its defeat in

order to work out ways of coming back to power. This introspection is generally based on

inputs from states where they did well and those where they fared poorly, in order to

evolve a winning strategy for the next round. Finally, for the single-state and multi-state

parties which find themselves in the pool of coalition partners and allies, they have to

often decide whether they situate themselves in the government or with the opposition

camp till the next round of consultations, whether state or national.5 These calculations

are complex, for they must interpret the result in their own state and work out strategies

for leveraging central ties without endangering their own primary objective i.e. the

capture of power in the state.

7 Thus one approach to contextualizing the Lok Sabha elections is to view them within the

framework of inter-party relations in a multi-level federal polity, and to assess their

impact on public policy processes in the intervening periods. It is evident that the

assessments and interpretations of electoral mandates by parties, particularly those in

power, have a direct bearing on public policy choices. This is equally applicable to

opposition parties and the policies they combat. More often than not, it is a delicate

balancing act of extracting political mileage from visibly popular welfare policies while

performing, at the same time, the role of the opposition, i.e. to oppose.6

8 Government-opposition relations are crucial to understanding political processes in

parliamentary democracies. In a federal polity, this relationship runs concurrently at two

levels, with calendars that criss-cross ever since national and state elections were

delinked in 1971-72.7 Federal coalitions consist of concentric circles and the calculations

that enter into their construction are heavily influenced by the electoral calendar and

compulsions of the partners and allies in each of the circles.


3

State goals, federal imperatives

9 In decoding the mandate that flows from the 2009 consultation, we need to contextualize

the results at two levels of the federal polity, the national and the state, and attempt to

define the nature of the link between the two. One way of doing this is to first situate the

15th Lok Sabha elections in terms of the defining trends of the last two decades, since the

convincing defeat of the Congress in 1989. Clues to the links between the levels of the

dual federal polity can emerge by exploring the ways in which elections at the state level

have been linked to or delinked from the Lok Sabha electoral mandates. The responses of

federal coalitions, which have their own internal logic, to the continuing challenge of the

electoral consultations calendar are equally instructive. Finally, empirical data on

decision making in federal coalitions reveals that the systemic innovations first

introduced by the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government (1999-2004)

and further developed by the first Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA)

government (2004-09) ensure that constituency concerns of coalition members are

adequately addressed and thus play an important role in maintaining governmental

stability.8

10 While movements and parties have distinct and often identifiable social roots, they

respond to institutional parameters in devising their electoral tactics and strategies. Ever

since the debate on the relative weight to be attached to these two elements between

Maurice Duverger (1954) and Georges Lavau (1955) in the 1950s, political science has tried

to grapple with this issue. The fragmentation of party systems usually has clear social

roots, and in the case of India, given the caste configuration and cultural pluralism of the

polity, their political articulation is conditioned, and frequently determined, by the

structure of electoral opportunities of the multilevel federal polity. In these calculations,

the fact that the federal polity is centralized in its distribution of power and resources

further weighs on the choices made.

11 One of the durable trends of the period under study is the steady increase in the number

of single-state and multi-state parties as a result of the federalization of the party system.9 One can analytically distinguish between the first generation state parties which were

born in the pre-independence era or under the Congress dominance phase, from the state

parties that came into being in the subsequent phase. While the most prominent ones

were primarily based on territorial identity politics, those based on ideological

specificities were no less significant (Tirimagni-Hurtig & Arora 1972).10 The second

generation of state parties resulted from the gradual splintering and eventual collapse of

the Congress during its 1969-1977 hyper-centralization phase and the subsequent

implosion of the short-lived Janata alternative.11 These single-state and multi-state

parties constitute the building blocks of federal coalitions since the 1996 elections

witnessed a sharp decline in the Congress seat share and the BJP was totally unprepared

for occupying the political space so vacated. As the following tables show, the popularity

of single-state and multi-state parties remains undiminished.12

Table 1. Distribution of Lok Sabha Seats between All-India and State Parties 1996-2009

11LS:1996 12LS:1998 13LS:1999 14LS:2004 15LS:2009


4

% Seats % Seats % Seats % Seats % Seats

All-India Parties

Congress 25.8 26.0 21.0 26.7 37.9

BJP 29.6 33.5 33.5 25.4 21.4

Sub Total INC+BJP 55.4 59.5 54.5 52.1 59.3

State Parties

Multi-state parties* 18.8 11.8 13.3 14.9. 9.9

Single-State parties &

Independents. 25.8 28.7 32.2 33.0 30.8

Sub Total State Parties 44.6 40.5 45.5 47.9 40.7

Grand Total 100 100 100 100 100

Table 2. Division of Vote Share in the Lok Sabha between All-India and State Parties 1996-2009

11LS:1996 12LS:1998 13LS:1999 14LS:2004 15LS:2009

% Vote

share

% Vote

share

% Vote

share

% Vote

share

% Vote

share

All-India Parties

Congress 28.80 25.82 28.30 26.53 28.52

BJP 20.29 25.59 23.75 22.16 18.84

Sub Total INC+BJP 49.09 51.41 52.05 48.59 47.36

State Parties

Multi-state parties* 22.72 19.36 20.11 16.61 16.24

Single-State parties and

Independents 28.19 29.23 27.84 34.80 36.40

Sub Total State Parties 50.91 48.59 47.95 51.41 52.64

Grand Total 100 100 100 100 100

Source for Tables 1 & 2: Election Commission of India (http://eci.nic.in)

*Multi-state parties are the smaller parties recognized as ‘national’ by the ElectionCommission in successive elections. In 2009 these were CPM, CPI, BSP, RJD, and NCP.


5

http://eci.nic.in/

12 Two immediate observations impose themselves from even a cursory reading of these

tables: (a) the ratio of seats won by the all-India parties in relation to the state parties is

similar in 2009 to the 1998 level; and (b) the drop in their combined vote share is a

continuing trend, the lowest among all five elections. This is, on the face of it, not ‘a

radical shift in the social basis of political power’ that the 2004 electoral outcome

appeared to be at first glance.13 This said, the working of the First Passed the Post (FPTP)

electoral system is such that, with all these limitations, the votes did translate into a

comfortable win for the Congress, and gave it the option of being able to pick and choose

its coalition partners.14

13 While there is no authoritative indication of the BJP reading of its dismal performance,

the Congress has put forward its own interpretation of why it won.15 It sees the renewal of

its mandate as a vindication of the policy architecture of inclusion it built up during its

first term in office. ‘It is a mandate for inclusive growth, equitable development and a

secular and plural India.’16 It also views the mandate as a desire for peace and stability,

and places internal security as the first priority of the new government.

14 If one has to explain the resurgence of the Congress in what appeared to be at one stage a

‘post-Congress polity’, one also has to explain what happened to the other pillar of

conventional wisdom: the anti-incumbency vote. The hypothesis that deserves to be

further tested is that it held good during periods of poor economic growth and was a

reflection of the desperation of the electorate, willing to try any other option available to

see if it delivered any better living conditions. The recent trend of renewal of election

mandates is interpreted by the winning parties as an endorsement of their effective

delivery of welfare policies.17 Effective economic policy in the electoral context is

primarily seen as the ability of governments to keep prices in check and to ensure basic

necessities. Political mileage for other achievements such as the provision of jobs and

welfare benefits is keenly contested between central and state governments. As Table 3

shows, thirty single-state parties and nine independents managed to find a place in the

Lok Sabha.

Table 3. 15th Lok Sabha Elections 2009: Seats won by All India and State Parties

Seats

Won

Seats

(in %)States

All India Parties

Indian National Congress 206 37.94 All India vote share 28.52%

Bharatiya Janata Party 116 21.36 All India vote share 18.83%

Total All-India Parties (2) 322 59.30 Combined vote share 47.35%

Multi-State Parties/ECI

Recognized National (Vote share % in brackets)

Bahujan Samaj Party 21 4.99 U.P. + (6.17)

Communist Party of India 4 0.74 W. Bengal, Kerala + (1.43)


6

Communist Party of India

(Marxist)16 2.95 W. Bengal, Kerala, Tripura (5.34)

Nationalist Congress Party 9 1.66 Maharashtra, Meghalaya (2.04)

Rashtriya Janata Dal 4 0.74 Bihar (1.27)

Total Multi-State/ ECI

Recognized National (5)54 9.94 Total Vote share 16.26

State Parties ECI Recognized

All India Anna Dravida

Munnetra Kazhagam9 1.66 Tamil Nadu (1.67)

All India Forward Bloc 2 0.37 West Bengal (0.32)

All India Trinamool Congress 19 3.50 West Bengal (3.20)

Asom Gana Parishad 1 0.18 Assam (0.43)

Assam United Democratic Front 1 0.18 Assam (NA)

Biju Janata Dal 14 2.58 Orissa (1.59)

Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam 18 3.31 Tamil Nadu (1.83)

Jammu & Kashmir National

Conference3 0.55 J&K (0.12)

Janata Dal (Secular) 3 0.55 Karnataka (0.82)

Janata Dal (United) 20 3.68 Bihar(1.52)

Jharkhand Mukti Morcha 2 0.37 Jharkhand (0.40)

Kerala Congress (M) 1 0.18 Kerala (0.08)

Marumalarchi Dravida

Munnetra Kazhagam1 0.18 Tamil Nadu (NA)

Muslim League Kerala State

Committee2 0.37 Kerala(0.21)

Nagaland Peoples Front 1 0.18 Nagaland (NA)

Revolutionary Socialist Party 2 0.37 West Bengal (0.38)

Samajwadi Party 23 4.24 Uttar Pradesh (3.43)

Shiromani Akali Dal 4 0.74 Punjab (0.96)

Shiv Sena 11 2.03 Maharashtra (1.55)


7

Sikkim Democratic Front 1 0.18 Sikkim (0.04)

Telangana Rashtra Samithi 2 0.37 Andhra Pradesh (0.62)

Telugu Desam 6 1.10 Andhra Pradesh (2.51)

Total Single State ECI Recognized

(22) 146 26.89

ECI Unrecognized State Parties

All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul

Muslimeen1 0.18 Andhra Pradesh

Bahujan Vikas Aaghadi 1 0.18 Maharashtra

Bodaland Peoples Front 1 0.18 Assam

Haryana Janhit Congress

(BhajanLal)1 0.18 Haryana

Jharkhand Vikas Morcha

(Prajatantrik)1 0.18 Jharkhand

Rashtriya Lok Dal 5 0.92 Uttar Pradesh

Swabhimani Paksha 1 0.18 Maharashtra

Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katch 1 0.18 Tamil Nadu

Independents 9 1.66

Bihar(2), Jharkhand(2), J&K, Maharashtra

, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, W. Bengal (1

each)

Total ECI Unrecognized Single

State Parties (8) + Independents

(9)

21 3.87

Total seat share of multi-state and

single state parties + independents :

40.7%

GRAND TOTAL 543 100%

Source: Compiled from Election Commission of India (Press Information Bureau , http://www.pib.nic.in/elections2009) and Palshikar (2009). The assistance of K.K.Kailash in tabulatingelectoral data is gratefully acknowledged.

15 Going further, it is to be noted that there were only 17 single-state and multi-state parties

which crossed the 0.5% threshold of significance in terms of the number of seats

obtained, i.e. 3 seats. Some state parties obtained a significant share of votes—enough to

influence electoral outcomes but insufficient to obtain seats for them. Notable among

them were the Maharashtra Navanirman Sena (MNS), Desiya Murpokku Dravida

Kazhagam (DMDK) and the Praja Rajyam Party (PRP).18

16 The link between state and national elections is at the core of discussions on interpreting

mandates. Yogendra Yadav suggests that the principal choices are made in the state


8

http://www.pib.nic.in/elections2009

http://www.pib.nic.in/elections2009

assembly elections and the national consultation is increasingly ‘derivative’ (Yadav &

Palshikar 2009: 55).19 The relevance of state goals to the participation of parties in federal

coalitions is undoubtedly a major element of this analysis. For example, a surprisingly

large proportion of parties which joined the NDA in 2009 were in the role of the

opposition at the state level, and were clearly interested in leveraging their participation

to capture power in the state elections. The policy orientations and choices of federal

coalitions are thus influenced by the goals of coalition members, whose horizons are in

turn determined by the electoral cycles in their respective states.

17 The shift towards a bi-nodal system and the logic of federal coalitions has clear analytical

implications. How is a bi-nodal system different from a bi-polar one? The distinction is,

we argue, that bipolarity implies the existence of two antipodal forces, diametrically

opposite, at either end of the spectrum. What we observe however is the existence of two

and occasionally three principal nodes around which state parties tend to cluster in

varying formations. While there are some constants around each node, there is also

significant movement of parties to intermediate positions and in some cases between

nodes.20 As a recent study observes, ‘the Indian party system has made a definite

transition from the days of one-party dominance to a multi-party system in which the

multiplicity exists more at the national than at the state level and is increasingly bound

in a bi-nodal alliance system’ (Lokniti 2008: 85).

18 The electoral strategies of the two major parties in a bi-nodal system and the emergence

of federal coalitions are strikingly evident in the number of candidates fielded in

successive Lok Sabha elections. When the BJP switched from the cobbling together of a

post-electoral majority strategy (1998) to a conscious coalition-centric strategy (1999) the

number of candidates it fielded dropped. Its attempts at expanding and consolidating its

electoral base beyond its traditional bastions explain the subsequent increase in the

number of candidates fielded. In the case of the Congress, there is a significant increase in

2009 primarily due to the reassertion strategy adopted in the key states of Uttar Pradesh

and Bihar.

Table 4. Lok Sabha Seats Contested by the INC and BJP 1996-2009

1996 1998 1999 2004 2009

INC 529 477 453 417 440

BJP 471 388 339 364 433

Source: Election Commission of India http://eci.nic.in

Note: The BSP became the party to contest the largest number of seats in 2009: 500. In earlierelections, it fielded: 251 in 1998, 225 in 1999, and 435 in 2004.

19 In order to analyze the linkage between state goals and federal imperatives, the ways in

which federal coalitions have attempted to reconcile different priorities in their decision-

making processes is instructive. As earlier noted, the Group of Ministers (GoM) and the

Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) mechanisms constitute an interesting device for

understanding the relationship between the two levels of electoral consultations. The

UPA-I government used this device extensively and effectively to ensure participation of

coalition partners in key policy decisions.21


9

http://eci.nic.in/

20 Thus, from the public policy viewpoint, the electoral calendar of state assemblies (shown

in Table 5) is clearly of particular relevance. The mandates are linked even if the elections

are de-linked. The consolidation of power at the national level passes through the

decimation of challengers and opponents at the state level. Hence the interpretation of

the 2009 mandate by the Congress as one for effective delivery of welfare benefits to the

poor attempts to cut across traditional vote bank boundaries.22

Table 5: Electoral calendar for renewal of 23 State Assemblies (2009-2013)

2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

Maharashtra Bihar Assam Uttar Pradesh Karnataka

Andhra* Kerala Uttarakhand Madhya Pradesh.

Orissa* Tamil Nadu Gujarat Chattisgarh

Sikkim* West Bengal Punjab Rajasthan

Haryana Puducherry Goa Himachal Pradesh.

Jharkhand Delhi

Source: Compiled on the basis of dates on which the last elections were held, on the assumption thatthe assemblies are not prematurely dissolved. http://eci.nic.in

Notes:

1.* Elections held along with 15th LS Polls in May. Others held in Oct-Dec 2009.

2. Jammu & Kashmir Assembly has a six year term and will be up for re-election in 2014. Six north-eastern states (Nagaland, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Manipur, Tripura, and Arunachal) have not beenincluded due to data uncertainties.

21 The significance of this calendar is related to the concentric circles of federal coalitions.

The first circle comprises the coalition maker, the second consists of key coalition

partners, the third of minor coalition partners and the fourth of parties, whether pre or

post election allies, who have volunteered their support, conditionally or unconditionally,

but are not part of the coalition. The electoral compulsions of the first circle have direct

policy implications in terms of the prioritization of agenda items in a dual-horizon

perspective. The first horizon is that of the state election, whereas the second is the

objective of maintaining the majority for the full term of the mandate.23 Thus the

electoral horizons of the second circle of key partners enter into the picture. For

example, two major pieces of economic reform legislation which cleared the 14th Lok

Sabha but lapsed with its dissolution since the Rajya Sabha failed to approve them. They

have been reintroduced in the 15th Lok Sabha, but are unlikely to be processed very

rapidly till the West Bengal electoral horizon clears.24

22 The majoritarian temptation is ever present in coalitions, but in a bi-nodal federal polity

it takes on critical dimensions. While it is natural for parties with a vocation to capture

power at the national level to seek an absolute majority by themselves, the federalization

of the party system might well manifest a voter desire to loosen the grip of majoritarian

parties and to safeguard state autonomy.


10

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The contributors

23 Two papers in this special issue further discuss the possible interpretations and

implications of the 2009 Lok Sabha elections in terms of relationships between the Centre

and the states. C. Jaffrelot and G. Verniers analyze the 2009 electoral results with a view

to testing two hypotheses that have been largely discussed lately: (i) the hypothesis of the

re-centralization of the political scene, after a series of elections that seemed, on the

contrary, to manifest the increasing importance of the states as decisive political arenas;

and (ii) the hypothesis of the ethnicization of political parties. They conclude that the

regionalization of politics is continuing, and that the coalition era is far from over.

24 In a more theoretical perspective, C. Robin and B. Lefebvre situate this latest round of

elections in the international literature on coalition formation; they analyze the

dynamics of coalition formation since the emergence of the NDA in the late 1990s, with a

focus on a largely overlooked, and yet critical aspect: that of pre-electoral coalitions.

Their study relies on a geographical methodology that suggests that the contrasted

regional presence of the two coalition leaders, the Congress and the BJP, is a major factor

in their respective success as such.

25 R. Chowdhury’s paper then allows us to zoom in on the interplay between state and

national politics, with a case study of Jammu and Kashmir focusing on the intertwining of

mainstream and separatist strategy and practice in that state, which has also been

governed by coalition governments for the past few years. The paper also draws attention

to the continued significance of identity politics, which sustains state parties in many

parts of the country: Telangana, Bodoland, Gorkhaland, Jharkhand and most of the

northeastern states.

26 Finally, S. Tawa Lama-Rewal reflects on the conditions of production of election studies in

India. Her critical review of this literature underlines the variety of perspectives and

methodologies that can be, and have been, used in studying elections. She draws

attention to the important role of the media in funding and publicizing a major brand of

election studies, i.e. survey research. She also emphasizes the significant, but today

largely under-represented, contribution of anthropology to the understanding of this

rich phenomenon. Her paper argues that election studies are really in between science

and politics, which makes it all the more necessary to contextualize them—and this is

precisely what this issue of SAMAJ is aiming at.

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NOTES

1. Workshop ‘Elections 2009’ held at the India International Centre, New Delhi with the support

of the Centre de Sciences Humaines, on 31st July 2009. We would like to record our thanks to all

the paper presenters, discussants and sessions chairs who contributed to the very lively

discussion.

2. But the same perusal also underlines the risk of hasty conclusions: for instance Electoral Studies

stated that ‘the 1999 general election appears to have put an end to Sonia Gandhi’s short-lived

political career’ (Saez 2001).

3. In the introduction to the 2004 National Election Study (NES) of Lokniti, Yogendra Yadav

admitted, ‘The outcome of the 14th general elections to the Lok Sabha constitutes a puzzle,

something that continues to elude political actors, analysts and the public even six months after

[the results…] The mandate of the election is not clear even today. Neither the political

establishment nor the knowledge industry has been able to forge anything like a shared

consensus regarding the message of this general election.’ (Lokniti team 2004: 5373). See also

Shastri et al (2009).

4. Thus, is voting driven by anti-incumbency or by caste loyalty rational or irrational? American

historian Rick Shenkman (author of Just How Stupid Are We?) argues that ‘‘throw the bums out’

may not be a sophisticated response to adversity but it is a rational one.’ Cited in Bartels 2008: 50.

5. It is not that political actors themselves always find it easy to interpret the results which

concern them in the first instance. Speaking of the BJP’s assessment of its electoral reverses in

the last two elections, Yashwant Sinha, a prominent leader of the party, said of the 2004 election

‘we believe we lost accidentally.’ (Conversation with Shekhar Gupta ‘Walk the Talk’, Indian Express

, 27 July 2009).

6. In the interpretation of mandates by political parties, a crucial element of course is the degree

of democratic functioning within the party and the possibilities for a free flow of political

intelligence from the constituency to the leadership levels. Frequently, factions and coteries

impede this flow, with obvious consequences for sound decisions.

7. On 27 December 1970, Indira Gandhi prematurely dissolved the Lok Sabha elected in 1967 and

won handsomely the February 1971 elections. Following her spectacular foreign policy initiative

thereafter which led to the creation of Bangladesh in December 1971, she repeated her electoral

success in the state assembly polls held in March 1972 in most states.

8. Thus, the Group of Ministers mechanism was devised to meet needs generated by coalitional

power-sharing which could not be met by the traditional inter-ministerial coordination devices.

Also, leadership of the coalition in Parliament was delinked from leadership of the party in the

two Houses of Parliament by the UPA, a practice which was subsequently adopted by the NDA.

9. We prefer the term ‘federalization’ to the more frequently used ‘fragmentation’, because the

latter captures the reality without offering any explanation for the occurrence. We believe that

there is a pattern along which the fragmentation takes place, a ‘method in the madness’ which

goes beyond personality issues and ego clashes. As the number of state assemblies has grown, so

has the number of single – state parties, a process which began with the reorganization of states

and has continued since. The federalization of the party system denotes its restructuring, during

the post-Congress dominance phase, along the fault-lines of the federal polity. Parties rarely

succeed in transcending state boundaries and achieving multi-state social mobilization.

10. Prominent among the identity-based parties which still survive, with their off-shoots and

avatars, are the Muslim League, the Shiromani Akali Dal, the Dravida Munnettra Kazhagam, the


13

Jammu & Kashmir National Conference, and parties of Jharkhand, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Goa, and

Telangana. The ideological specificity group comprises Left parties such as the Forward Bloc, the

Revolutionary Socialist Party, the Peasants and Workers Party.

11. In this category we would include the Janata Dals (JDU, JDS, BJD, RJD), the Rashtriya Lok Dal,

Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party, and the three major ‘regionalist’ parties to emerge during

this phase, the Shiv Sena, the Asom Gana Parishad and the Telugu Desam Party. See K.C.Suri,

‘Telugu Desam Party’ and Suhas Palshikar, ‘Shiv Sena’ in DeSouza and Sridharan (2006).

12. We use the term multi-state parties to designate parties recognized as ‘national’ by the

Election Commission from time to time, other than the two all-India parties. This device enables

consistent comparison, since the only characteristic these parties have in common is their

meeting the ECI mandated threshold of electoral significance in electoral results in two or three

states, and since the ‘national’ label is conferred on them or withdrawn on periodic review of

their performance after each election. Thus their ‘national party’ status is unstable over

successive elections, whereas they remain state parties throughout. On the rapid response of the

BJP to the need for coalition building and the subsequent conversion of the Congress to this

strategy, see Arora (2000).

13. Yogendra Yadav in The Hindu, 20 May 2004. This assessment was subsequently corrected after

more detailed analysis, in Shastri et al. (2009).

14. Cf Palshikar (2009).

15. The BJP attempted introspection in Shimla in August 2009 on the basis of reports on the

states by centrally appointed observers. Successes were generally linked to good governance in

the states concerned whereas responsibility for failures remained vague and unassigned, not

going beyond the ‘need to avoid ideological dilution or confusion’ (Indian Express, 11 August

2009).

16. Speech by President Pratibha Patil at the opening session of the 15 th Lok Sabha, 4 June 2009

(Press Information Bureau, http://pib.nic.in accessed on 21 June 2009).

17. The state governments of Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Sikkim were also voted back to power

in April-May 2009. Earlier, the Delhi government was voted in for an unprecedented third term.

18. The PRP was recognized as a state party by the Election Commission of India after the

declaration of results.

19. The comparison with national assembly elections in member states and elections to the

European parliament is interesting though somewhat misleading because the European Union is

not a centralized federation like the Indian Union.

20. The bi-nodal system of party competition at the national level corresponds perhaps closest to

the ‘Two Plus’ category defined by Yadav and Palshikar (2006: 83) for party competition at the

state level, with the occasional rise of a third nodal party detaching itself from the bi-nodal

framework and making efforts to pull together an alternative coalition. The CPM played such a

role in the 2009 elections. For an initial statement of the bi-nodal concept, see Arora (2003: 84).

21. Under the UPA-II government, the practice has resumed. For example, the GoM on food

security has all three major coalition partners: NCP, TMC and DMK. The inclusion of the first two

can no doubt be explained by their portfolios, Agriculture and Railways, but the inclusion of the

DMK minister of textiles is perhaps more reflective of the interest of the coalition partner in this

crucial area of public policy. On the multiple uses of GoMs under UPA-I, a preliminary assessment

can be seen in Arora and Kailash (2007).

22. On the significance of the expanding welfare role of the Indian state, see Nayar 2009.

23. In the case of the UPA II, the Maharashtra, Kerala, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh elections

constitute clearly the first horizon which determines the schedule and pace of its economic and

social agenda.

24. The Land Acquisition Amendment Bill and the Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill are

crucial elements of the economic liberalization agenda of the UPA, which had managed to secure


14

http://pib.nic.in/

the support of the Left parties in the 14th Lok Sabha, but faces opposition from its new Bengal

ally, the Trinamool Congress.

INDEX

Keywords: general elections, India, regionalism, BJP, elections, political science, democracy,

Congress, NDA, UPA

AUTHORS

BALVEER ARORA

Professor of Political Science, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi

STÉPHANIE TAWA LAMA-REWAL

Research Fellow, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris


15

India’s 2009 Elections: TheResilience of Regionalism andEthnicity

Christophe Jaffrelot and Gilles Verniers

Introduction

1 The Indian elections, which started on 13 April 2009 and ended more than one month

later on May 16, broke one more record since 714 million people were eligible to vote and

about 58% exercised their right to franchise.1 These elections were also exceptional

because of their outcome as, for the first time since 1984, the ruling party was spared the

anti-incumbency reflex, which had become almost systematic till then. With 206 seats

and a comfortable majority in the Lok Sabha thanks to its allies, the Congress is bound to

rule for five more years with some room for manoeuvre. Indeed, the defeat of the

Communists and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) brings Indian politics back to the

centre, the favourite political space of the Congress. Does this mean that the Congress is

back to its heydays, where it had a dominating hand on the polity, and that the phase of

fragmentation of Indian politics, which accelerated in the 1990s, is over? While many

analysts have gone that far in a rather hasty way, a close look at the election results

suggests, instead, that the fragmentation process is still progressing. This paradox can be

explained partly and firstly by the distorting effect of the majoritarian electoral system,

as well as by the growing propensity of various social groups to vote according to regional

and ethnic identities. The ‘re-nationalization’ of Indian politics, as opposed to the

fragmentation process of the electorate and party system—characteristic of the 1990s and

early 2000s—is far from being back on track, as will be developed here. This article draws

essentially from a double set of quantitative data. The first set is made of the ‘raw data’

provided by the Election Commission of India, which we examined for some states at the

constituency level. The second set originates from the National Election Study (NES) 2009,

conducted by the Centre for Study of Developing Societies (CSDS). This study also

provides segmented qualitative analysis that inspired, or is reflected in, some of our own


16

analysis. Combining these data enabled us to crosscheck our own analysis while not

depending entirely on the survey data.

The ‘Comeback’ of the Congress: An Outcome of itsPolicies or of the Rise of Regional Parties?

2 Since the 1990s, India seemed to have entered into the post-Congress phase of its political

history. The fate of the dominant party of yesteryears seemed to be sealed for good. It

had lost its capacity to rally groups, which sometimes were poles apart, like the upper

castes, the Dalits and the Muslims. Indeed, until the early 1990s, the Congress’ dominance

formula had lied upon this capacity to encompass contending social groups. It was a

genuine ‘catch-all party’. In the 1967 general elections for example, the vote in favour of

the Congress did almost not vary according to the level of income (Madsen 1970: 100). In

North India, it was more specifically based on a ‘coalition of extremes’ to use the terms of

Paul Brass (1980: 5), since its principal supports came from the Brahmins, the Scheduled

Castes and the Muslims. The party thus blurred two cleavages, the one opposing the high

and the low castes, and the one separating religious communities. The same technique

turned out to be successful in other regions too. The all India opinion polls conducted by

the CSDS show that till the 1980s, the Congress party was able to attract between 35.8%

and 50.5% of the voters from any social group.2 In 1989, the Brahmins, the Scheduled

Castes, the Scheduled Tribes and the Muslims were still over-represented within the

Congress (I) electorate. According to an opinion poll survey, carried out after the 1989

elections, where the Congress (I) won 39.5% of the valid votes, it received the support of

41% of the Brahmins who were interviewed, 44.2% of the SCs/STs and 45.8% of the

Muslims.

3 But, as Table 1 shows, the 1990s witnessed an erosion of the Congress attraction amongst

all sections. The BJP and a large number of regional parties were the chief beneficiaries of

this decline, of this disintegration of the social coalition that sustained the party’s

electoral success (Chandra 2004, Chhibber 1999, Jaffrelot 2003). And if the Congress could

not play the role of a catch-all party anymore, some argued that the national character of

Indian politics would be at stake (Yadav 2000).


17

Table 1. Evolution of the Congress vote (in %) by social group (1967-1998)*

Castes

& communitiesElection year

1967 1971 1980 1996 1998

Upper castes 41.1 45.6 35.8 28.4 28.1

Dominant castes NA NA NA NA NA

OBCs3 38 39.4 42 21.7 22.5

Scheduled Castes 49.4 47.8 50.5 31.6 29.6

Scheduled Tribes 46.2 41.2 48.6 39.2 41.9

* These figures concern the Congress and its allies. Source: Surveys by the CSDS Data Unit (quoted inMitra & Singh 1999: 134).

4 Yet, in 2009, the Congress performed very well in terms of seats in the Assembly, a feat

even more remarkable that it was already in office since 2004. It had never won so many

seats since 1991.

Table 2. Congress performances (1977-2009)

1977 1980 1984 1989 1991 1996 1998 1999 2004 2009

Number of seats obtained 154 353 415 197 232 140 141 140 145 206

Share of valid votes (in %) 34.3 42.7 48.1 39.5 36.5 28.80 25.82 28.30 26.53 28.52

Total number of seats4 492 492 517 517 529 521 543 543 543 543

Source: Election Commission of India.

5 The Congress’ 2009 election performance is remarkable for two reasons. First, no Prime

Minister in office for a full term of five years had successfully fought elections since

Jawaharlal Nehru in 1962. Certainly, Manmohan Singh is no Nehru. He is more of a

technocrat than a statesman.5 But his prestige, supported by his reputation of wisdom

and integrity, is increasing among the population at large. The Congress’ performance is

also remarkable because of the party’s score in several key states like Andhra Pradesh

and Rajasthan and even more in regions where the party had been marginalized for

decades. One needs to go back to 1991 (see Table 3) to see the Congress winning so many

seats in Kerala (13 out of 20—an increase of 8% in terms of valid votes compared to 2004—

against 13 in 1991) and Uttar Pradesh (21 out of 80, an increase of 6.2% in terms of votes—

even 26 out of 85, if one includes Uttarakhand created in 2000 for making the comparison

easier with the previous elections when the Congress could not win more than 16 seats


18

over the last 20 years). In these four states, the Congress has won 45 more seats than in

2004.

Table 3. Electoral performances of the Congress in four key states

States 1991 1996 1998 1999 2004 2009

Andhra PradeshSeats

Vote share (in %)

25

45.55

22

39.66

22

38.46

5

42.79

29

41.56

33

38.95

KeralaSeats

Vote share (in %)

13

38.77

7

38.01

8

38.67

8

39.35

0

32.13

13

40.13

RajasthanSeats

Vote share (in %)

13

43.9

12

40.51

18

44.45

9

45.12

4

41.42

20

47.19

Uttar PradeshSeats

Vote share (in %)

5

18.02

5

8.14

0

6.02

10

14.72

9

12.04

21

18.25


6 Compared to 2004, the Congress has improved its results in 16 out of 28 states; a result

even more striking if compared with the BJP’s performances during the same period. Last

but not least, the idea that Congress has benefited from a national wave—i.e. from an

homogeneous pattern of political following among voters across states—is also supported

by its scores in terms of votes in states where it did not win many seats: in Bihar and

Madhya Pradesh, where total votes increased of 6.4% (the party lost one seat in the

former but gained 8 in the latter), and in Punjab where they increased of 11% (with an

additional 6 seats).

Table 4. State-wise performances of the Congress (INC) and the BJP (2004-09)

INC - - BJP - -

2004 2009won/

lost2004 2009

won/

lost

National Seats:

Votes (%):

145

26.53

206

28.52

+61

+1.99

138

22.16

116

18.84

-22

-3.32

Andhra Pradesh29

41.56

33

38.95

+4

-2.61

-

8.41

-

3.75

-

-4.66

Arunachal Pradesh-

9.96

2

51.11

+2

+41.15

2

53.85

-

37.17

-2

-16.68

Assam9

35.07

7

33.91

-2

-1.02

2

22.94

4

17.22

+2

5.82


19

Bihar3

4.49

2

10.96

-

+6.43

5

14.57

12

13.93

+7

-0.64

Chandigarh1

52.06

1

46.87

-

-5.19

-

35.22

-

29.71

-

-5.51

Chhattisgarh1

40.16

1

37.31

-

-3.85

10

47.78

10

45.03

-

-1.75

Goa1

29.76

1

22.60

-

-7.16

1

46.83

1

44.78

-

-2.05

Gujarat12

43.86

10

43.38

-2

-0.48

14

47.37

15

46.52

+1

-0.85

Haryana9

42.13

9

41.77

-

-0.46

1

17.21

-

12.09

-1

-5.12

Himachal Pradesh3

51.89

1

45.61

-2

-6.28

1

44.24

3

49.58

+2

+5.34

Jammu and Kashmir2

27.83

2

24.67

-

-3.16

-

23.04

-

18.61

-

-4.43

Jharkhand6

21.44

1

15.02

-5

-5.42

1

33.01

8

27.53

+7

-5.48

Karnataka8

36.82

6

37.65

-2

+0.83

18

34.77

19

41.63

+1

+6.86

Kerala-

32.13

13

40.13

+13

+8.00

-

10.38

-

6.31

-

-4.07

Madhya Pradesh4

34.07

12

40.44

+8

+6.37

25

48.83

16

43.45

-9

-5.38

Maharashtra13

23.77

17

19.61

+4

-4.16

13

22.61

9

18.17

-4

-4.44

Manipur1

14.88

2

42.96

+1

+18.08

-

20.65

-

9.49

-

-11.16

Meghalaya1

45.55

1

44.84

+1

+28.08

-

8.63- -

Mizoram-

-

1

65.58+1

-

-- -


20

Nagaland-

25.78

-

29.36

-

+3.58

-

-- -

Delhi6

54.81

7

57.11

+1

+2.20

1

40.67

-

35.23

-1

-5.44

Orissa2

40.43

6

32.75

+4

-7.68

7

19.30

-

16.89

-7

-2.41

Punjab2

34.17

8

45.23

+6

+11.06

3

10.48

1

10.06

-2

-0.42

Rajasthan4

41.42

20

47.19

+16

+5.77

21

49.01

4

36.57

-17

-12.44

Sikkim-

27.43

-

29.59

-

+2.16

-

-

-

1.77-

Tamil Nadu10

14.40

8

15.10

-2

+0.70

-

5.07

-

2.33

-

-2.74

Tripura-

14.28

-

30.75

-

+16.47

-

7.82

-

3.38

-

-4.44

Uttar Pradesh9

12.04

21

18.25

+12

+6.21

10

22.17

10

17.50

-

-4.67

Uttarakhand1

38.31

5

43.13

+4

+4.82

3

40.98

-

33.82

-3

-7.16

West Bengal6

14.56

6

13.45

-

-1.11

-

8.06

1

6.14

+1

-1.94


7 The success of the Congress is largely due to its President Sonia Gandhi whose prestige

improved because of the way she gave up the trappings of executive power when she

decided not to be the PM. She is very much in command of the Congress, a party which,

otherwise, would be divided into many factions, as during the Narasimha Rao years

(1991-96):6 being above factions, with the mantle of the ‘dynasty’ on her shoulders, she

neutralizes them and maintains the cohesion of the party—and that of the United

Progressive Alliance (UPA) in general, given her great talent as a negotiator and peace

maker. The success of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh (UP) has been attributed to her son

Rahul Gandhi, who is in charge of rebuilding the party in this former stronghold. This

achievement—his first success in fact—makes him a strong contender for the post of

Prime Minister after Manmohan Singh. Still, the CSDS exit poll shows that Rahul is

lagging behind in terms of popularity in UP: to the question ‘Who is the best personality

for Chief ministership in UP?’, only 4% of the respondents opted for Rahul Gandhi, against


21

28% for Mayawati (BSP), 27% to Mulayam Singh (SP) and 12% to Rajnath Singh (BJP)7 (Beg

& Kumar 2009: 193).

8 The success of the Congress is also due to some of its best thought out policies, such as the

National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), which institutes a minimal

guaranteed wage (amounting to one hundred days of work hours per annum, at

government-fixed rates) to all rural casual workers;8 the Right to Information Act, which

obliges the bureaucracy to explain its decisions when asked by concerned citizens; and

the implementation of a 27% quota for the OBCs in the university where, according to

surveys, the Dalits were in larger number than the OBCs because of reservations.9 All this

pleased a popular electorate, which was also sensitive to the fall of the inflation rate: in

India, a double-digit inflation can make a government fall whereas the growth rate (on

the decline since mid-2007) does not play such a big role in a country used to slow growth

till the 1990s. The urban middle class also appreciated the 2008 nuclear deal with the US—

through which Washington agreed to transfer civil nuclear energy technology to India in

spite of the fact that the country had not signed the TNP—, not only for the mark of

international recognition it represented, but also because of its implications in terms of

energy.

9 This being said, neither the success of the Congress, nor the ‘re-nationalization’ of Indian

politics that it is supposed to reflect according to the media10 must be overrated. The

Congress has won 61 seats more than in 2004, but it has improved its score in terms of

valid votes by only 2%. In fact, the party has won approximately 27% of the valid votes in

every election since 1996. The graph below shows that the two largest parties, Congress

and BJP, are actually not making significant progress, whereas the regional parties are: in

other words, there is no ‘re-nationalization’ of politics in India, but a constant trend

towards regionalization. As a matter of fact, regional parties got more valid votes in 2009

than the Congress and BJP combined, thus confirming a trend already visible for the first

time during the 2004 elections (see Table 5).

Figure 1. Vote share of the Congress, the BJP and regional parties since 1991

Table 5. National and regional parties, 1991-2009 (in % of valid votes)*

Parties 1991 1996 1998 1999 2004 2009

Congress 36.26 28.80 25.82 28.30 26.53 28.52


22

BJP 20.11 20.29 25.59 23.75 22.16 18.84

Total 56.37 49.09 51.41 52.05 48.59 47.36

Regional parties 43.63 50.71 48.59 47.95 51.41 52.54

Grand Total 100 100 100 100 100 100

*According to the list of national parties established by the Election Commission, except for theCongress and BJP. Source: Election Commission of India.

10 This regionalization of politics is precisely what helped the Congress, as much as the

progress he made on its own. The party has benefited from this phenomenon in three

distinct manners. Firstly, in many states, newly created local or regional parties—a clear

indicator of the increasing fragmentation of Indian politics—have helped the Congress by

denting into the votes of its main opponents, often established regional parties. In

Andhra Pradesh, the Praja Rajyam Party, created by the film actor Chiranjeevi, deprived

Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party of about 20 seats—which have mostly gone to

the Congress—by winning 160 000 votes per constituency on an average. In Maharashtra,

the Congress and its ally, the Nationalist Congress Party, won all the six seats of Mumbai

thanks to the 126,000 votes that Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (a

breakaway faction of the Shiv Sena) won on an average in these constituencies—

otherwise some of them at least would have been won by the Shiv Sena and/or its ally,

the BJP. In Tamil Nadu, the emergence of a new party, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam

(DMK) of Vijaykant, prevented the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazagham (AIADMK)

from winning in about 15 constituencies where the Congress and more especially its ally,

the DMK, won most of the seats. Secondly, the Congress benefited from the good

performance of its regional allies. The DMK won 18 out of 38 seats and helped the

Congress to win 8. In Maharashtra, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), an offshoot of

the Congress Party, won 9 seats. In West Bengal, the Congress re-established a very

fruitful alliance with Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool National Congress (TNC),11 which won

19 seats and helped the Congress win 7 more. Thirdly, the BJP-led coalition (the National

Democratic Alliance, NDA) lost very important allies prior and during the campaign.

11 In 2004 most of the analysts were under the impression that, indeed, it was not the

Congress, which won the elections but the BJP, which lost them by using counter

productive (‘pro-rich’) strategies and slogans such as ‘Shining India’. In 2009, it seems

that the Congress has hugely benefited from the crumbling down of the NDA: as a matter

of fact, the departures of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), the AIADMK, the TNC and the

Biju Janata Dal (BJD) really sealed the fate of the BJP. Yogendra Yadav and Suhas Palshikar

admit that ‘Changes in the composition of the NDA meant a net loss of 42 seats and nearly

8% points of national votes […] if the BJP had managed to retain the NDA of 2004, the gap

between the UPA and the NDA would have been much narrower’ (Yadav & Palshikar 2009:

43). One may argue that the face of the elections would have been truly changed, even

because in states like Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, not only

would the BJP have had allies, but the Congress would have also been facing not two but

one main adversary, which makes a huge difference in a ‘first past the post’ electoral

system. Some of the former allies of the BJP—like the TNC—opted for the UPA, but others

simply regained their independence and contested elections in their states on their own;


23

another symptom of the regionalisation of politics at the expense of national coalition

politics.

Who Are the Real Losers?

12 The first real loser of the elections is the BJP. With about 19% of the valid votes, it falls

below its 1991 score. It has been routed from some of its strongholds, like Delhi (no seat at

all) and Rajasthan (5 out of 25 seats), and has been badly affected in others, like Uttar

Pradesh (10 seats as in 2004 but with 5% of valid votes less) and Uttarakhand (no seats,

against 3 out of 5 in 2004 and 7% votes less). The party is on a declining slope since its

peak of popularity, during the 1998 general elections, where it stood at 25.59% of valid

votes. Yet, the BJP has lost only 3.3% of the valid votes since 2004 and has resisted well in

half a dozen states, like Himachal Pradesh (3 out of 4 seats), Gujarat (15 against 11 seats to

Congress), Jharkhand (8 out of 11 seats) and Chhattisgarh (10 out of 11 seats).12 In

Karnataka, its most recent conquest, the BJP has performed remarkably well with 19 out

of 28 seats (with 7% votes more than in 2004). Last but not least, the BJP has doubled its

score in terms of seats (4 against 2 in 2004, with 6% votes more) in Assam thanks to its

alliance with the Asom Gana Parishad. Nonetheless, in terms of vote share, the BJP loses

ground in 21 states out of 28. The 82 year old L.K. Advani, whom the BJP had projected as

its prime ministerial candidate, announced his resignation from the post of leader of the

opposition immediately after the elections, despite the fact that he had been asked by the

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the mother organization of the Sangh Parivar, to hold it

back till the end of the year. The party is since undergoing a difficult succession process.

13 But this is an exceptional scenario because in general the BJP found itself rather isolated.

First, the NDA lost some of its members. It numbered 23 parties in 2004 but only 7 at the

time of the 2009 elections. In Orissa, the BJD left the NDA just before the beginning of the

campaign, depriving the BJP of an important ally— hence the local success of the

Congress in terms of seats in spite of its decline in terms of votes. In Andhra Pradesh, the

same scenario unfolded itself with the TDP dissociating itself and then severing its links

with the BJP. Therefore, the most important question about the 15th general elections

might well be: why has the NDA shrunk so much between 2004 and 2009? One of the

responses could be that the BJP seemed to be more a loser than before its 2004 defeat, but

another one may well be that parties like the TDP and the BJD were not be comfortable

with the Hindu nationalist discourse and practices of the Sangh Parivar. Former Andhra

Pradesh Chief Minister, Chandrababu Naidu, might have come to the conclusion that the

2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in the BJP-governed state of Gujarat will dissuade Muslim

voters to support its party and Navin Patnaik, current Chief Minister of Orissa, might

have been indisposed by the anti-Christian activities of the Sangh Parivar in his very

state. Not only did former allies abandon the BJP, but those which remained in the NDA

were also not as successful as the Congress’ allies. The Akali Dal has lost three seats in

Punjab and the Shiv Sena one in Maharashtra. Yet, the Janata Dal (U), with 20 of 40 seats

in Bihar has done very well, helping the BJP to win 9 seats.

14 If the BJP is the biggest loser of the elections because it was plausibly expected to be back

in office, the most dramatic defeat has been that of the Communists, who never won so

few seats: a mere 24. Their setback is especially marked in their traditional strongholds,

Kerala and West Bengal, where they won only 4 and 12 seats respectively. In Kerala, the

CPI(M) paid for its internal fights and some scandals of corruption. In West Bengal, this


24

setback is partly a sequel of Nandigram and Singur, two issues that the TNC exploited

skilfully.13 The defeat of the two Other Backward Classes leaders, Mulayam Singh Yadav

and Laloo Prasad Yadav, who had refused to remain associated with the Congress in order

to form a ‘Fourth Front’, is also worth mentioning. The former’s Samajwadi Party saved

24 seats out of the 36 it had in UP, whereas the latter’s Rashtriya Janata Dal was routed in

Bihar, dropping from 23 to a measly 3 seats. In both cases, the lack of understanding with

potential allies played a decisive role in their defeats.

15 Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has been classified among the losers in most of the

press reports. This is fair enough given its performances in 2007, when it had won 204

seats (a single majority) in the UP assembly, and given its expectations in 2009: it thought

it would get 50 and be the kingmaker but obtained only 21 seats. But the BSP has actually

made progress compared to the 2004 Lok Sabha elections (21 seats against 19) and is still,

by far, the first party in terms of valid votes, 27.4% in UP14—3 points more than in 2004

and 10 more than the Congress. Besides, even if the BSP could win only one seat outside

of UP, it won more than 5% of the votes in Punjab, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra and

more than 15% in Haryana. The BSP, which fielded 500 candidates, has a national

presence, more than any Dalit party before. As a result, and with more than 6% of the

valid votes, it is now the third national party of India, ahead of the CPI(M).

Towards a De-ethnicized Voting Pattern?

16 In India, the act of voting has always been partially over-determined by the ethnic

identity of the citizen, be it based on religion, caste or language. As contentious as it may

sound, the qualification ‘ethnic voting’ is frequently used in the academic literature as an

encompassing and convenient notion regrouping the political and mobilization processes

based on ascriptive identities, such as religious or caste-based groups (Chandra 2004,

Chhibber 1999, Jaffrelot 2003). When more than 50% of a caste group, tribe or religious

community vote for one party, we can speak of ‘ethnic voting’, all the more so than a rival

party will nominate candidates of the same caste in order to cut into its vote. This voting

pattern reflects the very structure of the party system, regionalist parties articulating a

linguistic identity (like the Dravidian parties) or a religious one (like the Akali Dal for the

Sikhs in Punjab or the Muslim League in Kerala). The rise of caste-based parties in the

1990s has resulted in further ethnicization of electoral politics.

17 In 2009, many observers have interpreted the rise of the Congress as a return to a

national brand of politics, which entailed a certain de-ethnicization of the vote—i.e.

individuals from all kinds of castes, tribes and communities would vote together as

citizens whose political preferences are determined by an individual choice. Certainly,

the Congress has attracted voters from all segments of society, but this does not mean

that ethnic voting has disappeared. The BJP is similarly still associated with some sections

of the electorate. According to the CSDS exit poll, almost 38% of the upper castes voted

for this party—this is the only social group where the BJP is ahead of the Congress. The

BJP has retained only half of its (already not many) Muslim voters: only 3.7% of them cast

their vote in its favour, against 6% in 2004. The BSP has been identified, more than ever

before, with its social constituency: while the party attracted some upper caste voters in

2007, it fell back on its Dalit base during the last elections: 21% of them voted for this

party (actually more than 50% of its electorate came from this group).


25

Table 6. Castes, tribes and religious communities vote (in %) in the 2009 general elections

18

Congress Congress allies BJP BJP allies Communists BSP Others

Upper castes 25.5 6.9 37.9 5.6 9.0 3.1 12.1

Peasantcastes 25.1 13.4 14.9 8.8 2.8 2.1 32.9

Upper OBC 23.2 7.2 21.6 4.9 2.0 3.0 38.1

Lower OBC 27.1 4.0 22.8 7.5 9.2 3.6 25.9

SC 27.1 7.0 11.9 2.9 10.9 21.0 19.3

ST 38.9 8.7 23.1 2.4 6.9 1.3 18.7

Muslims 37.2 10.2 3.7 1.9 12.0 5.4 29.5

Others 32.6 8.4 12.7 11.1 9.1 5.4 20.6

Source: CSDS Data Unit.

19 Ethnic voting is especially obvious at the state level given the regional dimension of

castes—most of them (especially the dominant castes) do not expand beyond a linguistic

area, often coterminous with one state.15 A few examples will suffice to make this point.

In Andhra Pradesh, the three most important parties continue to identify themselves

with one of the three dominant castes: 65.9% of the Reddys voted for the Congress

(according to the CSDS exit poll), 63.7% of the Kammas for the TDP and its allies, and

53.1% of the Kapus for the PRP (The Hindu 2009)16. In UP, 53% of the Brahmins, 53% of the

Rajputs and 54% of the other upper castes voted for the BJP whereas 84% of the Jatavs17

and 64% of the other Dalits voted for the BSP (Ibid: 5). In Karnataka, 73% of the Lingayats18 voted for the BJP (Shastri, Suri et al., 2009: 117). In Rajasthan, 74% of the Brahmins, 55%

of the Rajputs and 59% of the Jats voted for the BJP, whereas 66% of the Dalits, 55% of the

Tribals and 82% of the Muslims voted for the Congress (Lodha 2009: 189). In some states,

the electoral preferences of the voters can be better understood by looking at the sub-

caste level. This fragmentation—which recalls the one we observed at the territorial level

with the emergence of sub-regional parties—is especially obvious in the case of dominant

castes. In Gujarat, the Patels19 need to be disaggregated that way. Two groups, the Karwa

and Leuva Patels, have overwhelmingly supported the BJP—87% of them did—during the

last Lok Sabha elections (Jani 2009: 135). So far as the Muslims are concerned, 59% of them

voted for the Congress-TNC alliance in West Bengal, 77% of them supported the Congress

in Delhi, 67% in Gujarat, 68% in Karnataka, 64% in Madhya Pradesh, and 82% in Rajasthan

(Alam 2009: 94). Such figures do not mean that the Congress is not a catch-all party

anymore—it still attracts voters from different segments—, but it does show that many

groups continue to vote en bloc.


26

Class Vote?

20 If caste voting remains all pervading, it is much more difficult to identify the emergence

of class voting in India. In 2004, as shown in table 7, the BJP, despite its defeat, had

remained the party of the middle class and the elite: the richer the Indian voter, the more

he/she voted for the BJP, whereas in the case of the Congress, the correlation was the

reverse.

Table 7. Class-wise voting (in %) in the 14th (2004) and 15th (2009) Indian general elections

CongressCongress

alliesBJP

BJP

alliesLeft BSP Others

2004 09 2004 09 2004 09 2004 09 2004 09 2004 09 2004 09

Upper Class 25.4 30.3 5.8 7.3 30.3 24.5 12.4 6.5 7.8 3.8 3.1 4.6 15.1 22.9

Middle Class 29.9 29.3 8.7 7.6 28.9 18.5 12.6 5.3 7.0 6.1 1.8 4.5 11.12 28.7

LowerMiddleClass 26.0 28.8 10.7 5.4 22.1 19.7 13.6 4.5 7.4 6.4 4.1 7.0 16.0 28.2

Poor 24.8 27.3 10.6 8.3 20.3 16.8 13.8 4.4 7.5 10.6 7.0 8.7 16.1 23.9

Very Poor 27.0 27.1 11.4 10.0 18.0 16.2 14.5 6.1 9.4 11.3 7.4 7.9 12.3 21.4

Total 26.4 28.6 10.1 7.8 22.2 18.8 13.7 5.3 8.0 7.6 5.3 6.2 14.3 25.7

Source : CSDS Data Unit.

21 In 2009, this type of linear relation no longer held good for the rural milieu—the one that

matters the most.20 Here, the rich voted as much as the poor for the Congress and—one of

the striking aspects of these elections—the BJP was no longer the party of the well-heeled,

whether urban or rural, who voted like the poor for the Congress. The latter succeeded on

both fronts: on the one hand, Manmohan Singh’s economic policies, based on balanced

liberalization measures, drew the wealthy urban milieus. On the other hand, the flagship

social schemes—identified moreover with Sonia Gandhi—was a magnet for the poorer

rural milieus.

Table 8. Class-wise and urban/rural-wise voting (in %) in the 15th (2009) Indian general elections

Congress Congress allies BJP BJP allies Left BSP 4th front Others

Rural

Up. Cl. 30.1 5.5 23.1 7.8 4.2 4.9 8.4 15.9

Middle Cl. 29.9 9.4 19.0 5.7 7.0 4.1 3.6 24.8

LowerMid.Cl. 28.6 4.4 20.3 3.9 6.2 7.3 7.3 22.1


27

Poor 27.3 6.8 17.7 4.4 10.2 8.9 6.2 18.5

Very Poor 26.6 8.3 17.0 6.0 12.1 8.3 7.9 13.8

Total 28.4 6.3 18.9 5.4 8.4 6.7 6.3 19.6

Urban

Up. Cl. 30.5 9.6 26.3 4.8 3.3 4.3 2.4 18.8

Middle Cl. 28.4 9.9 17.6 4.6 5.0 5.0 2.1 27.0

LowerMid.Cl. 29.8 10.8 16.8 7.2 7.2 5.8 3.8 18.6

Poor 27.5 17.8 11.1 4.8 12.7 7.2 2.5 16.3

Very Poor 30.5 22.4 11.1 6.9 5.5 4.7 3.2 15.7

Total 29.1 11.6 18.5 5.1 5.5 5.1 2.4 22.8

Source: CSDS Data Unit.

22 This trend does not prevent the BJP from remaining an urban-based party, as the voters’

desertion was more pronounced among the poor in the rural rather than urban areas.

One linear relation that persists is education: the CSDS survey reveals that the more

educated the Indian voter, the more likely he or she is to vote for the BJP. But this, again,

has more to do with caste than class.

Conclusion

23 The 2009 Indian general elections have not been the turning point that most

commentators had predicted.21 The Congress’ success neither translated into a real re-

nationalization of the party system nor into a de-ethnicizing of the vote. Certainly, the

Congress has done much better in many states where it was pitched against the BJP in

straight fights, but otherwise, its performance in terms of seats does not reflect its real

popularity. This optical illusion stems firstly from the single-round majoritarian voting

system, which meant that the growing fragmentation of the regional political scenes,

particularly in the case of triangular or quadrangular competitions, has acted in favour of

the Congress, the most consistent though not dominant player.

24 The distortion between vote-shares and results in terms of seats—due to the voting

system—is not a new phenomenon in India, where the electoral fate of parties always

depends more on their adversaries’ performances than on their own. Even if the Congress

has often obtained a majority of seats in the Lok Sabha, sometimes with a considerable

margin, it has never obtained more than 48% of the vote share (in 1984). On the contrary,

between the 1999 defeat and the 2004 victory, the Congress’ vote share had decreased by

2% (Shastri, Suri et al. 2009: 4). Yet, this distortion was certainly more striking in 2009,

due to the increased fragmentation of the political scene. The Congress thus won seats in

three states in which it lost vote share (Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Orissa). The

same applies to the BJP in Gujarat, Jharkhand and Bihar incidentally. One may add in this


28

respect that the multiplication of triangular—and sometimes quadrangular—

competitions rendered any attempt at predicting the electoral outcome completely

illusory.

25 The other conclusion we can draw from our study is that these elections demonstrate

once again that the regional level is the most determining one. In the CSDS post-poll

National Election survey, 70% of those interviewed considered loyalty to their region to

be more important than loyalty to the nation; only 14% of those interviewed thought

otherwise (The Hindu 2009). The Indian general elections continue to be the aggregate of

28 regional elections, each displaying its social, political and economic specificities. In

such a context, regional parties will continue to rise. With a total of 52.54% vote share,

against 47.36% for the Congress and BJP clubbed together, regional parties attract an

absolute majority of voters. This trend has been on a continuous rise since 1999. Not only

are regional parties progressing but they are also multiplying, and the most important

among them fail to become ‘meta-regional’, to take root in neighbouring states. Even if

the BSP managed to penetrate in Haryana for instance, and garner a few votes in some

sub-regional pockets (Vidharba, notably), these elections confirm the fact that regional

parties remain confined to the states from which they originate. The vote share of the so-

called ‘multi-state’ parties has been on a constant decline since 1999, falling from 20.11%

to 16.24% of the votes. In sum, the fragmentation of the political scene confirms India’s

entry into the ‘coalition era’. As always, post-poll negotiations have been tense, the

formation and survival of the Government depending on the goodwill of regional—even

local—players.

Figure 2. Vote share of Congress, the BJP, multi-state parties and, regional parties since 1991

26 With 262 seats, the UPA coalition achieved a near absolute majority at the Lok Sabha. It

had no trouble finding the necessary additional seats to ensure the stability of its

Government, picking and choosing amongst the ‘Third’ and ‘Fourth Fronts’. The Congress

managed to gather practically all the so-called secular parties, with the exception of the

Left. What kind of policies will this coalition government implement? It is particularly

difficult to draw a lesson from these elections in terms of the mandate given to the

government. Of course, the pro-poor redistributive policies of the Congress contributed

to its electoral success and it is understood that the electorate expects the party to follow

the same direction. But it is equally interesting to point out what the voters did not say.

These elections, for instance, cannot be interpreted as a call for the pursuit of

liberalization and deregulation policies. This is borne out in the Congress’ loss in vote

share in all economically advanced states (Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka).


29

Nonetheless, these liberalization, even privatization, policies will continue at a pace

dependent on Manmohan Singh’s ability to convince its most reluctant partners—the

DMK and the TNC—but also Sonia Gandhi herself, that it would be the best development

strategy to follow in a period of economic slowdown.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alam, Mohamed Sanjeer (2009) ‘Whither Muslim Politics’, Economic & Political Weekly, 44, pp. 92-5.

Beg, Mirza Asmer; Kumar Suhil (2009) ‘Uttar Pradesh: Signs of a Congress Revival?’, Economic &

Political Weekly, 44, pp. 190-3.

Brass, Paul (1980) ‘The Politicization of the Peasantry in a North Indian State - Part II’, Journal of

Peasant Studies, 8, pp. 3-36.

Chandra, Kanchan (2004) Why Ethnic Parties Succeed: Patronage and Ethnic Head Counts in India,

Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.

Chhibber, Pradeep K. (1999) Democracy without Associations: Transformation of the Party System and

Social Cleavages in India, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, Economics & Political Weekly,

2009. ‘National Election Study 2009’, 44(39).

Jaffrelot, Christophe (2003) India’s Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Lower Castes in North India, New

York: Columbia University Press.

Jani, Mahashweta (2009) ‘Gujarat: BJP Scrapes Through’, Economic & Political Weekly, 44, pp. 133-6.

Lodha, Sanjay (2009) ‘Rajasthan: Performance and Campaigning Pay Dividends’, Economic &

Political Weekly, 44, pp. 186-90.

Madsen, Douglas (1970) ‘Solid Congress Support in 1967: A Statistical Inquiry’, Asian Survey,

Special Issue ‘Elections and Party Politics in India: A Symposium’, 10(11), pp. 1004-14.

Mitra, Subrata K.; Singh, V. B. (1999) Democracy and Social Change in India: A Cross-Sectional Analysis

of the National Electorate, New Delhi & Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

Shastri, Sandeep; Devi, Veena & Padmavathi, B. S. (2009) ‘Karnataka: A Default Win for the BJP’,

Economic & Political Weekly, 44, pp. 114-7.

Shastri, Sandeep; Suri, K. C. & Yadav, Yogendra (eds.) (2009) Electoral Politics in Indian States: Lok

Sabha Elections in 2004 and Beyond, New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

The Hindu, 2009. ‘How India Voted’, 26 May.

Yadav, Yogendra (2000) ‘Understanding the Second Democratic Upsurge: Trends of Bahujan

Participation in Electoral Politics in the 1990s’, in Francine R. Frankel, Zoya Hasan, Rajeev

Bhargava & Balveer Arora (eds.), Transforming India: Social and Political Dynamics of Democracy

Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 120-145.

Yadav, Yogendra; Palshikar, Suhas (2009) ‘Between Fortuna and Virtu: Explaining the Congress’

Ambiguous Victory in 2009’, Economic & Political Weekly, 44, pp. 33-46.


30

NOTES

1. The traditional cleavage between the North and the South persisted, as both displayed highly

contrasted participation rates: where no Southern state registered participation rates below 63%

(in Karnataka), no state of the Hindi belt exceeded 52% (in Delhi).

2. Raw data collected at the CSDS.

3. The Constitutional formula, ‘Other Backward Classes’ (OBCs) designates the lower or

intermediate castes other than the Scheduled Castes and Tribes (SCs and STs), which belong to

the fourth Varna (Shudras).

4. In the Lok Sabha.

5. Incidentally, he has not been elected in a popular election even once till now; he remains a

Rajya Sabha member.

6. As shown by the fact that Arjun Singh, the ‘number two’ in the government, then dropped his

ministerial portfolio (in December 1994), particularly reproaching to Prime Minister Narasimha

Rao his liberal policy that penalized the poor and his incapacity to regain the confidence of the

Muslims. Shortly afterwards, he was expelled from the Congress. He founded later on the

Congress (T) with N.D. Tiwari, the head of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh. Obviously, the absence

of a representative of the Nehru/Gandhi lineage at the helm of the party removed the inhibitions

that, till then, had restrained the appetites of factions’ leaders.

7. President of the Bahujan Samaj Party, Mayawati is the state’s current Chief Minister. Mulayam

Singh Yadav and Rajnath Singh are former Chief Ministers and respective Presidents of the

Samajwadi Party and the BJP.

8. According to the CSDS exit poll, 31% of the rural poor and 29% of the rural very poor said that

they had benefited from the NREGA, which is more than the level of support for any other

previous or existing poverty-alleviation program (Yadav & Palshikar 2009).

9. In the previous quota regime, the 27% of reservation for OBC was limited to the public service

and elective assemblies. Its extension to institutions of higher education - in particular the elitist

Indian Institutes of Technologies (IITs) and of Management (IIMs), as well as the public medical

schools (AIIMS)—stirred a violent debate between proponents of meritocracy and proponents of

reservation policies.

10. The press coverage of the 2009 election results was especially misleading this time - partly

because of the repeated mistakes of so-called ‘experts’.

11. An offshoot of the Congress party and former ally of the BJP in the NDA coalition.

12. The BJP’s support in its two Central India strongholds is however eroding. It lost respectively

5.48% and 1.75% of the votes in Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh.

13. Nandigram and Singur are two rural localities where peasants mobilised against the CPI(M)

government’s decision to let big industrialists (including Tata) build factories on a very fertile

lands. The repression of the first demonstrations, which occurred in March 2007, has been

especially brutal in both cases.

14. BSP’s candidates were runner-ups in 46 constituencies of UP, sometimes losing with small

margins.

15. The resilience of identity politics at the state level weakens considerably the argument Yadav

and Palshikar try to make: ‘While caste or community continues to be the primary building bloc

of political affiliation at the micro level, the politics of building a macro political coalitions based

on these blocs has suffered a setback’ (Yadav & Palshikar 2009: 38). Such an assertion is puzzling

since the level at which caste has always played a key role is the state, not the locality—and

certainly not the nation—and it is still the case, as evident from the CSDS data they are

themselves using.


31

16. Reddys, Kammas and Kapus are three important Shudra castes of Andhra Pradesh. Reddys

and Kammas are considered dominant castes in coastal Andhra and had the upper hand on the

state politics for the past three decades. Kapus located in the Telengana region have been

granted the OBC status, but not in coastal Andhra.

17. Former Chamars, shoemakers, who started to change their name in the late 19th century and

have become the most important Dalit caste in demographic as well as in political terms.

18. Lingayats are a group of non-Brahmin upper castes that, along with the Vokkaligas, have

dominated and still dominate the Karnataka political scene.

19. Patels belong to various sub-groups of the upper caste Patidars. Although fragmented, they

tend to be politically and socially dominant in the state of Gujarat.

20. According to the CSDS’ NES, the rural electorate represents 71.8% of the total electorate.

21. ‘The voters appeared to have delivered a decisive verdict, one that heralded a new era in the

country’s politics’ stated The Hindu in its special elections supplement (The Hindu 2009). Other

such misinterpretations could be found elsewhere as well.

ABSTRACTS

The 2009 Indian general elections saw the Congress Party-led United Progressive Alliance retain

power, with a remarkable increase of seats in the National Assembly (Lok Sabha), leading to

claims of a ‘re-nationalization’ of the party system as well as of the voting pattern. However,

evidence from the results themselves show that, on the contrary, the process of fragmentation of

the party system and the electorate is still progressing, Indian voters having opted for regional

and local players more than they ever did before. The distorting effect of the majority electoral

system (‘First Past The Post’) provides the central explanation for this apparent paradox. A close

look at the electoral results also demonstrates the resilience of ‘ethnic voting’, despite the

recurring discourse on the predominance of ‘economic voting’.

INDEX

Keywords: general elections, ethnic voting, class voting, regional parties, regionalization, India

AUTHORS

CHRISTOPHE JAFFRELOT

Former Director of CERI (Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Internationales, Sciences Po Paris) is

Research Director at the CNRS

GILLES VERNIERS

Ph.D. Candidate at the CERI-Sciences Po Paris, affiliated to the Centre de Sciences Humaines

(CSH), New Delhi


32

Pre-electoral Coalitions, PartySystem and Electoral Geography: ADecade of General Elections in India(1999–2009)

Bertrand Lefebvre and Cyril Robin

Introduction

1 The 15th Lok Sabha elections offer an opportunity to analyze the changes of the Indian

party system, and particularly the politics of coalition in the multi-level setting which

characterizes it today. Coalitions are not a new phenomenon in India as coalition

formation took place in some states as early as the late 1960s and at the national level for

the first time in 1977-1980.1 But until the late 1990s coalitions were mainly anti-Congress

in nature and characterized by strong political and governmental instability. During the

last decade however, since no single party is in a position to lead a majority in the Lok

Sabha, coalitions have become the only option for parties to exercise executive power. In

such a political context, as Golder explains,

[parties] can compete independently at election time and hope to be part of any

government coalition that subsequently forms. Or they can form a pre-electoral

coalition with another party (or parties) prior to the election in the hopes of

governing together afterwards (2006: 193).

2 Studying the recent Indian experience of coalitions might address two lacunae in the vast

literature in political science on coalitions. First, although there are many studies on

coalition government, there has been little theoretical and empirical research addressing

pre-electoral coalitions (Golder 2006) and interaction between electoral behaviour and the

politics of coalition (Laver 1989; Narud 1996). Second, in data sets on parliamentary

democracies, the Indian case is often not included as case studies usually focus on

western industrialized democracies. Yet India offers a clear case for the

disproportionality hypothesis characterized by huge electoral advantage because of its


33

‘first past the post’ electoral system, which ‘provides an electoral bonus to large parties

or coalitions through their mechanical effect on the translation of votes into seats’

(Golder 2006: 198). In addition to the electoral system, the ever-increasing number of

parties that take part in the General Elections is also favourable to the formation of large

coalitions. The decline over the years of the once dominant Congress party has left a

vacuum that state(s)-based parties are ready to occupy and has led to the formation of

pre-electoral coalitions to govern the country.

3 The first objective of this paper is to start addressing the research gap on pre-electoral

coalitions in India. The second objective is to propose preliminary elements for a dynamic

theory of pre-electoral coalition formation, as theories on this topic have been so far

essentially static, or dealing with the dynamics of a single coalition formation situation

(Grofman 1982). Such an objective makes it necessary (a) to historicize the coalition

phenomenon by giving an account of changes in the party system over an extended

period of time (three elections over ten years), and (b) to represent the spatial dimension

of the coalitions under study.

4 We will consider pre-electoral alliances as non-formal coalitions, i.e. as coalitions

‘[reflecting] informal patterns of cooperation among parties [that] tend to devise

electoral seat adjustments in constituencies that maximize their probability of electoral

success’ (Kugler & Swaminathan 1999: 177). Here seat adjustments are defined as ‘mutual

agreements between parties not to compete against each other in individual

constituencies but to share seat contests on an agreed basis’ (Fickett 1993). We chose to

take vote maximization as the main criteria for the formation of pre-electoral coalition

(Golder 2006: 195), even if all states are not characterized by a multiparty/bipolar system.2 Indeed we consider vote maximization as the major determinant of politicians’ actions

as it drives parliamentary influence and access to positions of power: ‘the benefit of votes

is their contribution to office and policy benefits’ (Narud 1996: 501).

5 With the purpose of giving a comprehensive understanding of the evolution of the

relations between national or nationwide parties (NWP) and state(s)-based or non

nationwide parties (NNWP)3 in the context of coalition formation over the last decade,

this paper aims at analyzing the trajectories of the Indian National Congress (INC) and the

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) within their own coalitions, respectively the United

Progressive Alliance (UPA) composed of parties that normally compete in the same

constituencies, and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), composed of parties with

more differentiated geographical bases of support.

6 The paper will argue that pre-electoral coalition formation can be the expression of

different strategies (depending on the leading party involved), which bring about varying

electoral and political results in the long run. In order to support this argument, we

articulate this paper around two core questions. One, in the long run and from the point

of view of the two main national parties, is alliance-building a successful strategy to gain

or to keep enough constituencies to maintain its position at the Centre? Two, how do the

geometry and balance within each alliance (NDA, UPA) evolve over time in different

states?


34

From contextualization to theory: changes in the partysystem and pre-electoral coalitions

7 Before proceeding, it is useful to define two fundamental notions: the notion of ‘pre-

electoral coalition’ and that of ‘party system’. Concerning pre-electoral coalitions, we use

the definition given by Golder (2006: 195): ‘a pre-electoral coalition exists when multiple

parties choose to co-ordinate their electoral strategies rather than run for office alone’.

Regarding the party system, which usually denotes the way in which various parties

interact at a particular level of political competition and/or cooperation (e.g.,

predominant party system, multiple party system, etc), one must note that ‘there are

[actually] several party systems operating in different arenas and linked to each other in

a range of different ways, so that change in one system induces or reflects change in

another’ (Laver 1989: 303). For the purpose of this study and given the data sets we are

using, we focus on the interactions between two dimensions of the party system: the

electoral dimension (i.e. the proportion of votes cast for a party) and the legislative

dimension (i.e. the proportion of seats won by a party). Given the nature of the Indian

party system, i.e. the number of parties spread all over the country with a narrow

electoral basis at the national level, coalitions in India are mainly defined by their

utilitarian role for actors coming from different ideological backgrounds. As Chakrabarty

argues, ‘what seems crucial in this process [of coalition formation] is not ‘ideological

purity’ but ‘the exigency of the situation’ where the former seems to be a liability rather

than an asset’ (Chakrabarty 2006: 1).

8 In one of her seminal works, Irina Stefuriuc (2009: 93) argues that ‘coalition formation is

one of the main challenges that political parties face in decentralized political systems’.

But do all political parties face the same level of challenge? Changes in the party system

and the alliance strategies developed by national parties suggest that coalition formation

is more challenging for national parties than for state(s)-based parties. Indeed, in the

present party system, those states where national parties (Congress and BJP) fight

elections head on represent only one-sixth of the total Lok Sabha seats (Rajasthan,

Himachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi)

(Chawla 2009). The Congress party plays the role of junior coalition partner in most of the

other states since the early 1990s.

9 During the last three General Elections, coalitions have characterized a party system that

has evolved from a one dominant party system (in which free competition among parties

occurred, but where the INC enjoyed a dominant position)4 ‘to a multi-party system

characterized by a more differentiated structure of party competition’ (Kothari 1970). In

the latter system, state(s)-based parties have emerged as a serious electoral alternative to

the dominant party in their own state and aspire to play a role at the national level. This

has led to the formation of electoral coalitions at the national level: since no single party

was able to get an absolute majority in the Lok Sabha, parties whose political and

electoral influence was hitherto confined to state(s) politics have found a space in the

Central government (Palshikar 2003: 328). At the state level however, national or regional

parties are still able to get an absolute majority in the legislative assembly, the Vidhan

Sabha.


35

Map 1. General Elections results (1984 – 1998)

10 Whereas the electoral system has remained unchanged, the party system has evolved

drastically over the last fourteen years. The collection of maps (Map 1) contrasting the

1984 and 1998 General Elections results for the INC, BJP and state(s)-based parties is

illustrative of three major changes. One, while the Congress won by a landslide the 1984

General Elections (with 405 seats out of 542), it secured only 139 seats in 1998. The

collapse of the Congress is impressive but the party remains a real pan Indian force,

because it wins seats in almost every large state except Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh.

Two, from winning only two seats in 1984, the BJP won 181 seats in 1998, thus becoming

the largest party on the Indian political scene. But it failed to achieve the past pre-

eminence of the Congress in terms of seats and spatial distribution. The BJP remains a

strong party in northern and central India, but it is weak in southern and eastern India.

Three, state(s) parties (as defined by the Electoral Commission of India) won 95

constituencies in 1998 against 65 in 1984. However the rise of these parties on the

national stage has been much more important than these figures suggest, because of the

restrictive definition adopted by the ECI. For instance in 1998 the Biju Janata Dal (BJD)

was not recognized by the Electoral Commission of India as a state party, although for all

practical purposes it is confined to the state of Orissa.

11 From 1998/1999 onwards, coalitions at the federal level have emerged from three types of

party configurations at the state level: 1) bi-partism characterized by the opposition

between the INC and the BJP; 2) bi-partism characterized by the opposition between two

state parties; 3) bi-polarization structured around two coalitions. Changes in the national

party system and the formation of coalitions at this level directly result from the

increasing complexity of state party systems. Indeed, as mentioned by Suhas Palshikar,

‘the theatre for defining the boundaries of political contestation often turned out to be

the state. Whether a party will be only anti-Congress or also anti-BJP depended upon the


36

state-level configuration of forces rather than on national-level exigencies or ideological

positions’ (2003: 330). In a multi-cultural society like India, the process of coalition

building takes place both at the national and state level (Mehra et al. 2003) with each

level having its own distinct compulsion, with each state breeding its own particular type

of party system. As a result, the linkages between the national multiparty system

described by Balveer Arora as ‘bi-nodal, a node being typically a centering point of

component parts’ (2003: 84), and states’ multiparty systems have changed ‘towards a

more complex mechanism of negotiation, alliance and coalition building’ (Hansen &

Jaffrelot 1998: 7). The balance of political power between the Centre and the states has

evolved towards an increased mutual political and electoral dependence between

components of the party system at these two different levels (Chatterjee 1997: 306).

12 In terms of seats in the Lok Sabha, coalitions do not represent a force equivalent to that

of the Congress Party before the 1990s. This is due to a process of extreme fragmentation

of the states’ political scene—very few parties have a large geographical base, spreading

over several States, which means that most coalitions are formed of parties with different

geographical bases in terms of party, representatives, and voters—with a direct

consequence on the national level. The multiplication of state-based parties makes

electoral results at the national level much more uncertain, and the formation and

resilience of election coalitions much more difficult. Indeed, in a party system with a

large number of parties the process of coalition formation is far more complex than in a

three party system (Laver 1989: 308). This complexity implies the definition of

‘alternative norms’ for the building of a coalition like ‘bargaining over payoffs

[proceeding] only after bargaining over membership is over and the composition of the

coalition has been settled’ (Schofield & Laver 1985: 161). The Indian case surely fits in

with this particular situation as the number of parties contesting Lok Sabha elections

increased from 33 in 1984 to 369 in 2009, out of which only 36 have been successful in

sending one or more representatives to the Lok Sabha.

Data and methodology

13 Golder identifies three criteria that make a pre-electoral coalition valid (2006: 195):

• Joint candidate, joint list;

• Prior to election, different parties claim that they will govern together;

• Coordination of the campaign (i.e. common platform).

14 Also, parties have to make the coalition public. Golder argues that voter behaviour might

be affected by one or all of these criteria. A pre-electoral coalition will then attract a

larger number of voters than if the same parties were to compete independently. While

each criterion makes perfect sense from a theoretical point of view, the reality of Indian

politics in general and Lok Sabha elections in particular make it difficult to track the

parties involved in pre-electoral coalitions.5 While an agreement may be found between

parties either to govern together or to build a joint-list at the national level, such

decisions cannot always be enforced at the state-level. The state units of national parties

like the BJP or the Congress often fight against these national agreements when they

involve a party that is their competitor at the local level. Thus during the 1999 Lok Sabha

elections, the Janata Dal (United) (JD(U)) unit in Karnataka was vehemently against a

joint-list with the BJP and filed its own candidates in the parliamentary constituencies.


37

15 But the contrary is also true. Some state level agreements can be observed between

parties that do not follow national trends. For instance in 2004, the Congress had no

candidate in a couple of Andhra Pradesh parliamentary constituencies where the Left

Front, a short-lived coalition, was present. This withdrawal helped the Left Front to win

these constituencies against NDA candidates.

16 Looking at different sources we found a lack of consistency regarding the composition of

pre-electoral coalitions. One major difficulty lies in the fact that coalition geometry is

highly volatile. A few days before the deadline for filing the candidates list, parties are

usually still bargaining over joint-list and high profile constituencies. For the 2004 Lok

Sabha elections Sridharan (2004), based on Centre for the Study of Developing Societies

(CSDS) information, considered the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam

(AIADMK) as a member of NDA, while Chakrabarty (2006) left this party outside the NDA

pre-electoral coalition. For the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, Palshikar (2009) puts the Sikkim

Democratic Front (SDF) with the NDA while the Indian-elections website (www.indian-

elections.com) considers this party as part of the UPA.

17 In order to build our own pre-electoral coalitions list for 1999, 2004 and 2009 Lok Sabha

elections (see Annexe 1), we crossed check different sources (Sridharan 2004, Chakrabarty

2006, Palshikar 2009, www.indian-elections.com) and in case of inconsistency we tried to

collect the information from parties’ websites or from newspapers (i.e. The Hindu). BJP or

Congress party members competing as independent candidates were dropped, even if

they later supported the coalition in government.

18 Data on Lok Sabha elections for 1999, 2004 and 2009 were then collected from the website

of the Electoral Commission of India. Results, vote shares and candidates were then

computed for each party and each parliamentary constituency. In order to better

contextualize the results from each election, we built several tables on the trajectory of

each party and each state. Such tables enable us to compare the data we collected to

other sources (Sanghavi & Thakkar 2000, Sridharan 2004, Palshikar 2009) and test their

reliability. We used the parliamentary constituency level, unlike most commentators who

tend to approach the geography of Lok Sabha results at the state level. Although this

makes sense given the importance of this level in the making or breaking of coalitions, it

does not give due attention to the fragmented geography of each coalition or each party.

Such analysis tends to overemphasize the final result—a win or a defeat—and neglect the

question of the vote share. In the Indian electoral system, with the ‘First Past The Post’

rule, winning or losing a constituency can be a matter of a few votes. Under this rule,

constituencies frequently swing from one party to another.6 Following the evolution of

the vote share over three consecutive elections gives us a better understanding of the

spatial distribution of a party or coalition. We look at vote maximization as the main

criteria for the formation of a coalition in an electoral context, even if all the states are

not characterized by a multiparty system. Parties want to improve their vote share:

through coalitions, they hope to expand their base and gain a foothold in those states

where their presence is weak.

19 In 2008 the boundaries of parliamentary constituencies were redrawn in order to reduce

the discrepancy between population and number of seats at the Lok Sabha (Kumar 2009).

This makes it impossible to compare the electoral results of each constituency between

the 1999-2004 period and the 2009 election. Because of this change in the delimitation, we

take recourse to the spatial interpolation method for mapping coalitions’ results. Spatial

interpolation relies heavily on Tobler’s principle (1970: 236) that ‘near things are more


38

http://www.indian-elections.com/



related than distant things’. Figure 1 illustrates the interpolation method and the use of a

barycentre to create a new layer for comparing elections results. The upper map presents

the vote share for one party using principal constituency boundaries. The lower map

presents the same data after running a geostatistical interpolation, also known as kriging,

based on constituencies’ barycentre (one dot for each constituency). Based on each

barycentre of the 543 parliamentary constituencies, we generate new continuous surfaces

for each election between 1999 and 2009. The spatial interpolation allows us to have a

common unit of comparison when using different data structures. Even with new

constituencies’ boundaries for 1999-2004 elections and 2009 elections we can assess the

spatial diffusion and distribution of votes through these new layers.

Figure 1. Interpolation method

20 By smoothing results at the national level, spatial interpolation coupled with a common

scale makes the spatial distribution of coalition clearer and makes comparison between

the different elections easier. To better understand the spatial diffusion of vote we also

measured spatial autocorrelation of vote for each coalition at each election. We use the

Moran Index to give a global measure of the spatial distribution of vote shares. Spatial

autocorrelation measures how nearby observations of the same phenomenon are

correlated. A coefficient close to 1 shows a strong spatial autocorrelation. Similar voting

shares either high or low tend to be spatially clustered. A coefficient close to 0 shows a

random spatial pattern while a coefficient close to 1 indicates a spatial dispersion.

Comparing the different values of Moran Index taken by each coalition will give us a

better understanding of the spatial trend of each coalition.


39

The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance: a landmarkin Indian politics

21 With the development of region-based, competitive party systems, the ‘ideological

vacuum resulting from the rapid decline of the Congress system and the gradual

abandonment of the Nehruvian national consensus on both socialism and secularism in

the second half of the 1980s’ (Pai 2002: 64), the BJP managed to create its own political

space both at the national and state level. But due to its geographical deficits (Arora 2003:

93) resulting from social and ideological factors, the BJP did not achieve a Congress-type

dominance and did not succeed in emerging as a single national alternative since the

Congress party remained a potent force in most states. However the BJP has been able to

grasp the reality of federalization of India’s party system (Arora 2003: 83) better than the

Congress and it adopted the coalition principle as the party’s policy in the Chennai

declaration of 28th December 1999.7 The states-based alliances forged by the BJP ‘provided

it with crucial seats from its allies in regions where it had no base’ (Pai 1998: 838).

22 The formation of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance therefore

represents a landmark as the party system moved decisively towards stable coalitions

composed of national and state(s)-based parties. The NDA represents a new phenomenon

‘in the sense that it has strengthened the federal character of national polity’

(Chakrabarty 2006: 171). Previous coalitions (in 1977 and 1989) represented the

opposition between the Congress and all the other parties and did not have the federal

character of the NDA (and later UPA).

23 The BJP paid a heavy price to unbalanced and fragile government coalitions in 1998 and

1999, as it lost the vote of confidence in the Lok Sabha by a margin of one vote (with the

AIADMK stepping out of the coalition). The BJP leadership then envisioned a strong and

large pre-electoral coalition for the General Elections held at the end of 1999. The BJP was

then the largest party on the national stage but it needed allies to remain in power. In the

long term, the BJP was also interested in building partnerships with state-level parties in

order to expand its base. The success of this strategy in Maharashtra or in Karnataka

reinforced this position.

24 In 1999, vote for the BJP was clustered along a line going from Gujarat through Rajasthan,

Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Jharkhand (Map 2). While voters from these states

represented 17% of total Indian voters, BJP voters from these states represented 36% of

total Indian BJP voters. The party scored on average 53% of votes in Gujarat

constituencies and 49% in Rajasthan constituencies. It came with a good performance in

northern Himalayan constituencies and in Goa-North Karnataka region. Thanks to the

support of its allies, the BJP established pockets in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, West

Bengal,8 Maharashtra and Bihar. The BJP’s allies also came with strong performances. In

states like Orissa, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, the NDA won the majority of

the seats. In Tamil Nadu and in Andhra Pradesh, states where the BJP’s presence is weak,

its allies won 21 and 29 seats respectively. Comparing the geography of vote share

between the BJP and its allies (Map 2), we can observe a complementary spatial

distribution between the two. This is particularly true of states like Bihar or Maharashtra

where pockets of low BJP vote share are in fact NDA allies’ stronghold. In this election BJP

was at its peak in terms of vote share, seats, as well as spatial distribution.


40

25 The 2004 Lok Sabha elections were organised following a series of victories for the BJP in

the state level elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh in late 2003. As

seen from the 1999 General Elections, these states are BJP strongholds. Hoping to become

a real pan Indian party, the BJP filed more candidates, contesting in 425 constituencies as

against 339 in 1999. This expansion was at the cost of NDA coalition partners. From 17

parties in 1999, the NDA went down to 12 parties in 2004. Indeed, the BJP decided to go it

alone in Jharkhand, Assam, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. It refused to compromise with

former NDA members like the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) in Assam, or the Indian National

Lok Dal (INLD) in Haryana. The BJP could not reach an agreement with the Janata Dal

(United) over seat-sharing in Jharkhand. As seen from Map 3, 2004 saw a decline of the

NDA coalition in terms of vote share and seats (minus 89 seats). The BJP won only 138

seats, compared to 182 in 1999. Comparing the maps of 1999 and 2004 shows that the BJP

vote share was no longer expanding, and was rather eroding in several states: Uttar

Pradesh, Jharkhand and Orissa. 65% of the constituencies won by the BJP in 2004 were

already under BJP banner in 1999. BJP pockets in South India failed to expand, except in

Karnataka. The party’s performance in central India, and the fact that it won new seats in

this area somehow mitigated the very poor performance of the party elsewhere. In

addition, NDA allies failed to deliver and suffered a massive blow. The TDP went down

from 29 seats in 1999 to four seats in 2004. In Tamil Nadu, the BJP’s new ally, the AIADMK,

lost the ten constituencies it had won in 1999. Wherever the BJP decided to go on its own,

the party was defeated. In Jharkhand it lost 365 000 votes between the 1999 and 2004

general elections, while in Haryana it lost 644 000 votes (from 29.21% to 17.21% of votes

polled). In Uttar Pradesh the party lost more than two million votes between the two

elections. However, in Maharashtra and Punjab, where the BJP allied with old partners,

the party was successful in expanding its support base (i.e. +750 000 votes in Maharashtra

from 21.18% to 22.61% of votes polled).

26 The losses of the BJP in states where it contested, on its own, members of the opposite

coalition and/or former NDA components proved the inevitable necessity of pre-electoral

coalition formation for a national party in this highly competitive political system.

27 Five years later, the 2009 Lok Sabha elections confirmed the declining trend for the NDA

and the BJP (Map 4). More parties left the NDA coalition, now down to eight parties. State

(s)-based heavyweights like the TDP in Andhra Pradesh, the AIADMK in Tamil Nadu, and

the BJD in Orissa quit the NDA and withdrew their support to BJP candidates. Even though

the BJP filed more candidates than ever before in 2009 (434), the party could not avoid

another defeat. The comeback of former allies in the pre-electoral alliance like the INLD

or the AGP could not prevent such collapse. The BJP lost close to 7.9 millions of votes

between 2004 and 2009 general elections (from 22.16% to 18.8% of votes polled).

28 Left without allies in several states (Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Orissa, West Bengal),

the party suffered a massive blow and simply failed to sustain its positions in these states.

In Tamil Nadu, the number of BJP voters declined by 51% between 2004 and 2009 (minus

700 000 voters, from 5.07% to 2.34% of votes polled). In Andhra Pradesh the BJP lost 1.4

million voters (from 8.41% to 3.75% of votes polled). In its central India stronghold the

BJP suffered from the good performance of Congress in Rajasthan (47.19% of votes polled

for the latter). However in Bihar the NDA was victorious by a landslide thanks to the JD

(U)’s good scores (24.04% of votes polled). The BJP has established itself as the main party

of Karnataka politics with a support base of more than 10 million voters now (41.63% of

votes polled).


41

Map 2. National Democratic Alliance - 1999



42


29 From a peak position in 1999, the BJP-led NDA felt apart as elections succeeded one

another. While maps give a visual account of this trend, the comparison of Moran Index

for each election gives us a measure of such spatial withdrawal. As mentioned, the Moran

Index measures the clustering of similar values and the significance of such clusters

(O’Loughlin et al. 1994). We used a first order contiguity between constituencies to

measure the Moran Index of NDA, BJP and BJP allies for 1999, 2004 and 2009 elections. The

measures show a positive spatial autocorrelation. But over the years, the Moran Index is

increasing, indicating that the vote tends to be more and more concentrated in some

regions. Interestingly while BJP autocorrelation stabilized around 0.5 the autocorrelation

of NDA rose from 0.43 to 0.68 between 1999 and 2009. We can explain such trends by the

decreasing number of parties involved with the NDA: NDA spatial distribution over India

is less and less homogeneous.

Table 1. Moran Index for NDA vote share

1999 2004 2009

Party I z I z I z

NDA 0.43 18.07 0.51 19.99 0.68 26.27

BJP 0.42 16.27 0.51 19.59 0.5 19.53

BJP+ 0.44 17.25 0.46 18.07 0.58 22.49

30 Nevertheless, the resilience of the NDA testifies to the stability of the coalition

phenomenon in India after a decade, irrespective of the conflicts that can arise between

coalition partners and of the development of opposing electoral strategies when the

discrepancy between the objectives of state-based partners and those of the leading


43

component of the coalition becomes too large. Coalitions are not static but characterized

by internal ongoing bargaining. This is especially true in the Indian political system,

where the quick succession of elections at the local, state and national levels leads

coalition partners to continuously reassess their strategies and their position within the

coalition.

31 Despite the heavy losses of the BJP-led NDA, it still represents the main opponent to the

Congress-led UPA after the 2009 Lok Sabha elections and it would be premature to talk

about the unmaking of coalitions. Indeed coalitions still structure party politics at both

state and national levels.

The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance: thecoalition’s strategy improved

32 In 1977, the first defeat of the Congress party at the national level, as well as in some

states, was the manifestation of significant change taking place at the grass roots level,

mainly in rural areas. With the emergence of a political alternative to Congress at the

state level, ‘all sections of the electorate, including the poorer, lower castes […] no longer

content with mere tokenism [...] stopped voting as their social ‘betters’ suggested and

provided electoral support only to parties that offered substantial benefits’ (Manor 1995:

106).

33 Despite this defeat, Congress dominance over the Indian political scene lasted for almost

40 years, partly thanks to a strategy that yielded votes from both the common people and

the dominant castes and because factionalism made it possible to offset the internal

rivalries within the party, at least until the 1960s (Kothari 1964).

34 1999 marked a new low in Congress electoral history. By securing only 114 seats at the

Lok Sabha, the party was no longer the first party of Indian politics. Many Congress

insiders had believed that the party could still win an election on its own and without a

strong pre-electoral coalition. Although 1999 saw some local agreements over joint-list in

Tamil Nadu or in Kerala, no proper pre-electoral coalition was put in place. The outcome

for Congress in major states like Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Bihar and West Bengal was

very poor. Hitting a low in terms of seats, the Congress was still a major contender in

many parts of India with regard to vote share. Comparing the geography of BJP and

Congress vote share is very instructive in that regard. Contrary to the BJP, the areas of

high percentage of Congress vote share (above 40% of votes polled) are scattered all over

India (Map 5): Central India, southern states (Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka), the North East,

and northern India. By refusing to build a pre-electoral coalition, the Congress failed to

translate its strong scores into seats. It was defeated either by the BJP or by other NDA

parties that could benefit from cross support. Because of the geography of its support

base, building a pre-electoral coalition was more difficult for the Congress than for the

BJP. The BJP could find allies where its presence was weak, like in southern and eastern

India, thus without threatening its allies’ position, at least in the short term. The

Congress had more at stake in the painful negotiations involved in building the pre-

electoral coalitions.

35 The failure of the Congress party to regain power in April 1999, after the Vajpayee

Government fell by one vote in a confidence motion, led the leadership of the party to

adopt a new electoral strategy regarding the formation of coalition on the eve of the 2004


44

General Elections. Whereas the Panchmarhi declaration of 1998 affirmed that ‘coalitions

will be considered only when absolutely necessary’ (Congress Working Committee 1998),

the 14-point Shimla declaration of 2003 called ‘for a joint front of all secular forces

against the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance’ (Sharma 2003).

36 Thus the Congress party set out to build a pre-electoral coalition for the 2004 General

Elections. In Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand it succeeded in building joint-list with newly

formed parties. In Andhra Pradesh, the newly formed Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS)

agreed on seat sharing in Telengana region. In Jharkhand, the Congress built an alliance

with the Jharkhand Mukhti Morcha (JMM). In states like Bihar and Tamil Nadu, the

Congress was no longer a threat to local parties. In Bihar, it joined at the last minute the

Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD)- Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) coalition. In Tamil Nadu, Congress

tied up with Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK),

Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK), parties formerly members of NDA.

In Maharashtra and Goa, the Congress found an agreement for seat-sharing with the

Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).

37 For the 2004 general elections the Congress thus managed to form a pre-electoral

coalition of 17 parties. Because of all these new alliances, the number of Congress

candidates in 2004 was lower than in 1999 (from 453 to 414), and the vote share of the

party, at 26.4%, went down by nearly two points (1.8). But overall the pre-electoral

coalition was a success. Because the Congress had to leave some constituencies to its

partners, its vote share declined in Maharashtra (from 29.71% to 23.77% of votes polled),

and in some parts of Andhra Pradesh, but its share increased in other constituencies of

the same states leading to new wins and strong color contrast on the map (Map 6). The

Congress’ decline in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka and in

Northern Eastern states mainly benefited the BJP, who won 38 constituencies from the

Congress—but the BJP lost 54 constituencies to the Congress. Overall the Congress

secured 34 more seats in 2004 than in 1999. Congress allies had great success in Bihar and

Tamil Nadu, in the latter the UPA won 35 of the 39 constituencies.

38 Altogether the UPA coalition won 222 seats against 188 for the NDA. Compared to the NDA

landslide of 1999, the UPA success seems overall less impressive and less cohesive with

regards to the geography of vote for the Congress and its allies. But this is partly due, as

we said, to the more scattered spatial distribution of Congress vote compared to BJP vote.

The UPA did secure a great number of seats in large states like Tamil Nadu, Andhra

Pradesh and Bihar.

39 Prior to the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, the UPA’s ‘geometry’ was revamped. The Congress

lost some allies and picked up some new ones: 12 parties were part of UPA pre-electoral

coalition. This volatility of the UPA coalition can be explained by a series of political

moves. One, the long term objective of the Congress in northern Indian states like Uttar

Pradesh and Bihar is to rebuild its support base to come back to power. Therefore the

party claimed more seats for itself in Bihar, but considering its poor performance at the

previous polls, the LJP and RJD declined the request. Two, following the 2004 general

elections, the UPA had relied on outside support for governing and in particular on the

Left Front. This support came to an end in 2008 (on the issue of the nuclear deal between

India and USA). Contrary to 2004, the Congress in 2009 did not retreat from

constituencies where Left front parties where in a good position to win. On the contrary,

it built joint-lists in West Bengal with the Trinamul Congress (AITC) and in Jammu and

Kashmir with the National Conference—two parties previously allied with the BJP. Three,


45

in Andhra Pradesh the TRS left the UPA after its single-point agenda, the creation of a

Telengana state, was not taken up by the UPA.

40 On the whole the Congress won 202 seats and its allies 54. The 2009 maps (Map 7) show

mixed trends, similar to the 1999 and 2004 maps: some UPA strongholds have been

reinforced (Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu) while some have been newly formed in Jammu &

Kashmir or West Bengal. As far as Congress’ vote share is concerned, the party seems to

resurge in Rajasthan, Karnataka and to a lesser degree in Uttar Pradesh.

Map 5. BJP and INC vote - 1999

Map 6. United Progressive Alliance - 2004


46

Map 7. United Progressive Alliance – 2009

41 These mixed trends for the 2009 elections can also be read from the Moran Index of UPA,

Congress allies (INC+) and Congress (INC). The Moran Index for Congress is decreasing

between 1999 and 2004, and it is increasing between 2004 and 2009. After withdrawing

from several constituencies between 1999 and 2004, the votes polled for Congress tend to

be less clustered. Between 2004 and 2009, the Congress was competing in more

constituencies (440 against 414), particularly in northern India, thus leading to a slight

increase of Moran Index.

Table 2. Moran Index for UPA vote share

1999 2004 2009

Party I z I z I z

UPA 0.53 20.26 0.57 22.22

INC 0.56 21.54 0.4 15.28 0.47 18.26

INC+ 0.49 19.21 0.47 18.5

Conclusions

42 Looking at the trajectory of two pre-electoral coalitions over ten years, the present paper

tries to contribute to the nascent research on pre-electoral coalitions. While much has

been written on the importance of disproportionate electoral systems or the ideological

distance between parties in the formation of pre-electoral coalitions, this paper explores

the importance of different geographical bases of support in the composition and

sustainability of Indian pre-electoral coalitions, election after election.


47

43 The BJP saw the decline of its alliance partly because it had not much to offer to its allies

besides accessing power in New Delhi. Prior to the 1999 general elections the party was

particularly strong in central and northern India, and in a position to govern at the

national level. It could be the vehicle for regional parties (mostly from southern and

eastern India) to gain leverage in New Delhi. But because the BJP remained out of power

at the national level and lost its grasp on its Central India stronghold in 2009, it had little

to offer in terms of vote base. The party’s success in many states was highly dependent on

the position of its allies. Between 1999 and 2009 the BJP lost 1.7 million votes in Andhra

Pradesh (from 9.9% to 3.75% of votes polled), 1.3 million in West Bengal (from 11.13% to

6.14% of votes polled) and 1.2 million in Tamil Nadu (from 7.14% to 2.34% of votes polled).

44 In contrast, the Congress benefited from its spatially scattered vote base. At the state and

at the national levels, the Congress always had votes and constituencies over which to

bargain with its allies. The party does not depend as much as the BJP on its coalition

partners. Between 2004 and 2009, it found new allies in West Bengal and Jammu &

Kashmir while it lost old ones in Bihar. If we consider the 1999-2009 period, the formation

of UPA appears as a way to reunite the Congress with some of its offshoots (NCP, AITC). In

the 1999 general elections, the Congress suffered from the recent formation of NCP in

Maharashtra and AITC in West Bengal. It remains to be seen how the objective to rebuild

the base of Congress in different states will affect UPA’s existence and results.

45 The major discrepancy between the BJP and the Congress is their motivation for coalition

formation. Whereas the Congress is managing somehow to maintain itself as a pan Indian

organization, the BJP is still struggling to establish itself as a national party with a pan

Indian distribution.

46 In a multi-party federal system, while competing for vote maximization, parties have to

decide which partners to accept in a coalition; this involves the risk of ‘[producing]

confusion on [their] specific ideological position and [their] relative distance from the

other parties’ (Colomer & Martinez 1995: 43). However this study of Indian elections

underlines the resilience of competition between parties belonging to the same pre-poll

alliance. On the one hand, cooperation with one’s coalition partners may not be in the

best interest of coalition participants who hope to increase their future influence. On the

other hand, extreme competitiveness is not in their long-term interest either, although it

is the best strategy for coalition members interested in short-term gains. The ideal

strategy for those who seek long-term increases in their influence is a mixture of

competition and cooperation, as shown by Bueno de Mesquita (1975: 1). Finally, the

Indian case also reminds us that coalitions are more likely to win elections when their

size (in number of parties) is large but characterized by a significant size difference

between the coalition partners.

47 Arora, Balveer (2003) ‘Federalization of India’s Party System’ in Ajay K. Mehra;

D.D. Khanna; Gert W. Kueck (eds.), Political Parties and Party Systems, New Delhi: Sage, pp.

83-99.


48

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce (1975) Strategy, Risk and Personality in Coalition Politics: the Case of India,

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chakrabarty, Bidyut (2006) Forging Power: Coalition Politics in India, New Delhi: Oxford University

Press.

Chatterjee, Partha (ed.) (1997) State and Politics in India, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chawla, Prabhu (2009) ‘The Allied Forces’, India Today, 9 March.

Colomer, Joseph M.; Martinez, Florencio (1995) ‘The Paradox of Coalition Trading’, Journal of

Theoretical Politics, 7(1), pp. 41-63.

de Vega, P. (ed.) (1977) Teoria y practica de los partidos, Madrid: Cuadernos para el Dialogo.

Fickett, Lewis P. (1993) ‘The Janata Dal in Ninth General Election of 1989 and its Future

Prospects’, in Harold A. Gould & Sumit Ganguly (eds.), India Votes: Alliance Politics and Minority

Governments in the Ninth and Tenth General Elections, Boulder (Colorado): Westview.

Golder, Sona Nadenichek (2006) ‘Pre-Electoral Coalition Formation in Parliamentary

Democracies’, British Journal of Political Science, 36(2), pp. 193-212.

Grofman, Bernard (1982) ‘A Dynamic Model of Protocoalition Formation in Ideological n-space’,

Behavioural Science, 27, pp. 77-90.

Hansen, Thomas Blom; Jaffrelot, Christophe (eds.) (1998) BJP—The Compulsions of Politics, Delhi:

Oxford University Press.

Kothari, Rajni (1964) ‘The Congress System in India’, Asian Survey, 4(12), pp. 1161-73.

Kothari, Rajni (1970) Politics in India, New Delhi: Orient Longman.

Kugler, Jacek; Swaminathan, Siddharth (1999) ‘Electoral Alliances and Political Outcomes in

India’, in Birol A. Yesilada (ed.), Comparative Political Parties and Party Elites. Essays in Honor of

Samuel J. Eldersveld, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, pp. 177-96.

Kumar, Sanjay (2009) ‘The Fourth Delimitation: An Evaluation’, Economic and Political Weekly, 17-23

January.

Laver, Michael (1989) ‘Party Competition and Party System Change: The Interaction of Coalition

Bargaining and Election Competition’, Journal of Theoretical Politics, 1(3), pp. 301-324.

Manor, James (1995) ‘Regional Parties in Federal Systems’, in Balveer Arora & Douglas V. Verney

(eds.), Multiple Identities in a Single State: Indian Federalism in Comparative Perspective, New Delhi:

Konark Publishers, pp. 105-135.

Mehra, Ajay K.; Khanna, D.D.; Kueck, Gert W. (eds.) (2003) Political Parties and Party Systems, New

Delhi: Sage.

Morris-Jones, W. H. (1967) ‘The Indian Congress Party: A Dilemma of Dominance’, Modern Asian

Studies, 1(2), pp. 109-132.

Narud, Hanne Marthe (1996) ‘Electoral Competition and Coalition Bargaining in Multiparty

Systems’, Journal of Theoretical Politics, 8 (4), pp. 499-525.


49

O’Loughlin, John; Flint, Colin; Anselin, Luc (1994) ‘The Geography of the Nazi Vote: Context,

Confession, and Class in the Reichstag Election of 1930’, Annals of the Association of American

Geographers, 84(3), pp. 351-80.

Pai, Sudha (1998) ‘Indian Party System under Transformation: Lok Sabha 1998’, Asian Survey, 388

(9), pp. 83-852.

Pai, Sudha (2002) ‘Parliamentary Elections in Contemporary India: Breakdown of the Dominant

Party System and Ascendancy of Regional Parties’, in Arun K. Jana & Bhupen Sarmah (eds.), Class,

Ideology and Political Parties in India, New Delhi: South Asian Publisher, pp. 62-76.

Palshikar, Suhas (2003) ‘The Regional Parties and Democracy. Romantic Rendez-vous or Localized

Legitimation?’, in Ajay K. Mehra; D.D. Khanna; Gert W. Kueck (eds.), Political Parties and Party

Systems, New Delhi: Sage, pp. 306-35.

Palshikar, Suhas (2009) ‘Tentative Emergence of a New and Tentative Coalition?’, Economic and

Political Weekly, 23 May, pp. 8-10.

Sanghavi, Nagindas; Thakkar, Usha (2000) ‘Regionalisation of Indian Politics’, Economic and

Political Weekly, 12 February, pp. 514-18.

Schofield, Norman; Laver Michael (1985) ‘Bargaining Theory and Portfolio Payoffs in European

Coalition Governments 1945-1983’, British Journal of Political Science, 15(2), pp. 143-64.

Sridharan, E. (2004) ‘Electoral coalitions in 2004 General Elections. Theory and Evidence’,

Economic and Political Weekly, 18 December, pp. 5418-25.

Stefuriuc, Irina (2009) ‘Government Formation in Multi-Level Settings, Spanish Regional

Coalitions and the Quest for Vertical Congruence’, Party Politics, 15(1), pp. 93-115.

Tobler, Waldo (1970) ‘A Computer Movie Simulating Urban Growth in the Detroit Region’.

Economic Geography, 46(2), pp. 234-240

APPENDIXES

Membership of the NDA and UPA coalitions, 1999-2009.

Party 1999 2004 2009

HVP NDA

Janata Party NDA

Lok Shakti NDA

Samata Party NDA

TRC NDA

BJD NDA NDA

TDP NDA NDA

BJP NDA NDA NDA


50

JD(U) NDA NDA NDA

SAD NDA NDA NDA

SHS NDA NDA NDA

INLD NDA NDA

AGP NDA

RLD NDA

NPF NDA NDA

AIADMK NDA

IFDP NDA

MNF NDA

SDF NDA

AITC NDA NDA UPA

JKNC NDA UPA

MDMK NDA UPA

PMK NDA UPA

DMK NDA UPA UPA

INC UPA UPA

IUML UPA UPA

JMM UPA UPA

KCM UPA UPA

MUL UPA UPA

NCP UPA UPA

RPI (A) UPA UPA

AC UPA

JKPDP UPA

LJNSP UPA

PDS UPA


51

RJD UPA

RPI UPA

TRS UPA

AIMIM UPA

VCK UPA

NOTES

1. For a detailed account of coalitions’ formation before 1998/1999, see Chakrabarty (2006:

64-167).

2. A multiparty system is defined by electoral competition between several parties; a bipolar

system is defined by an opposition between two groups or coalitions of parties.

3. These two expressions (‘nation wide parties’ and ‘non nation wide parties’) are inspired by the

terminology used in de Vega (1977: 188).

4. The dominant position of the Indian Congress Party has to be understood both in terms of the

number of seats that it held in the national Parliament and in state legislative assemblies, and in

terms of its immense organizational strength outside the legislatures (Kothari 1964; Morris-Jones

1967).

5. The position of the Telegu Desam Party (TDP), a regional party based in Andhra Pradesh, with

regard to the National Democratic Alliance is a case in point. During the 1999 Lok Sabha

elections, the TDP was not part of the NDA. But in Andhra Pradesh the TDP and the BJP had a sort

of agreement since no TDP candidates were fielded in those parliamentary constituencies where

the BJP had candidates.

6. While the Congress increased its number of parliamentary constituencies from 114 to 138

between 1999 and 2004, it kept only 38 parliamentary constituencies out of those won in 1999.

7. On this date, the BJP National Council accepted to follow the National Democratic Alliance’s

(NDA) agenda.

8. For the first time in its history the BJP won a seat in West Bengal.

ABSTRACTS

Between 1999 and 2009, since no single party was in a position to lead a majority in the Lok

Sabha, pre-electoral coalitions have become the only option for parties to exercise executive

power at the Centre. Looking at the trajectory of two pre-electoral coalitions over ten years,

namely the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance and the Congress-led United Progressive

Alliance, the paper attempts to contribute to the nascent research on pre-electoral coalitions.

Much has been written on the importance of disproportionate electoral systems or the

ideological distance between parties in the formation of governing coalitions. This paper

explores the importance of different geographical bases of support in the composition and


52

sustainability of Indian pre-electoral coalitions, election after election, and proposes preliminary

elements for a dynamic theory of pre-electoral coalition formation.

INDEX

Keywords: pre-electoral coalitions, alliances, BJP, Congress, NDA, UPA, party system, elections,

spatial distribution

AUTHORS

BERTRAND LEFEBVRE

PhD candidate, University of Rouen

CYRIL ROBIN

Post-Doctoral Fellow, Centre de Sciences Humaines, New Delhi


53

Electoral Politics in the Context ofSeparatism and Political Divergence:An Analysis of 2009 Parliamentaryelections in Jammu & Kashmir

Rekha Chowdhary

1 As in any other state of India, the 2009 Parliamentary election in the State of Jammu and

Kashmir can be seen as an important moment reflecting the nature and direction of

politics as it is evolving at the local level. One can gauge the changing nature of power

politics; the context of popular participation; the nature of competition and the intensity

and depth of democracy in the State. However, the context of the conflict situation which

has engulfed this state for the past two decades provides additional meaning to the

electoral exercise here. This paper will therefore seek to locate the Parliamentary

elections in the context of separatism. Specifically, it will focus on the implications of

parallel existence of the separatist and the mainstream politics on power politics of the

State. Separatism, it may be mentioned here, emerged as the dominant political response

in Kashmir during the post-1989 period. Manifested simultaneously through armed

militancy as well as spontaneous popular upsurge, this political response has continued

to have a hold over the politics of the Valley throughout the last two decades.1 Despite the

restoration of mainstream politics after its complete erosion during the initial stages of

separatism, the separatist politics continues to define the political responses of Kashmir.

The two kinds of politics seem to be operating side by side, overlapping at a number of

points and impacting each other in an interesting manner. It is in this context of overlap

between the separatist and mainstream politics that the 2009 Parliamentary election will

be analysed.

2 The paper will also highlight the context of diversity and political divergence within the

state and its implications on electoral politics. Focusing on the political divergence at the

regional level, it will analyse the process of political mobilisation around the regional

identity politics.


54

3 The immediate context of the elections is framed by two significant political events that

preceed these elections—first, the Amarnath agitation which engulfed almost the whole

state during the summer of 2008 and Assembly elections that were concluded in

December 2008.

The context of electoral politics in Kashmir:Implications of conflict situation and separatistpolitics

4 The state of Jammu and Kashmir has been affected by the conflict situation ever since

1947. The ruler of this erstwhile Princely state, after remaining indecisive for quite some

time, signed the instrument of Accession with India under troubled conditions created by

the tribal invaders supported by Pakistan army, on 26th October 1947. The issue assumed

international character with India taking the case to the UN. With Pakistan holding on a

part of J&K and contesting the validity of Accession of the other part with India, this State

continued to remain a bone of contention between the two countries.

5 However, besides external dimension of the conflict which has afflicted this state ever

since 1947, there is also an internal dimension which is defined by Kashmir’s relationship

with India. This relation has witnessed a protracted tension, especially since 1953. In

1953, Sheikh Abdullah, the popular Kashmiri leader was removed from power and

detained for a long time. Before his detention, Sheikh had been instrumental in

negotiating a special constitutional status for the state. However, with his dismissal not

only this status was gradually eroded, but Kashmiris were also denied democratic

channels of political expression. Excessive central intrusion in the politics of the state

distorted even the most developed indigenous political institutions like the National

Conference and distanced governance from the popular responses (Bose 2003: 66-7) All

this resulted in an accumulated political discontent which was manifested throughout the

post-1953 period.

6 Though Sheikh was brought back to power in 1975, political discontent continued to

manifest itself. One of the major reasons for this discontent was the lack of any initiative

in restoring the constitutional autonomy of the state, the major pre-condition of Sheikh

for resuming power. However, due to the towering personality of the Sheikh, particularly

his capacity to assert autonomy of his government vis-à-vis the intrusive politics of the

Centre, the discontent was quite subdued. But the incapacity of his successor and son, Dr.

Farooq Abdullah, to keep the Centre away from meddling into the politics of the state,

resulted in intensifying the already existing feeling of discontent. The tension continued

to grow after the dismissal, engineered by the Congress—the ruling party in the Centre—,

of Farooq Abbdullah’s government, which had obtained a massive popular mandate

during the 1983 Assembly elections, (Abdullah 1985: 9). In addition, the pressure built

upon Farooq Abdullah and the National Conference to enter into an electoral alliance

with the Congress party increased the dissatisfaction, since the Congress party was

popularly held responsible for distorting local politics since early fifties.

7 However, the real political outrage in the Valley was triggered by the 1987 Assembly

election, generally perceived to be highly rigged, which led to the massive victory of NC-

Congress combine and the defeat of most of the Muslim United Front (MUF) candidates.

The MUF was formed in 1986 to give vent to the growing popular resentment against the


55

alliance were seen to be manipulated. Despite polling 38.2% votes (compared to 45.2%

votes of the NC-Congress combine), the opposition comprised of MUF and People’s

Conference2 could register victory barely in four constituencies. The fact that the margin

of victory of some of the candidates belonging to the ruling combine was very low, and

the number of invalid votes in these constituencies was quite high, generated a feeling of

scepticism regarding the validity of the results3 (Chowdhary & Rao 2003: 189-219).

8 It was in the wake of disillusionment with the internal politics in general that the present

phase of conflict was started in the Valley. What marked the beginning of this phase was

the decision of some of the Kashmiri youth who had participated in the elections as

contestants, election agents, campaigners and sympathisers of candidates to cross over to

Pakistan administered Kashmir to take training in armed militancy. Moreover, apart from

armed militancy, a spontaneous popular upsurge grew against the Indian State that

eroded the mainstream politics in the Valley of Kashmir. The separatist politics

manifested both through the armed militancy as well as spontaneous political response

took a more organised form with the establishment of the All Party Hurriyat Conference

(APHC) in 1993. The establishment of APHC as an umbrella organisation was necessitated

by the proliferation of militant groups which were at times operating at cross purposes.

The ideological differences between these organisations and their internal strife,

especially the war declared by Hizbul Mujahideen on the JKLF, generated a need for a

loose-knit organisation that could give a sense of unity and common direction to those

participating in the movement (Schofield 2000: 143-88).

9 So much was the sway of the separatist politics in the Kashmir Valley, that it completely

eroded the mainstream politics right from 1989. While Jammu and Ladakh regions

remained more or less normal, there was no scope for the mainstream power politics in

the Valley.4 As the legitimacy of the mainstream politics was openly questioned by the

militants on the one hand, and the defiant masses on the streets of Kashmir on the other,

the state was placed under the President’s rule for a prolonged period of time. In 1996,

the electoral process was restored but the government that was formed after the

Assembly election could not gain credence in the Valley of Kashmir. Since the elections

were organised with the help of the security forces and the counter-insurgents, the

government formed after the elections was not seen to be representing the popular will.

Though NC had given the slogan of ‘autonomy’ to regain its hold in the local politics,

there were not many takers of this slogan (Chowdhary 2000: 2600-1).

10 Despite the restoration of political process, separatist sentiment continued to hold sway.

Though Kashmiris, by this time, had started reacting against the ‘culture of violence’ and

very subtly rejecting and de-legitimising militancy, their sympathies with separatist

politics continued to be expressed through various demonstrations organised by the

Hurriyat Conference. Mainstream politics, therefore, continued to remain challenged.

11 A number of factors changed the popular response towards electoral and mainstream

politics. Firstly, the urge for normalcy after the prolonged period of militant violence led

to some kind of change of attitude towards the process of governance. By the time the

2002 Assembly election was concluded, the political processes related to governance had

already found some legitimate space in Kashmir’s politics. Without any contradiction

towards their separatist sentiments, people started involving themselves in the ‘politics

related to governance’. This process was further boosted by a change in the nature of

political mobilisation. With the emergence of People’s Democratic Party (PDP) as another

Kashmir-based party, not only the electoral competition became quite intense, but the


56

electoral discourse also became more grounded in the local realities. PDP referred to the

Human Rights violations taking place in Kashmir and the need for providing ‘healing

touch’ to people, and also raised the issue of conflict and its resolution through the

process of dialogue both with both Pakistan and militants. Also significant were the

initiatives being taken by the Vajpayee-led Government: declaring that India had made

mistakes in Kashmir, Vajpayee made a commitment to hold a ‘free and fair election’. This

commitment was an indirect acknowledgement of the intrusive role that the Centre had

been playing in the power politics of the State since 1950s.

12 The impact of all these factors was significantly visible through the voters’ response.

Although the overall turnout during the 2002 Assembly elections was much lower than

the 1996 Assembly elections, the participation was more voluntary rather than coerced by

the presence of security forces in any manner, which made the 30% turnout in Kashmir

Valley quite significant.5

13 The 2002 Assembly elections, generally acknowledged to be fair, helped build some kind

of confidence in the electoral institutions and processes. Till now, the formation of

government and its sustenance in power was more dependent on the support of the

Centre rather than the mandate of people. The electoral politics therefore was quite

distanced from the popular responses.6 Breaking the hegemony of the single dominant

party also brought an alternative to the PDP-Congress coalition power. The possibility

that a government could be changed through the participation of people in the electoral

process, rather than through the manipulative politics of the Centre, strengthened the

stake of the people in this process.

14 Moreover, the response of people towards the electoral process was further transformed

through the intensity of competition after the creation of the People’s Democratic Party.

The emergence of another Kashmir-based political party invigorated the mainstream

political space.

15 Before the emergence of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), National Conference (NC) had

hegemonised the politics of Kashmir region (Chowdhary & Rao 2004: 1521-7). It based its

on playing a role in organising the resistance movement against the feudal Dogra rule

before 1947 and the radical land reforms that it had initiated after it came into power in

1947. Its emphasis on economic and political reconstruction of the state, in pursuance of

the New Kashmir Manifesto, the ideological blueprint of the party—particularly the

redistribution of the land to the landless, debt relief to the peasants, free education till

the Post Graduate stage—endeared this party to the Kashmiri masses and they formed the

base of this party. The support was strengthened by Sheikh Abdullah’s charisma until his

removal from power in 1953.7

16 With the ouster of the Sheikh Abdullah from power and subsequent formation of

Plebiscite Front, the support base of NC shifted to this organisation in the post-1953

period. However, NC continued to officially operate as the ruling party of the state under

the leadership of Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed. But the ruling NC legitimacy remained

contested throughout and it survived more on the basis of the support from the Congress

party than on the basis of local support. So overwhelming was the influence of the

Congress that the NC ultimately merged with it in mid-sixties. After 1975 when Sheikh

Abdullah came back to power politics, the Plebiscite Front was dissolved and the NC was

revived. From 1975 to 1996, the NC was again the most influential party of Jammu and

Kashmir, particularly in the Valley.


57

17 Though the NC continued to dominate the political scene of the State, its support base

gradually declined. In the background of the Kashmir’s politics between 1953 and 1975

when people were mobilised around the theme of contestation of the existing

relationship of the state with India, the return of Sheikh Abdullah to power without much

change in the status quo, there was a simmering discontent in the Valley. However, due

to the towering personality of Sheikh Abdullah, much of this discontent did not take a

concrete shape during his life time. But after his death, the party now led by his son

Farooq Abdullah started losing space. Even when Congress as the ruling party in the

Centre had manoeuvred the ouster of his government in 1984, he had entered into an

alliance with this party in 1986 and contested the 1987 election leading this alliance.

18 As the party became dependent on the centre for its political survival rather than on

mass support at the ground level, it distanced itself from popular concerns. That the

party, despite obtaining massive mandate was disconnected from popular responses

became clear in 1989 when the Valley came in the grip of militancy and witnessed a

massive upsurge (Schofield 2003: 143-88).8 In the political crisis that ensued, not only NC

was forced to withdraw from the political scene but had to face the maximum brunt of

violence. Devoid of legitimacy, NC leadership went into hibernation. And even after

coming back on the political scene by contesting the 1996 Assembly election and forming

the government, it could not regain its previous legitimacy.

19 With the emergence of PDP in late nineties, the context of the power politics changed

drastically. As another Kashmir-based party, it not only challenged the dominance of the

NC but changed the very logic of power politics. Adopting a political discourse that

reflected the popular concerns of people in a situation of conflict, PDP sought to reduce

the gap between popular aspirations and the power politics. It borrowed issues from the

separatist camp and brought them to the centre of mainstream political space. Thus the

party suggested ‘dialogue’ with the militants and separatists as a way towards solving the

conflict; easing out pressure upon people from the excessive presence of the security

forces; and reducing drastically the number of cases of Human Rights violations. It was

this ‘people-oriented’ strategy of PDP that helped bring an end the hegemony of NC.

During the 2002 Assembly elections, the PDP managed to capture as many as 16 seats

from Kashmir Valley.9

20 The mainstream political space was able to expand substantially during the period

between 2002 and 2008. From a situation in pre-2002 period when political parties and

leaders could not freely move in public space and could not organise public meetings,

2007 saw frequent rallies being organised by almost all the political parties in various

parts of the Valley—in the anticipation of the coming election, almost one year in

advance (Chowdhary 2008: 22).

21 Expansion of the electoral space, however, has not taken place at the cost of the

separatist sentiment and politics. In fact, the separatist sentiment remains intact in

Kashmir. The legitimisation of the mainstream politics has been possible only because

there is no contradiction between the separatist and mainstream politics and people are

not forced to make a choice between the two. The two are seen as reflecting two different

spheres of politics: one dealing with issues relating to governance; and the other dealing

with conflict situation and its resolution. Right since the 2002 elections, the political

parties have sought to restrict the scope of electoral politics to the issues related to

‘governance’ only. Recognising the larger political realities of the state, these parties

acknowledge the widely prevalent separatist sentiment and the need of addressing it. In


58

no way do they claim that the extension of electoral space amounts to shrinking the

separatist space.

22 The parallel existence of the two kinds of politics reflects a complexity that exists at the

ground level, generated both by the change in the dynamics of the separatist politics, and

the nature of popular responses. With the decline in armed militancy, the assertion of the

separatist sentiments is taking place through the mass politics. The more the mainstream

politics is expanding, the more it becomes rooted in local responses, while generating a

need to reaffirm the popular separatist sentiments. In a situation where conflict

resolution has not taken a concrete shape, a danger is always felt that participation in

mainstream politics may be a sign of political normalcy which might put the whole

question of conflict resolution to the back burner. Thus has emerged the very peculiar

situation in Kashmir, where mainstream political processes and assertion of separatist

sentiments alternate. It is interesting to note how abruptly the situation changes in the

Valley. While there was a tremendous electoral upsurge throughout the year of 2007 and

early 2008, it was suddenly halted by an equally strong assertion of separatist politics

during the Amarnath agitation. The affirmation of the mainstream politics immediately

followed when people participated in large number during the 2008 Assembly elections.

The Amarnath agitation

23 Amarnath land row engulfed the whole state throughout the summer of 2008. To begin

with, there was a massive agitation in Kashmir, which was followed by a prolonged

agitation in Jammu. This was once again followed by a renewed mass upsurge in Kashmir.

The entire issue initially revolved around a government order diverting forest land to

Shri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB), and subsequently around the revocation of the same

order.10 The order gave the SASB the right to erect pre-fabricated temporary structures

for housing pilgrims during the period of the Amarnath yatra. However, more than the

order, it was the assertion of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the SASB—representing

the ex-officio chairman, the Governor, General S.K. Sinha—, that land had been given

permanently to the Board to build permanent structures that generated a massive

response in Kashmir.11

24 The separatists used the issue of diversion of land to SASB to create suspicion of a grand

design behind the order aimed at altering the Muslim-majority character of the state. The

fear of ‘demographic change’, therefore, became the basis of mass mobilization in

Kashmir. To quell the agitation which had assumed dangerous proportions in Kashmir,

the order was revoked but this only generated another kind of polemics in Jammu. The

Bharatiya Janata Party and like-minded organizations termed the revocation as an assault

on ‘Hindu sentiments’ and demanded restoration of the original order. The revocation of

the order was portrayed as anti-Jammu decision taken under the pressure of separatists

to appease the ‘Muslims of Kashmir’ without taking into consideration the sentiments of

the ‘Hindus of Jammu’.

25 In both the regions, the agitation brought in focus the radical elements who sought to

mobilise people around emotive issues. In Kashmir, people were mobilised by the Geelani-

led Hurriyat Conference (as well as by the PDP) around the fear of demographic change

(the fear that by systematic efforts the Muslim-majority character of the State will be

changed) and in Jammu, the mobilisation took place around the religious sentiments of

Hindus (supposedly hurt by the revocation of the Land Order).


59

26 The agitation had far reaching implications for the politics of the State. In the Valley of

Kashmir, there was aggressive affirmation of separatist sentiments reminding one of the

massive popular demonstrations of early 1990. However, unlike the separatism of the last

few years which was marked by the centrality of moderate leadership, it was now

directed by hardliners.

27 The public display of the separatist sentiments during this time gave an indication that

beyond the electoral vibrancy, the deep-rooted sense of alienation continued to prevail.

Throughout the period of agitation one could feel that the mainstream politics had once

more regressed to the background and the separatist politics had become ascendant.

28 A significant implication of the Amarnath agitation was the fractured relationship

between Jammu and Kashmir. Though politically divergent, the two major regions had

never been placed in such an antagonistic relationship.12 The political discord had

reached beyond the usual issues of regional disparities and had started affecting the

economic and trade relationship between the two regions. The most dangerous

implication of the agitation was the communally divisive mobilisation and the resultant

communal tension in the state.

29 Along with the religious factor, it was the regional identity politics that provided stimulus

to the Amarnath agitation. In Jammu, a feeling of political discontent has been persisting

since early fifties. The feeling emanates from the context of power politics of the State

which is perceived to be ‘Kashmir-centric’ having negligible or token presence of

Jammu’s political elite (Puri 1966: 77-81). It also has much to do with the specificity of the

conflict situation of Kashmir and the response of the Central government. There is a

feeling that in all political negotiations undertaken to address the Kashmir problem,

Jammu is taken for granted and that the political arrangements are imposed on this

region. This feeling is accentuated by the context of political divergence and the

ideological divide between the two regions. The logic of Kashmir’s dominant politics

governed by the contestation of the State’s relationship with India and manifested

through the discourse of ‘Autonomy’/‘Azadi’ does not extend itself to the Jammu region.

The politics of this region on the contrary, is governed by the regional asymmetry in the

power politics and resource distribution.

30 The dominant political discourse of Jammu revolves around the issues related to regional

‘deprivation and neglect’. ‘Kashmir’ in this discourse forms the ‘centre of power’ within

the state and is perceived to be dominating both the power structure of the state and the

economic and material resources. It is on this basis that popular perceptions have been

articulated around the notion of regional imbalances and a number of agitations have

been organised in Jammu. The context of regional divergence and regional imbalances

has come to overwhelm the political logic of Jammu, not only in the Hindu-dominated

areas where organisations of Hindu-Right have been mobilising people around the

demand for abolition of Article 370 guaranteeing the special status of the State, but also

in the Muslim-dominated districts which are relatively more backward. Leaders here

blame the Kashmir-centric power politics for the perpetual neglect of these districts. Ever

since the early fifties, there has been a perception throughout Jammu region that the

public policy and political decisions favour Kashmir while ignoring Jammu. The political

response of the region is therefore organised around the issue of regional imbalances.

The range of this response however varies from the demand for regional autonomy

(emanating from the centrist politics), to the demand for a separate state of Jammu

(emanating from the Hindu Rightist politics). There is also a third demand, coming from


60

backward areas of Jammu region, for some kind of sub-regional arrangement (the Hill

Development Councils for instance).

31 Regional divergence has been manifested in the politics of the state in a variety of

manners. However, despite this divergence the two regions of the state never followed a

confrontationist path. It was during the period of militancy that the political divergence

was reflected in a sharp manner. However, even this did not result in collision between

the two regions. On the contrary, there evolved a feeling that despite the specificity of

conflict in the Kashmir region, there was a need to evolve a consensus between the two

regions. The conflict resolution process, it was understood (both by the political elite in

Kashmir as well as in Jammu) needed to be inclusive so as to represent the divergent

political voices within the State.

32 Amarnath agitation became the first occasion in the history of politics of the state when

the two major regions of the state were placed in an antagonistic situation. Both in

Jammu as well as in Kashmir, the masses were mobilised in a manner that enhanced

regional chauvinism. Worse still, the mobilisation ultimately took a communal route and

resulted not only in the tension between the two major communities of the state but also

in carving of new political constituencies based on religion.

33 In the absence of a regional party, the politics of regional discontent is often appropriated

by the Hindu Rightist parties and organisations which combine regional issues with

religious sentiments. Since the onset of militancy, the parties of Hindu Right have sought

to sharpen the regional identity politics.13 Amarnath agitation was one such occasion

when the Hindu Rightist organisations could mobilise masses in Hindu dominated areas

of Jammu by arousing regional sentiment combined with religious one.

34 Regional chauvinism not only dominated the Jammu region, but Kashmir as well. After

the onset of the coalition era which gave a visibility to Jammu in the power politics, a

politics has been generated in Kashmir around the issue of its discrimination vis-à-vis

Jammu. In radicalising the regional politics of Kashmir, PDP has had a clear role to play.

In its competition with NC, this party has often sought to give an aggressive edge to

Kashmiri regional politics and also add religious dimensions to it. One could clearly see

the role of PDP in raising the regional sentiments in Kashmir during the Amarnath

agitation. Though responsible for taking the decision on transfer of land to the SASB, this

party joined the side of agitators to demand its revocation, terming the Land Order as an

assault to Kashmiri identity and endangering the Muslim-dominated character of the

State.

The 2008 Assembly elections

35 The 2008 elections took place immediately after the Amarnath agitation. The

unprecedented regional and communal polarisation that afflicted the state during this

agitation, therefore, was bound to have repercussions on this election.

36 In the Valley, separatist politics was the highlight of the agitation. The separatist

leadership had developed a renewed confidence that people who had participated in

massive demonstrations against the Indian state during the agitation would not come

forward to participate in elections, and the electoral exercise would once again be

reduced to a farce. However, the boycott call was defied and there was massive

participation of people in the Assembly election. Against 29.64% voter turnout in the 2002


61

Assembly election, the 2008 election recorded 51.64%. In almost all the districts and all

the constituencies of the Valley, the percentage of the voter-turnout was much higher

than the last Assembly elections. Throughout the Valley one could see the images of long

queues outside the polling booth showing the eagerness to cast votes. The message was

very clear: despite the centrality of the separatist politics, the mainstream politics has

been extended and legitimised. The proximity of the people with the power politics, the

location of power politics in local responses of people and their growing stake in the local

politics—all had led to the deepening of democracy in this state, particularly in the

Valley.14 This is why the usual sense of scepticism with regard to the democratic

institutions was replaced by a greater involvement in the process of government making.

Table 1. Comparative voter turnout in Kashmir – 2002 and 2008 Assembly elections*

Votes polled (in %

)

2002 2008

J&K 43.70 60.92

Kashmir 29.64 51.64

Jammu 55.82 70.90

Ladakh 75.91 68.65

* Source: Election Commission of India. All the tables contain data from the Election Commission of India.

37 Although the voter turnout was not affected by the Amarnath agitation, same is not the

case with the electoral outcome. In an intensely contested election which gave a

fragmented verdict, PDP and BJP emerged as the gainers. While PDP was able to increase

its share of seats in Kashmir region from 16 in 2002 to 19 and its vote percentage arose

from 24.48% to 27.42%, it could also gain entry in Jammu and register its victory in 2 seats

with a voter turnout of 6.88% in its favour. BJP, however emerged as the biggest gainer

since it could increase its share of seats from one to eleven. Its vote share in Jammu

region increased from 17.80% to 22.94%.

38 NC was able to retain 28 seats that it had in 2002, but it suffered some losses in Jammu

region where it could win only 6 seats as compared to 9 seats in 2002. Congress also could

not fare so well. As against 20 seats in 2002, this time it could win only 17 seats. As against

21.38% votes in 2002, only 18.17% votes were cast in its favour in 2008. It suffered loss

both in Jammu (from 26.40% to 23.98%) as well as in Kashmir (from 14.41% to 10%).

Table 2. Comparative percentage of votes polled by different parties – 2002 and 2008 Assemblyelections

Votes Polled (in %)

J&KKashmir

Region

Jammu

Region


62

2002 2008 2002 2008 2002 2008

NC 28.23 23.59 35.62 27.50 23.95 20.16

INC 21.38 18.17 14.41 10.48 26.40 23.98

PDP 09.04 15.68 24.51 27,41 01.76 06.88

BJP 12.15 12.73 01.60 00.96 17.80 22.94

JKNPP 04.68 3.39 00.03 0.78 07.02 05.68

Table 3. Comparative share of seats attained by political parties – 2002 and 2008 Assemblyelections

Number of Seats

J&KKashmir

Region

Jammu

Region

2002 2008 2002 2008 2002 2008

NC 28 28 18 20 09 06

INC 20 17 05 03 15 13

PDP 16 21 16 19 00 02

BJP 01 11 00 00 01 11

JKNPP 04 03 00 00 04 03

39 The results of Assembly elections clearly reflect the divide created during the agitation.

The increase in BJP’s and PDP’s share of votes and seats follow the successful aggressive

mobilisation of the regional and religious identities by these two parties. Rather than the

centrist forces represented by Congress and National Conference, it was the triumph for

those parties which had stretched the politics of the state to the extremely polarised

responses.

40 Before the Amarnath agitation, PDP was not in a very comfortable position in Kashmir.

After remaining in power for more than five years, it was facing the anti-incumbency

factor. In the context of its radical pro-Kashmir politics, its association with Congress was

becoming a liability. In all likelihood therefore, NC was poised to win a substantial

number of seats in the Valley, had the agitation not taken place. However, the Amarnath

agitation changed the situation for the PDP which severed its link with the Congress and

joined the side of agitators. Since the agitation honed the Kashmiri regional and

separatist sentiments, PDP’s gain was ensured. In the regionally polarised politics where

Jammu’s rightwing forces were provoking anti-Kashmir sentiments, PDP was projecting

itself as the redeemer of the Kashmiri sentiment. Its leader Mehbooba Mufti was


63

vociferously campaigning against the ‘economic blockade’ of Kashmir by Jammu’s

agitators. In this context of regional and communal polarisation, the PDP’s increase in

popularity was clearly reflected during the Assembly election.

41 The electoral polarisation on the communal basis was more clearly established in the

Jammu region.15 Here BJP could register its victory in the record number of 11 seats. The

highest number of seats that this party had ever attained was 8 during the 1996 Assembly

election, as an immediate post-militancy reaction from the region. In the context of

violence, BJP could succeed in extending its constituency. However, as the violence level

came down, the influence of BJP also weakened. During the 2002 Assembly election, this

party only managed to win one seat.

42 The constituency of BJP’s politics was in any case shrinking due to the changed nature of

power politics of the State. The extreme politics of regional discontent on which the

popularity of this party depends, was getting blunted in the context of coalitional power

sharing. For the first time in the political history of the state, Jammu had a fair share of

power in the state. The Congress having its base in Jammu and PDP in Kashmir created a

regional balance.16

43 It is important to note that since 2002, there was no major protest organised in Jammu

region around any regional issue. However, the Amarnath agitation provided space and

opportunity for BJP and other like-minded organisations to mobilise the Hindu

constituency. The massive mandate in favour of BJP in Jammu’s Hindu-dominated

districts indicated that region was now getting communally polarised.

44 The fact that the PDP could register its victory in two Muslim dominated constituencies

of the Jammu region provided additional reason to believe the growing impact of

communal polarisation. Being a Kashmir-centric party which has been seeking to

legitimise its politics by emphasising its ‘pro-Kashmir’ orientation with a pro-Muslim

bias, PDP’s entry into Jammu’s Muslim dominated areas and its success in two

predominantly Muslim constituencies was an indication of the communal polarisation

that was taking deeper roots in the State. In a way this reflected a very dangerous signal

of an extension of Kashmiri constituency to Jammu’s Muslim pockets, thereby creating

new alignments. So far, the political divide in the state generally has been regional rather

than religious based. This is not to argue that communal factor did not operate at all. On

the contrary, the communal identity was invoked for electoral purposes by almost all the

political parties, including the National Conference. However, the impact of such

mobilisation remained limited and did not succeed in carving a communal constituency.

During the Amarnath agitation, the aggressive Hindu religious mobilisation and backlash

against Muslims, in certain cases, resulted in communal wedge. As a result, Kashmiri

leaders both from the separatist camp as well as from the mainstream parties sought to

create a political constituency among Jammu Muslims. The unprecedented victory of PDP

in two Muslim dominated constituencies signalled the success in this direction.

45 The impact of Amarnath agitation as reflected in the Assembly elections raised major

questions related to the future of the state. If the divisive forces were to dominate the

politics of the state, it would threaten the integrity of the State. The state, despite its

diversity and political divergence, had continued to remain integrated due to the

endurance of the centrist forces. The centrist forces actually affirmed the plural nature of

society. With the radical forces occupying the central space, the very plurality of the state

has been endangered.


64

The 2009 Parliamentary elections

46 The 2009 Parliamentary elections took place barely few months after the Assembly

elections, thus dealing with the concerns and anxieties raised due to the outcome of the

Assembly elections. This election, being relatively more distanced from the Amarnath

agitation, provided important clues about the depth of the impact of the divisive

tendencies sharpened during the agitation. It also provided interesting insights into the

relationship between the mainstream and separatist politics in Kashmir.

The context of separatist politics

47 Defiance of the boycott call and enthusiastic participation of people in the Assembly

elections resulted in a sense of demoralisation in the separatist camp. The growing space

of the mainstream politics did not induce a simultaneous shrinking of the separatist space17, but it did lead to a change in orientation within the separatist camp. The impact of this

shift could be seen during the Parliamentary elections, when Sajjad Gani Lone, a

prominent separatist took the decision to contest the 2009 Parliamentary election from

Baramula constituency of North Kashmir.

48 Sajjad Lone led one of the leading separatist organisation, the People’s Conference (PC)

which was a part of the All Party Hurriyat Conference (APHC) right from the time of its

inception in 1993. As an amalgam of the separatist and militant organisations active in

Kashmir, APHC represented the popular separatist sentiment in Kashmir.18 A G Lone,

father of Sajjad Lone and the founder of the People’s Conference was one of the most

prominent leaders of the APHC.

49 Though many other separatists had earlier joined the electoral fray, the Sajjad Lone’s

decision to contest Parliamentary election had an altogether different impact. Being a

high profile separatist, at par with the top separatist leaders like Mirwaiz Omar Farooq,

Ali Shah Geelani and Yasin Malik, one could see in his decision to contest election a crack

within the separatist politics. The crack was very small, not seeming to affect the

separatists overtly but in reality had had a great psychological effect on them. More so

since his decision to contest election came in the wake of the massive participation of

Kashmiris in the Assembly elections.

50 Separatists had been very aggressive in their boycott call during the 2009 Parliamentary

elections. Though the call was initially given by Syed Ali Shah Geelani, the hardliner

leader of the Hurriyat (G), soon the other faction of Hurriyat led by Mirwaiz Omer Farooq

and other organisations joined the boycott campaign.

51 The voter enthusiasm was quite low this time. Against 51% turnout during the Assembly

election, only 31.24% votes were registered during this election. It was partially the

impact of the aggressive campaigning by the separatists that the voter participation

during the Parliamentary elections was relatively lower.

Table 4. Comparative voter turnout in Kashmir region – 2008 Assembly elections and 2009Parliamentary elections

Voter turnout (%)


65

2008

Assembly elections

2009

Parliamentary elections

J&K 60.92 39.66

Kashmir 51.64 31.24

Jammu 70.90 47.19

Ladakh 68.65 71.85

52 It is important to analyse as to why the same voters who showed enthusiasm in 2008

shied away from the same process in the Parliamentary election? Why did the separatists’

call for boycott succeeded this time? A number of reasons can be attributed to this.

Firstly, the kind of proximity and involvement that the voters felt with the Assembly

elections was missing during the Lok Sabha elections. Governance is becoming important

to people and therefore they are keen to have a party in power with which they identify.19

This is why they defied the call for boycott during the Assembly elections. During the

Parliamentary election, the boycott call could become effective because people did not

have similar stakes. Not voting during these elections was a message that many Kashmiris

would have wanted to give to the Central government—that their participation in the

Assembly elections should not be construed as their complete rejection of the separatist

politics. In the context of the complexity of relationship between the separatist and

mainstream politics in Kashmir, it needs to be reiterated that the expansion of the

mainstream politics does not necessarily take place at the cost of the separatist political

space. Separatist sentiments continue to dominate the popular political responses despite

their positive response to the mainstream politics. It is the assertion of the separatist

sentiments that was reflected in the boycott politics. Lest the participation of the people

during the Assembly elections should be seen as an endorsement of Indian position on

Kashmir, the people sought to use the strategy of boycott politics to assert their

continued contestation of this position.

53 However, despite the lower voter turnout in the Parliamentary elections as compared to

their turnout in the Assembly elections, participation of Kashmiris showed an

improvement as compared to their participation in the earlier Parliamentary election. In

all the three constituencies of the Valley, the voter turnout this time was higher than in

2004 Parliamentary elections.

Table 5. Comparative voter turnout in all the constituencies of the State – 2004 and 2009Parliamentary elections

Voter turnout (in %)

2004


2009


Baramulla 35.65 41.84

Srinagar 18.57 25.55


66

Anantnag 15.04 27.09

Ladakh 73.52 71.86

Udhampur 45.09 44.88

Jammu 44.49 49.03

54 On the basis of this data one can infer that although separatist politics has affected the

responses of people in the Valley to the extent that many of them chose to remain away

from the Parliamentary elections, their response cannot be construed to mean a total

rejection of the electoral process. As the electoral data of 2004 elections shows, the stake

of people in the Parliamentary elections is not as high as in the Assembly elections. Even

when the faith of the people in the electoral politics had increased due to a very credible

electoral process during the 2002 Assembly elections, their participation in the 2004

Parliamentary elections remained low. The overall expansion of the electoral space that

was taking place in the post-2002 period was not reflected during the Parliamentary

elections, even when at the ground level one could see the difference. The political

environment was energised by intense political competition between the two regional

parties—the NC and the PDP which were not only mobilising people and holding huge

rallies but were also engaging people at the discursive level through their different

versions/models of peace process. One could see the intensity of this politics throughout

the year 2007 and 2008 (till the Amarnath agitation took place). The massive participation

of the people during the 2008 Assembly elections clearly established as to how this

politics had been legitimised.

55 However, separatist politics remains the reality of Kashmir and despite the extension of

mainstream politics, and will remain intact mainly due to the fact that there is a long-

standing alienation among people which needs to be addressed. Much of this alienation is

the result of the disjuncture between the power politics and the local responses. Politics

generally operated at a level where people were not involved—even in the discursive

sense. Not a single local debate took place about the kind of political arrangements the

state required, or the major political changes implemented since 1953. The competitive

nature of power politics has changed this context. Rather than depending upon the

Centre for its legitimaty, the power politics now depends on popular responses and is

rooted in the local milieu.

Implications of the Amarnath agitation

56 To what extent had the Amarnath agitation changed the nature and course of politics of

the state? Was the political response reflected during the Assembly election symptomatic

of the change in the nature of politics? Or was it merely a passing phenomenon? An

analysis of the 2009 Parliamentarly election is important for reflecting upon these

questions.

57 Though not much time had passed between the Assembly and the Parliamentary

elections, the ground level situation in the state had witnessed substantial changes which

had implications on the Parliamentary elections.


67

58 First of all, the centrist forces came to acquire central space in the politics of the State. In

the face of the fragmented verdict during the Assembly elections, the NC and Congress

had joined together to form the coalition government.

59 The Congress and the NC are the two parties of the State which have greater stakes in the

inclusive politics. The Congress has its stronghold in Jammu region, distinguishing itself

from the BJP by avoiding to present itself as a party of Hindus. It has therefore acquired a

solid base in many Muslim pockets of the region. The Gujjars, the Muslim community of

the state, for instance, have been strong supporters of the Congress party. Besides, to

succeed in power politics, the party has to extend its constituency beyond the Jammu

region by increasing its presence and stakes in Kashmir and Ladakh. Like the Congress,

the NC has its presence in all the three regions. Though Kashmir remains its primary

constituency, it has its existence and therefore a stake in all the three regions of the state.

The history of the party located in its progressive ideology also defines it as a centrist

party.

60 Moreover, the political mobilisation that had taken place during the period of agitation

lost its impact soon after the situation became normal, both in Jammu as well as in

Kashmir. In Jammu, however, there was a rethinking about the agitation and the effect

that it had on the region as a whole. Apart from the huge economic loss that people

suffered due to the agitation, there was a feeling that Jammu did not gain much from the

agitation. The massive regional sentiment that was generated during the agitation was

not translated into any positive achievement for the region. On the contrary there was lot

of negative baggage of the agitation. The traders, who form the economic backbone of the

region, had to face the wrath of their Kashmiri counterparts who responded to the

‘economic blockade’ of the Valley during the agitation, by taking a decision to bypass

Jammu in trade activities. However, it was the communal aftertaste of the agitation that

made the people uneasy.20 The aggressive anti-Muslim posture of the fringe organisations

activated during the agitation, the sporadic attacks on some Muslims and the outburst of

communal violence in two towns of the region did not go very well with the local

sensibilities.

The impact of rethinking the Parliamentary elections

61 Being partners in power, the NC and the Congress had reached a pre-electoral

arrangement for contesting the 2009 Parliamentary elections. Due to its stronghold in the

Valley, the NC contested the three seats of the Valley, while the Congress having its base

in Jammu, fielded its candidates in both constituencies of the region. The third seat of

Ladakh was also contested by the Congress. As a consequence of this alliance, the contest

was regionally localised. There was a direct fight between the NC and PDP in the Valley

and between the Congress and BJP in Jammu region.

62 The strategy of the coalition partners to contest in alliance helped them to gain both in

the Valley as well as in Jammu region. The NC-Congress combine was able to sweep the

Parliamentary elections winning five of the six seats. The sixth seat was also won by the

rebel candidate of NC.21 In two of the three constituencies of the Valley, the margin of

votes attained by the winning NC candidate over their PDP rivals was quite high. It was

only in Anantnag constituency that there was a close contest between the two parties. In

the case of Jammu region also, the Congress was able to win the Jammu seat with a very


68

solid majority and it was only in Udhampur constituency that there was a neck-to-neck

fight between the Congress and the BJP candidates.

Table 6. Performance of NC, Congress, PDP and BJP – 2009 Parliamentary elections

Winner Votes (in %) Runner Up Votes (in %)

Baramulla NC 46.01 PDP 31.32

Srinagar NC 51.99 PDP 41.30

Anantnag NC 46.53 PDP 44.89

Ladakh IND 29.84 INC 26.48

Udhampur INC 37.90 BJP 35.71

Jammu INC 45.33 BJP 30.94

The Kashmir region

63 In Kashmir Valley, the NC not only registered its victory in all the three seats of the

region, but also improved its share of votes compared to earlier election. With 38.42%

votes cast in its favour during the 2004 Parliamentary election, it obtained 49.79% votes

during the 2009 Parliamentary elections. This poll percentage was quite high as compared

to the 38.12% votes polled by the PDP (slightly lower than its voter turnout of 39.29% in

2004). While the improvement of its share of votes was reflected in each individual

constituency, however, it was in Anantnag constituency that the NC actually doubled its

share of votes as compared to 200422 (from 23.63% in 2004 to 46.53% in 2009).

Table 7. Votes polled (%) by NC and PDP in Kashmir Region – 2009 Parliamentary elections

NC (in %) PDP (in %)

Kashmir region 49.79 38.12

Baramulla 46.01 31.32

Srinagar 51.99 41.30

Anantnag 46.53 44.89

64 The loss of Anantnag seat was a huge setback for the PDP. Interestingly, Anantnag is the

stronghold of the PDP. The PDP has been dominating both the Parliamentary as well as

Assembly constituencies. In 2004 Parliamentary election, the seat was won by Mehbooba

Mufti with 49.55% votes. And during the 2008 Assembly elections, the party had swept the

four districts falling in this constituency, bagging 12 of the total 16 seats. What reflected

the great decline of the party was its performance in two Assembly segments of Anantnag


69

and Wachi from where Muft Syed, the patron of the party and Mehbooba Mufti, the party

president, had registered their victory with massive mandate during the Assembly

election. During the Parliamentary elections, the vote share of PDP in both these

segments had fallen drastically.

Table 8. Comparative performance of NC and PDP – 2004 and 2009 Parliamentary elections

Votes polled (in %

)

NC PDP

Kashmir region

2004 38.42 39.29

2009 47.79 38.17

Baramula constituency

2004 38.13 35.18

2009 46.01 31.32

Srinagar constituency

2004 50.3 38.46

2009 51.99 41.30

Anantnag constituency

2004 23.63 49.55

2009 46.53 44.89

65 The loss of the PDP in the Parliamentary elections reflected a change of mood at the

ground level since the Assembly elections. The lower level of participation during the

election also affected the election outcome. The PDP’s was incapable to mobilise as it had

during the Assembly election, thus revealing its complacency during the Parliamentary

elections. Buoyant by its performance during the Assembly elections, the party had taken

its victory for granted during the Parliamentary election. And may be due to this sense of

complacency or may be to show some kind of proximity with the separatist politics,

neither Mehbooba nor Mufti Syed cast their own votes.

66 The PDP’s failure to retain its own ground in the Valley could be seen as a rejection of the

‘soft-separatism’ of the party. In order to ground its politics in the local sensibilities, the

PDP borrows heavily from the separatist agenda and often seeks to use emotive slogans to

strengthen its constituency. Even when it was a part of government, it continued to use

the populist rhetoric in order to claim its proximity with the separatist sentiments of

people. It was in the same vein that the party had joined the Amarnath agitation and had

sought to raise the emotive pitch of Kashmir’s politics. Though the party could gain

during the Assembly elections which was conducted in the heat of the sentiments raised

during the Amarnath agitation, it could not take advantage during the Parliamentary

elections. As the situation was normalised, the party lost support at the ground level.

67 With the rejection of PDP during the Parliamentary elections, the Kashmir region also

seems to have rejected the polarised regional politics of the state. The PDP’s role in

sharpening the regional divide equals to that of the BJP. Both the parties gain mutually by


70

stretching the regional politics on opposite side. While BJP sharpens the pro-Jammu

sentiments, the PDP arouses pro-Kashmir sentiments. The mutual exclusivity of both the

sentiments aggravates the regional divide. The fact that the communal elements

automatically creeps in this kind of aggressive regional mobilisation, makes this politics

quite dangerous.

68 Since Kashmir remains the most important constituency, the NC also indulges in the pro-

Kashmir politics. However, what distinguishes the PDP’s politics from the NC’s is that the

former invokes ‘region’ as well as ‘religion’ in a more aggressive manner. NC’s Kashmir-

centric politics is more oriented towards the Centre, making demands upon it on behalf

of the State (therefore, its emphasis on State Autonomy). The PDP’s politics is more

inward looking and therefore focuses on Kashmir region defined in antagonistic terms

vis-à-vis Jammu region. In the definition of regional identity, the religious element of

Kashmiri identity is also invoked.

The Jammu region

69 In Jammu region, the BJP was expecting to register its victory in both the seats. During

the 2008 Assembly elections it could return 11 Assembly seats. The performance of the

BJP in this election had raised the hopes of this party for the Parliamentary elections.

However it lost both the seats to Congress. As against the 42.20% votes polled by the

Congress, it could poll only 32.94% votes.23

Table 9: Votes polled by BJP and Congress in Jammu region – 2009 Parliamentary elections (%)

BJP Congress

Jammu region 32.94 42.20

Udhampur constituency 35.71 37.90

Jammu constituency 30.94 45.33

70 Though both the seats of Jammu have remained the traditional strongholds of the

Congress, the BJP could gain from the communal polarization during the peak of

militancy and win both the seats during the 1998 and 1999 Parliamentary elections.

However during the 2004 elections it lost both the seats. Its expectations in the post-

Amarnath agitation were quite high and it had expected its victory this time as well –

given the intensified mobilization by this party in the Hindu dominated areas of the

region and the consequent polarization between the communities that was reflected

during the period of agitation.24

Table 10. Comparative performance of BJP and INC in Jammu region – 2004 and 2009Parliamentary elections

Votes polled (in %

)

2004 2009


71

BJP 34.72 32.94

INC 39.22 42.20

Table 11. Jammu constituency over the years: Results of the Parliamentary elections from 1989 to2009

Votes polled (in %

)

BJP Congress

1989 6.16 41.82

1996 26.00 34.24

1998 43.26 18.11

1999 43.46 41.82

2004 36.81 38.94

2009 30.94 31.85

Table 12. Udhampur constituency over the years: Results of the Parliamentary elections from 1989to 2009

Votes polled (in %

)

BJP Congress

1989 12.63 40.66

1996 37.58 21.74

1998 48.67 7.13

1999 49.01 19.09

2004 31.85 39.61

2009 30.94 45.33

71 One definite message that is given by the voters during the Parliamentary elections in

Jammu region is that politics here cannot be controlled by the rightist forces for a long

time. In very certain terms people have shown their antipathy towards the forces that

aim at mobilizing them on religious basis, polarizing them on communal grounds and

generating tensions within the region. People might have been temporarily swayed by


72

the emotions raised during the Amarnath agitation, but that is not the normal political

mood of the region. In defeating Leela Karan Sharma from Jammu-Poonch Parliamentary

constituency, the people have distanced themselves not only from the politics of

Amarnath agitation but from the communal politics per se. The BJP, despite opposition

from within the cadre, had taken the decision to give ticket to Leela Karan because as

chairman of the Amarnath Sangharsh Samitie, he had become the most important face of

the agitation25. Confident that the BJP could gain from the popularity of Leela Karan

during the agitation, the party leadership had gone ahead with the Leela Karan’s

candidature. Leela Karan, however, lost the election with a big margin.

72 The natural direction of politics of Jammu is quite secular and is manifested in secular

manner in a variety of ways. The plurality of Jammu as well as its multi-layered social and

political dynamics compels the regional politics to take a secular shape. However, in the

absence of a secular regional politics that takes into consideration not only the

sensitivities of the Hindu-heartland of Jammu region but also carries within itself the

political concerns of the backward sub-regions at the periphery, the politics has all the

possibilities of becoming communally divisive. About Amarnath agitation, one can safely

say that, though it was manifested in religious terms, the major reason for the mass

mobilization was regional rather than religious. This leads us to argue that communal

elements which generally remain at the margins of Jammu’s politics, seek to appropriate

the regional discontent at any time they can and change the very direction of popular

responses.

Conclusion

73 This paper has sought to analyse the intricacies of the electoral politics of the state by

locating it in the prevailing separatist context in the Valley of Kashmir on the one hand

and increasing political divergence on regional basis on the other. The paper has sought

to highlight the reality of separatist politics in Kashmir, despite the fact that there is

increasing space for the mainstream politics. The electoral politics which had become

totally irrelevant in the Valley during the late eighties, in the wake of militancy and

political upsurge, has again acquired legitimacy not only due to a shift in the nature of

the resistance politics but also due to the changed context of mainstream politics. With

the emergence of PDP as another regional party of Kashmir, the hegemony of the

National Conference has been fractured and the intensity of electoral competition has

increased. Consequently, the possibilities of manipulation of the electoral politics by the

ruling party in the centre have become quite remote and the distance between the

electoral politics and the popular responses (that always used to characterise the

Kashmir’s electoral politics) has been significantly reduced.

74 The legitimacy of the electoral politics, however, has been attained within the overall

context of separatism. Rather than challenging the separatist politics, the political parties

have sought to recognise the reality of the conflict situation and limit the scope of their

politics to issues of ‘governance’ only. The divide between the ‘politics of governance’ in

which the political parties indulge and the ‘politics of the ultimate resolution of conflict’

which is seen as the domain of the separatist politics is generally recognised by the

political parties, separatist leaders as well as by the common masses.


73

75 The changed context of electoral politics can go a long way in dealing with the

separatism, which is actually a reflection of popular alienation. But mere expansion of the

mainstream space and its democratisation may not be sufficient to deal with alienation

and separatist sentiment. It will have to be dealt with separately—through the conflict

resolution mechanism. Till that time, it will remain intact.

76 The paper has also focused on the political divergence within the state on regional basis.

The political divergence between the Kashmir and Jammu regions reflects not only the

specificity of the conflict situation in Kashmir but also the context of power politics

which has traditionally been dominated by the political elite of Kashmir. This has

resulted in a politics of ‘regional deprivation’ that has often been appropriated by the

Hindu Rightist elements. The Hindu Rightist parties that seek to exploit the generally

prevalent feeling of regional discrimination by communally polarising the political

response of the region have not been successful in electoral terms. However, the kind of

regional cum communal divide that was created in the wake of Amarnath agitation did

result in the substantial electoral gain for the BJP. Similar gain was registered by PDP in

Kashmir Valley

77 The regional cum communal polarisation created during the Amarnath agitation and

reflected in the outcome of the 2008 Assembly elections led to a concern about the

implications of the divisive politics for the future of the state. However, an altogether

different voter response during the 2009 Parliamentary elections has clearly established

the limitations of politics of regional and communal polarisation in the plural and mixed

society of Jammu and Kashmir.

78 However, the regional discontent remains a reality of Jammu’s politics and needs to be

addressed. There is also a need for a more secular response to the regional discontent. In

the absence such secular response, the regional discontent is easily appropriated by the

right-wing organisations and gets communalised in the process. Communally divisive

politics, however, is not only dangerous for the Jammu region but for the whole state.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abdullah, Farooq (1985) My Dismissal: As Told to Satti Sahni, New Delhi: Vikas.

Akbar, M. J. (1991) Kashmir: Behind the Vale, Delhi: Viking.

Bose, Sumantra (1997) The Challenge in Kashmir: Democracy, Self-Determination and a Just Peace, New

Delhi: Sage.

Bose, Sumantra (2003) Kashmir: Roots of Conflicts, Paths to Peace, Delhi: Vistaar Publisher.

Chowdhary Rekha (2000) ‘Autonomy Demand: Kashmir at Crossroads’, Economic and Political

Weekly, 22 July.

Chowdhary Rekha & Nagendra Rao (2003) ‘Jammu and Kashmir: Political Alienation, Regional

Divergence and Communal Polarisation’, in Journal of Indian School of Political Economy, 15(1-2),

January-June.


74

Chowdhary Rekha & Nagendra Rao (2004) ‘National Conference of Jammu and Kashmir: From

Hegemonic to Competitive Politics’, Economic and Political Weekly, 3-10 April.

Chowdhary Rekha (2008) ‘Electioneering in Kashmir: Overlap between Separatist and Mainstream

Political Space’, Economic and Political Weekly, 12 July.

Ganguly, Sumit (1997) The Crisis in Kashmir: Portents of War, Hopes of Peace, Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

Hewitt, Vernon (1995) Reclaiming the Past: The Search for Political and Cultural Unity in Contemporary

Jammu and Kashmir, London: Portland.

Puri, Balraj (1966) Jammu: A Clue to Kashmir Tangle, Delhi: B. Puri.

Puri, Balraj (1983) Simmering Volcano: Jammu’s Relation with Kashmir, Delhi: Sterling.

Puri, Balraj (1993) Towards Insurgency, New Delhi: Orient Longman.

Schofield, Victoria (2000) Kashmir in Conflict: India, Pakistan and the Unending War, London: I B

Tauris.

NOTES

1. For a detailed understanding of the background and emergence of armed militancy and

separatist politics of Kashmir, see M J Akbar (1991), Sumit Ganguly (1997), Victoria Schofield

(2000), Sumantra Bose (1997, 2003), Vernon Hewitt (1995)

2. Along with MUF, the opposition to the NC-Congress combine was given by the People’s

Conference led by Abdul Gani Lone. While MUF could poll 31.8% votes, the People’s Conference

could get 6.4% votes.

3. For instance, the NC candidate in Bijbihera won the election with a margin of 100 votes only. In

Wachi the margin of victory of the winning candidate was of 122 votes and in Shopian it was of

336 votes. Moreover, there was a huge number of votes which were declared invalid. Thus 6.7%

votes polled in Doru, 5.6% in Chrar-e-Sharief, 4.9% in Homshilbug, 4.8% in Wachi and Sangrama

each, 4.5% in Amirakadal and 4.2% votes in Handwara were rejected. In most of the

constituencies of narrow victories, the number of invalid votes was quite high. In fact in the

three above stated constituencies of Bijbihera, Wachi and Shopian with very narrow margins of

victory, the number of invalid votes was much higher than the margin with which the winning

candidates had been declared victorious. Thus 1177 votes were declared invalid in Bijbihera, 1806

in Wachi and 1122 in Shopian.

4. With common people openly identifying with separatist politics, the farcical nature of the

electoral politics became very clear during the 1989 Parliamentary elections. Not only were there

not many keen contestants ready to fight this election, but there were also not many voters

ready to vote. For the two of three constituencies which went to poll (the third was returned

uncontested), only 5% voters cast their votes.

5. It was exactly 29.64% voter turnout for the Valley of Kashmir. Interestingly in few districts like

Kupwara, Budgam and Baramulla, the voter turnout was as high as 53.15%, 46% and 40.09%

respectively. The voter turnout in Ananntnag and Pulwama was moderate—24.05% and 23.68%

respectively. It was in the Srinagar district that the lowest turnout—11.17%.

6. That is the reason why the National Conference, which was ousted from power in 1984 due to

the defections engineered by the Congress, not only risked its popularity by going in for an

alliance with the same party, but also took the open position of remaining on the right side of the

ruling party of the Centre in order to stay in power. Going against its own ideology, it even chose

to side with the BJP-led NDA during the late nineties.


75

7. Sheikh was arrested on the suspicion that he was not happy with the Accession of the State

with India and was hobnobbing with the Americans around the idea of independence of Kashmir.

However, as Mir Qasim has revealed in his book, he was also a victim of a local conspiracy led by

his own cabinet colleagues led by Bakshi Ghulam Mohd.

8. The disjuncture between the National Conference and the popular responses was also reflected

earlier, especially after the Party opted for entering into alliance with the Congress party. The

support that the Muslim United Front enjoyed before the 1987 Assembly election was mainly due

to the disillusionment with the politics that this party was pursuing.

9. The competitive nature of regional politics of Kashmir ultimately resulted in deeper changes

in the power politics of the State. The fragmented verdict at the regional level and the failure of

any party to obtain a majority of seats led to the formation of a coalition government. The

important aspect of this post-2002 coalition politics is that is it representative of both regions.

Fragmented verdict during the 2002 Assembly election led to the alliance between the PDP and

the Congress and formation of their government along with few other smaller parties. The NC

emerged as the largest party with presence in all the three regions of the state and chose to sit in

opposition. This arrangement reflected greater democratisation of the politics of the state from a

number of angles. Apart from the fact that the politics of Kashmir had become intensely

competitive and rooted in local concerns, it had, for the first time, space for genuine opposition.

The NC due to its numerical strength could operate as an effective opposition party and could put

sufficient pressure on the ruling coalition. Meanwhile, there was a wider base for the

government with one of the coalition partners having its support base in Kashmir region, the

other in Jammu.

10. Shri Amarnath Shrine Board was formed by the government of J&K in 2000 with the purpose

of managing the pilgrimage to Amarnath shrine in South of Kashmir. During the peak of summer,

the shrine attracts thousands of pilgrims from all over India.

11. General Sinha had earlier incensed many Kashmiris with a self-proclaimed agenda of

changing the ‘mindset’ in Kashmir which he set about doing by redefining ‘Kashmiri-yat’ based

essentially on its Hindu past. As chancellor of the University of Kashmir, he patronised the

Centre for Kashmir Studies which was frequently used to propagate his views.

12. After the first phase of agitation which culminated with the revocation of the Government

Order, the agitation acquired a form in which the two regions were placed in a completely

antagonistic form. The revocation of the Order after the mass response in Kashmir was projected

as anti-Hindu and anti-Jammu act of the state government and therefore led to a prolonged

agitation in Jammu which lasted for more than two months. To quell the sharpened regional

response in Jammu, the State government took the decision to restore 800 canal of land in Baltal

to Shri Amarnath Shrin Board. This government decision led to a fresh phase of agitation in

Kashmir during which sharp regional sentiments were expressed. Specifically, there were

reactions against the ‘economic blockade’ of Kashmir during the Jammu agitation. So strong was

the anti-Jammu response in Kashmir at that time that the traders took a decision to severe their

links with their Jammu counterparts.

13. Since 2002, when the era of coalition politics started, Jammu started having a substantial

share in power politics. That is the reason why the voices raising the demand for a separate

Jammu state were not raised and the forces of Right were quite marginalised (this was reflected

in just one seat in favour of BJP and one for Jammu State Morcha). However during the Amarnath

agitation, the forces of Right were able to mobilise the people from urban centres of Jammu by

combining religious sentiment with regional factor.

14. Though much of the electoral discourse in Kashmir revolves around the ‘bigger issues’ like

the ideas of ‘self-government’, ‘autonomy’, there are also issues which confront the people on

routine basis. The idea of de-militarisation of PDP, for instance, is very much located in the

problems faced by people due to the continued presence of security forces. The ‘healing touch’


76

policy advocated by PDP similarly involves the rehabilitation of people adversely affected by

violence.

15. The communal polarisation of the electoral politics of the State is not unprecedented. The

1983 Assembly elections are known to be one of the most communally polarised elections of the

State. In an intensely contested election between the National Conference and Congress, the

Congress was able to mobilise the Hindu voters of Jammu and register its massive victory in this

region.

16. With Congress-PDP being the major partners of the coalition government, it represented a

balance of forces between Jammu and Kashmir. Congress was having its strong base in Jammu

and the PDP in Kashmir. Besides a very effective representation of Jammu based leaders in the

Ministry, there was a system of rotation for the position of CM and Deputy CM between the two

parties and regions. For the first three years of the coalition, the position of Chief Minister was

held by Kashmir based PDP leader Mufti Mohd Sayeed (with Mangat Ram Sharma of Congress, a

leader of Jammu holding the position of Deputy CM) and after that the position of CM was held by

Ghulam Nabi Azad, a Jammu-based Congress leader with Muzzafar Hussain Beg of PDP holding

the position of Deputy CM. Due to the changed context of power structure, the scope of politics

based on regional discontent was somewhat restricted.

17. It cannot be argued that the positive response of the Kashmiris towards the electoral process

has amounted to the decline in their separatist sentiments. On the contrary, the assertion of the

separatist sentiments, especially since the Amarnath agitation, has become more intense. One

can see the intensity of such sentiments through the mass demonstrations against cases of

Human Rights violations. Ever since 2007, such demonstrations have been frequently organised

all over the Valley. A glimpse of the deep-rooted separatist sentiment is also given by the massive

funeral processions of the militants killed by the security forces.

18. Though the present phase of Kashmir separatist politics was initiated in 1989, it was only in

1993 that the APHC was formed to give a political face to the separatist sentiment. This sentiment

was represented till that time, by the armed militancy on the one hand and the spontaneous

popular upsurge on the other. Throughout the period of 1990, there were massive

demonstrations in Kashmir Valley. Thousands of people would march on the streets raising the

slogan of Azadi. The repressive measures adopted by the state soon restrained the public

expression of the mass response, the intensity of the armed militancy, however continued. The

beginning of the decade of 1990s saw a mushroom growth of militant organizations. Apart from

Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), the initiator of armed militancy in Kashmir, the Hizbul

Mujahideen, had emerged as the major militant organization having a local support base. The

Hizb, supported by Pakistan, launched soon after its emergence a major offensive on JKLF and

succeeded in eliminating its cadres to a large extent. It was in this context of the mutual rivalry

that a need was felt to organise all the militant and separatist groups under the banner of a

single umbrella organization. The All Party Hurriyat Conference was therefore organised in 1993.

19. The high expectations that people have from the local politicians were demonstrated in 2007

when various agitations were launched around the issue of opening of colleges and restructuring

of the districts and Tehsils.

20. Interestingly, there has been a strong refutation of the communal charge on the part of the

vocal middle class, media, traders and the politicians of Jammu. Soon after the agitation, the

regional dimensions of the agitation were highlighted and the religious sentiments expressed

during the agitation were underplayed.

21. Though the seat of was officially contested by the Congress candidate, the NC cadre of Ladakh

rather than supporting him, worked for the victory of the NC rebel candidate who was able to

wrest the seat defeating the official candidate of the alliance partners.

22. In Baramulla constituency, the NC candidate Sharif ud din Shariq won the election by polling

203022 votes as against 138208 votes of PDP candidate Mohammad Dilawar Mir. Sajad Gani Lone


77

of People’s Conference polled 65403 votes. Please elaborate on the defeat of S.G. Lone. In Srinagar

constituency, NC candidate Farooq Abdullah won the election by polling 147075 votes as against

116793 of Moulvi Iftikhar Ansari of PDP. In Anantnag constituency, Mirza Mehboob Beg won the

election by polling 148317 votes as against 143093 votes polled by PDP candidate, Peer Mohd.

Hussain.

23. In Udhampur constituency, the Congress candidate, Ch. Lal Singh won the election by polling

2318153 won the seat by defeating BJP candidate Dr. Nirmal Singh who polled 218459 votes. In

Jammu constituency, the Congress candidate, Madan Lal Sharma won the election by polling

382305 votes as against 260932 votes polled by his nearest rival, Leela Karan Sharma of BJP.

24. However, the effect of the mobilization by the BJP does not seem to be lasting. Though it

could get a large number of votes from Hindus (exceeding its hold from 11 Assembly segments to

13), it failed to get the advantage of winning the seats as it had in 1998 and 1999. It could not get

all the Hindu votes of the region. The Congress could get a substantial number of Hindu votes.

(The NC-Congress combine also gained in the region—with lead in 21 Assembly segments as

compared to victory in 19 seats during 2008 Assembly elections).

25. The opposition to Leelakaran’s candidature came from within the party on the ground that

he was seen as an outsider who had not been associated with the politics of BJP in any form.

ABSTRACTS

The paper analyses the 2009 Parliamentary elections in Jammu and Kashmir in the context of the

conflict situation of the last two decades. The separatist sentiment, the paper argues, remains

ascendant, even though mainstream politics (that had become totally irrelevant during the

initial years of militancy and political upsurge) has been gradually gaining space. Rather than

challenging separatist politics, mainstream politics is seeking to legitimise itself by

acknowledging its own limitations and confining itself to the politics of ‘governance’ while

leaving for separatist politics the issue of the ‘ultimate resolution of conflict’. However, in this

process of legitimisation, mainstream politics has taken up many issues from the agenda of

separatist politics. Consequently, despite the distinction between the two kinds of politics, there

exists an overlap between them. The paper also focuses on the political divergence and the

assertion of regional/religious identity politics. The Amarnath agitation, which took place a few

months before the Parliamentary elections, became the basis of massive political mobilisation

and reaffirmation of the popular separatist sentiment in Kashmir and religious cum regional

identity politics in Jammu. As such, it forms an important reference point for the analysis. The

paper also focuses on the 2008 Assembly election, which immediately preceded the

Parliamentary elections.

INDEX

Keywords: conflict, democracy, elections, India, Jammu, Kashmir, political science


78

AUTHOR

REKHA CHOWDHARY

University of Jammu, Department of Political Science


79

Studying Elections in India:Scientific and Political Debates

Stéphanie Tawa Lama-Rewal

1 Studying elections in the largest democracy in the world is bound to be a challenge: given

the size of the country and of its population, Indian national elections have been the

largest electoral exercise in the world ever since the first national elections in 1952.

Moreover the cultural, linguistic, ethnic and religious diversity of the Indian society, as

well as the federal nature of the Indian state, make this event a particularly complex one.

What, then, have been the methodologies and approaches deployed to study this major

political event? What have been the disciplines and foci of election studies? Who have

been the main authors? In what form have these studies been publicized, and what type

of readership have they targeted? Reading the available literature with these questions in

mind, I have tried to identify some major shifts over time, and to grasp their meaning and

implications; a few interviews with specialists of the field have allowed me to test some of

the interpretations suggested by the readings. Through a review of the literature on

Indian elections since the 1980s, this paper aims at mapping the scientific and political

debates around election studies.

2 Election studies are here defined as scholarly work focusing on the major phases of the

electoral process, i.e. the campaign, the vote, the announcement of results and

subsequent government formation.1 This is a restrictive definition: elections are

obviously a central institution of representative democracy, and as such they are

connected to every aspect of the polity. Yet election studies constitute a distinct sub-

genre of studies on democracy, which focuses, so to speak, on the ‘mechanics’ more than

on the ‘substance’ of representative democracy.2 This sub-genre, being relatively more

visible than other studies of representative democracy, has specific implications, in the

academic but also in the political arena, which will be the focus of this critical review.

This paper will argue that election studies are really in between science and politics, and

that it is important, therefore, to contextualize them.

3 The paper starts with a quick overview of the different types of election studies which

have been produced on India, and goes on to analyze a series of dilemmas and debates


80

attached to election studies, which highlight the intricate nature of the political and

scientific issues at stake.

The study of Indian elections: an overview

4 At least three previous reviews of election studies have been realized, by Narain (1978),

Brass (1985), and Kondo (2007). Both Narain and Kondo provide a fairly exhaustive list of

publications in this field, and discuss their relevance and quality. Brass’ review also offers

a detailed discussion of the advantages and limitations of ecological approaches, to which

I will later return.

5 There is no need to repeat this exercise here. But in view of situating the debates

described in the next section of the paper, I simply want to sketch a broad typology of

election studies published since the late 1980s—a moment which can be considered as the

emergence of the new configuration of the Indian political scene, characterized by (i) the

importance of regional parties and regional politics; (ii) the formation of ruling coalitions

at the national and regional levels; and (iii) the polarization of national politics around

the Congress, the BJP, and the ‘third space’.

6 All three reviews of the literature highlight the diversity of disciplines, methods, authors,

institutions, and publication support of studies of Indian elections. But a major dividing

line appears today between case studies and survey research (which largely match a

distinction between qualitative and quantitative studies), with a number of publications,

however, combining elements of both.

Case studies

7 Case studies analyze elections from the vantage point of a relatively limited political

territory, which can be the village (for instance Somjee 1959), the city (or, within the city,

the mohalla, the basti), the constituency, the district, or the state. The major discipline

involved in this type of research has been political science. Indeed elections have been

the object par excellence of political science worldwide. In India as elsewhere, as we will

see below, election studies reveal characteristic features of this relatively recent

discipline, insofar as they embody some tensions between science and politics.

8 Paul Brass developed the case study method in the course of his long interest for politics

in Uttar Pradesh. His monograph on the 1977 and 1980 elections focuses on Uttar Pradesh

(he justifies this choice saying that this election was largely decided in North India). His

research is based on fieldwork in five selected constituencies whose ‘electoral history’ is

minutely recalled. Here the choice of the unit of analysis is linked to pedagogical

considerations: ‘Each constituency chosen illustrates a different aspect of the main social

conflicts that have been prominent in UP politics’, he writes (Brass 1985: 175). Indeed in

the case study approach, the detailed observation of elections in a particular area aims at

uncovering processes and dynamics which are relevant for a much wider territory.3

9 Beside political science, anthropology has also approached elections in a manner close to

case studies.4 But anthropological studies are usually focused on a more limited political

territory (typically, the village), and more importantly, they are centered on a

questioning of the meaning of the electoral process5 for voters: why do people vote? More


81

precisely, why do they bother, what is the meaning of voting for them? Thus

anthropologists often focus on the symbolic dimension of elections:

From this [symbolic] perspective, democracy is really an untrue but vitally

important myth in support of social cohesion, with elections as its central and

regular ritual enactment that helps maintain and restore equilibrium (Banerjee

2007: 1556).

10 Taking the ritual as a central metaphor in their accounts of elections, anthropologists

help us see the various ‘ceremonies’ and ‘performances’ that constitute the electoral

process:

To define [the] cultural qualities of Indian democracy, it is important to view the

ritual of the election process through four consecutive ceremonies [:] Party

endorsement […], the actual campaign […], the day of polling [and the] public

announcement [of winners] (Hauser & Singer 1986: 945).

11 On the basis of their observations of two elections in Bihar in the 1980s, Hauser and

Singer define the electoral process as a ‘cycle’. They describe the successive phases of this

cycle, and draw parallels with religious rituals, noting for instance that the electoral

process involves a series of processions. Their likening of the electoral campaign to a

‘pilgrimage’ manifesting the ‘inversion of power from the hands of the politicians back to

the hands of the voters’ (Hauser & Singer 1986: 947) goes a long way in explaining the

festive dimension of Indian elections.

12 Anthropological studies of elections also clearly show how elections precipitate, or at

least highlight, otherwise latent political dynamics. The long fieldwork characteristic of

the discipline makes it possible to concretely demonstrate how elections render visible

otherwise subtle, if not invisible, relationships of influence:

[…] election day was when the complexity of the village’s social life was distilled

into moments of structure and clarity, when diffuse tensions and loyalties were

made unusually manifest (Banerjee 2007: 1561).

13 For Banerjee, who studied politics from the standpoint of a village in West Bengal, an

election is a celebration in two ways: (i) it is a festive social event; (ii) it involves a sense

of democracy as sacred. Therefore she understands ‘elections as sacred expressions of

citizenship’ (Banerjee 2007: 1561).

14 For all their evocative strength, one can regret that anthropological studies of Indian

elections deal mostly with villages and with traditional electoral practices. However one

must also note that elections elsewhere have attracted even less attention from

anthropologists. Indeed, a recent issue of Qualitative Sociology deplored that ‘at a time

when few, if any, objects are beyond the reach and scrutiny of ethnographers, it is quite

surprising that politics and its main protagonists (state officials, politicians and activists)

remain largely un(der)studied by ethnography’s mainstream’ (Auyero 2006: 257).

Other approaches

15 A number of articles and books on Indian elections combine different methodological

approaches. Thus some of Banerjee’s conclusions are shared by the political scientists

Ahuja and Chibber (n.d.), in an interesting study combining quantitative and qualitative

methods (i.e. election surveys (1989-2004) and a series of focus group discussions) in three

large Indian states. In order to understand the particular pattern of electoral turnout

described by Yadav as characteristic of the ‘second democratic upsurge’ (Yadav 2000),

Ahuja and Chibber identify three broad social groups, defined by three distinct


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‘interpretations’ of voting. They argue that ‘differences in the voting patterns of opposite

ends of the social spectrum exist because each group interprets the act of voting

differently’. Thus the act of voting is considered as a ‘right’ by the groups who are on the

lower end of the socio-economic spectrum—the ‘marginalized’; as an ‘instrument […] to

gain access to the state and its resources’ by those in the middle of that spectrum—the

‘State’s clients’; and as ‘civic duty’ by those at the top—‘the elite’ (Ahuja & Chibber 2009:

1-9).

16 Among the ‘other approaches’ of elections, one also finds a number of monographs

devoted to a single election6. For instance Myron Weiner’s study of the 1977 election

constitutes an interesting, contemporary account of the beginning of the end of Congress

dominance over Indian politics, with the first part devoted to the campaign and the

second part to the analysis of results, on the basis on a medley of methods typical of

political science:

In four widely scattered cities – Bombay […], Calcutta, Hyderabad, and New Delhi […

]—[the author] talked to civil servants, candidates, campaign workers, newspaper

editors, and people in the streets, attended campaign rallies and visited ward

offices, collected campaign literature, listened to the radio, and followed the local

press (Weiner 1978: 21)

17 In the 1990, a series of collective volume were published on parliamentary elections (for

instance Roy & Wallace 1999). Often based on aggregate data such as those published by

the Election Commission of India, they offer a series of papers that are interpretative,

speculative, critical in nature.

18 I have found one single book of electoral geography (Dikshit 1993),7 which presents

election results (crossed with census data) as a series of maps. This particular method

highlights unexpected regional contrasts and similarities, which stimulates the

production of explanatory hypotheses.

19 Finally, a recent book by Wendy Singer (2007) makes a case for an application of social

history to elections. Going through a large material relating to elections (national, state,

local) from 1952 to the 1990s, she shows how some details of the electoral process reveal

important social changes over time.8

20 The gathering of the above mentioned writings in a single, residual category is not meant

to suggest that they are less effective than case studies or survey research in describing

and explaining elections. On the contrary, the variety of methodologies that they

mobilize shows the richness of elections as an object of scientific enquiry. But these

studies eschew the strong methodological choices which define the other two categories

and which point to the political stakes specific to election studies.

Survey research

21 Survey research has been dominating election studies since the 1990s for a variety of

reasons. I will here use Yadav’s definition of this particular method:

[…] a technique of data gathering in which a sample of respondents is asked

questions about their political preferences and beliefs to draw conclusions about

political opinions, attitudes and behavior of a wider population of citizens (Yadav

2008: 5).

22 Survey research exemplifies the close relationship between the media and political

science. It was introduced in India in the late 1950s by an economist turned journalist,


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Eric Da Costa, considered ‘the father of opinion polling in India’ (Butler et al. 1995: 41),9

who went on to work with the Indian Institute of Public Opinion (IIPO) created in 1956—

but it was political scientists such as Bashiruddin Ahmed, Ramashray Roy and Rajni

Kothari who gave it a scientific grounding. In his Memoirs (2002), Kothari recalls how he

went to Michigan University—which had developed an expertise in psephology, i.e. the

statistical analysis of elections - to get trained in survey research. When he came back to

India, Kothari applied this new method in his work at the Delhi-based Centre for the

Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), which he had founded a few years earlier, in 1963.10

The first election to which he applied this newly acquired expertise was the Kerala state

election in 1965 (Lokniti team 2004: 5373). The CSDS team then went on to study general

elections in 1967, 1971 and 1980, but it seems to have progressively lost interest for

election studies—hence the gap between this first series11 and the new series which

started in 1996—in a new political context, as we will see further.

23 The renaissance, so to speak, of electoral surveys, came from another academic turned

journalist: Prannoy Roy. An economist by training, Roy learnt survey research in the

United Kingdom. After coming back to India in the early 1980s, he applied this method to

Indian elections. He co-produced a series of volumes, with Butler and Lahiri, he

conducted a series of all India opinion polls for the magazine India Today, but more

importantly in 1998 he founded a new television channel, New Delhi Television (NDTV) on

which he anchored shows devoted to the statistical analysis of elections—thus

popularizing psephology.

24 The link between these two pioneering institutions of psephology, CSDS and NDTV, was

provided by Yogendra Yadav, a young political scientist who was brought from

Chandigarh University to the CSDS by Rajni Kothari. Yadav revived the data unit of the

CSDS and went on to supervise an uninterrupted series of electoral studies which have

been financially supported and publicized by the print media, but also by NDTV. Yadav’s

expertise, his great ability to explain psephological analyses both in English and Hindi,

made him a star of TV shows devoted to elections, first on NDTV, and then on the channel

co-founded by the star anchor Rajdeep Sardesai after he left NDTV: CNN-IBN.12 In 1995,

the CSDS team around Yogendra Yadav created Lokniti, a network of scholars based in

the various Indian states, working on democracy in general and on elections in particular.

The Lokniti network has been expanding both in sheer numbers and in terms of

disciplines, and it has consistently observed elections since 1996.

25 In a landmark volume published in 1995 by Roy along with two other scholars, David

Butler and Ashok Lahiri, the authors had made a strong statement in favour of

psephology, even while acknowledging its limits: ‘This book […] offers the ‘What?’ of the

electoral record; it does not deal with the ‘Why?’’ (Butler et al. 1995: 4). In this regard, the

CSDS data unit has strived, from 1996 onwards, to improve its data gathering in order to

capture more of the ‘Why?’, i.e. to capture with increasing accuracy the electoral

behaviour of Indians and its explanatory factors. More generally, it has aimed ‘to use

elections as an occasion or as a window to making sense of trends and patterns in

democratic politics’ (Lokniti Team 2004: 5373).

26 The CSDS election studies have also been published in academic supports such as the

Economic and Political Weekly (EPW) in India, or Electoral Studies on the international

level13, and they have been used by a large number of academic works in political

sociology (for instance Jaffrelot (2008) on the vote of the urban middle classes). Recently,


84

the Lokniti network has published a series of state election studies in Hindi and in

English, with academic publishing houses (Mohan 2009, Shastri 2009).

Scientific and political debates

27 Debates around the study of Indian elections involve political and scientific arguments

which are sometimes difficult to disentangle. These debates underline that no method is

politically neutral, and they illustrate the particularly problematic relationship of one

discipline, political science, with the political sphere and with the media.

Scientific dilemmas

28 The opposition between case studies and survey research can be broken into a series of

dilemmas and choices.

29 The first dilemma concerns the most relevant unit of analysis: should one privilege width

or depth? The central difficulty here is often to combine feasibility and relevance. In his

introduction to a series of case studies done in the 1960s and 1970s, Shah writes:

A major limitation of the survey method is its inability to capture the influence of

local politics on the electoral behavior of small communities. A questionnaire

administered to individual voters can elicit information about individual attitudes

and opinions but cannot capture the larger reality of events involving a collectivity

of individuals acting over a longer period of time. A fieldworker who knows the

community is better equipped to capture that reality (Shah 2007: 12).

30 As we saw, case studies, focusing on a limited area,14 do offer historical depth, for example

in Brass (1985). The anthropological brand of case studies also offers ‘cultural’ depth,

through a wealth of concrete details which suggest the multiple meanings of elections for

voters. However survey research allows generalizations; and it contextualizes results by

identifying patterns, linked to regions or social groups.

31 The second dilemma concerns quantitative vs. qualitative methods. This opposition

cannot be reduced to the use of figures vs. words. While many case studies involve some

quantified description of the vote, they are deeply qualitative in nature, insofar as they

aim at uncovering the qualities of particular political trajectories—of a community, a party,

a constituency, a state etc. Survey research on the contrary aims at revealing general

patterns. Here again the question of feasibility is central: while surveys are expensive,

case studies are time intensive.

32 An important dimension of that dilemma relates, again, to the capacity of these two types

of methods to capture the meaning of elections for voters. Survey research, functioning

with closed questions, conveys only the meanings that the survey design has anticipated,

and risks perpetuating the prejudices of its authors.15 By contrast, qualitative methods

such as open interviews and direct observation are more likely to bring out unexpected

interpretations.

33 However one large consensus appears to bridge the divide between survey research a la

CSDS and case studies: the ‘ecological’ approach is preferred to the ‘strategic’ approach of

elections. Ecological analyses ‘correlate electoral with other kind of aggregate data’

(Brass 1985: 3). They focus on ‘the sociological characteristics of voters, which determine

the construction of their representation of politics and their social solidarity’ (Hermet et

al. 2001: 31), whereas the ‘economical’ or strategic approach is based on methodological


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individualism and the problematic of the rational voter. Already in 1985 Paul Brass

argued that ‘ecological analyses had a ‘useful place in India electoral studies’ (ibid)—

indeed he expanded on their advantages and limitations, through a detailed discussion of

the methodological issues arising from the difficulty of relating electoral and census data,

and of the technical solutions found by a number of works which he reviewed.

34 The evolution of National Election Studies (NES) conducted by the CSDS since 1996 shows

an attempt to develop increasingly ecological types of analysis, by introducing more and

more variables in their considerations. Indeed the latest surveys come close to meeting

the advantages of ecological approaches as explained by Brass: ‘Identifying the

underlying structural properties of party systems, […] presenting time series data to

discover trends in voting behaviour, […] identifying distinctive regional contexts in which

voting choices occur, and […] discovering unthought of relationships through the

manipulation of available data’ (Brass 1985: 4).

35 A recent exception vis-à-vis this consensus is Kanchan Chandra’s work on ‘ethnic voting’

(Chandra 2008), which analyses electoral mobilization as a mode of negotiation used by

marginal groups. Chandra argues that the poorer groups in India use their vote as ‘their

primary channel of influence’. In a description of ‘elections as auctions’, she argues that

the ‘purchasing power of small groups of voters’ depends ‘upon the degree to which

electoral contests are competitive’ (Chandra 2004: 4). Her interpretation of the relatively

high turnout in Indian elections, even as one government after the other fails the poor, is

a materialist one:

When survival goods are allotted by the political market rather than as

entitlements, voters who need these goods have no option but to participate. […]

Voters do not themselves have control over the distribution of goods. But by voting

strategically and voting often, they can increase their chances of obtaining these

goods (Chandra 2004: 5).16

Academic rivalries

36 The above dilemmas are extremely widespread, but in the Indian context they also

correspond, to some extent, to academic rivalries between scholars and institutions,

which might explain their persistence over time.

37 One can identify, to start with, an implicit rivalry between political science and

psephology—even though the latter can be considered as a sub-discipline of the former.17

A few texts, but also interviews, reveal a mutual distrust, both in scientific and political

terms. Indian political science values theoretical work more than empirical research;

qualitative more than quantitative methods;18 politically, it favours a radical critique of

the political system.19 Survey research, of course, is essentially empirical, quantitative

and ‘status quoist’. Yogendra Yadav thus sums up the situation that prevailed in the late

1980s:

The label ‘survey research’ stood for what was considered most inappropriate in

the third world imitation of American science of politics: it was methodologically

naïve, politically conservative and culturally inauthentic (Yadav 2008: 3).

38 Even today, quantitative methods, which are much fashionable in American (and more

lately in French) political science, are hardly taught in the political science curriculum of

Indian universities. Thus Kothari’s endeavour to launch a ‘so-called ‘new political

science’’ in the CSDS in the 1960s—this was the time of the behaviorist revolution in social

sciences—was a lonely one. He describes this ambition thus:


86

[It] was mainly based on the empirical method leading to detailed analytical

understanding of the political processes […] The ‘people’ came within that

framework, as voters and citizens with desires, attitudes and opinions; our task as

academics was to build from there towards a macro-theory of democracy, largely

through empirical surveys of political behavior (by and large limited to electoral

choices) but also through broader surveys of social and political change (Kothari

2002: 60-61).

39 This project actually seems to be realized through the Lokniti network which links the

CSDS data unit with a number of colleges or universities across the country (and thus

contributes to training an increasingly large number of students who are then hired as

investigators for National and State Election studies).

40 As far as the political agenda of survey research is concerned, Yadav makes a passionate

plea for ‘transfer as transformation’ (Yadav 2008: 16) i.e. for an adaptation of survey

research to the political culture of countries of the global South, with a double objective:

(i) to make survey research more relevant scientifically; (ii) to use it as a politically

empowering device, that is ‘[…] to ensure that subaltern and suppressed opinions are

made public’ (Yadav 2008: 18).

41 Much of the latent opposition between psephologists and other political scientists is

probably due to the disproportionate visibility of psephologists when compared to other

social scientists working on elections. But the close connection between psephology and

the media is a double edged sword. On the one hand, it offers researchers a much needed

financial support:

Some of the leading media publications like the Hindu, India Today, Frontline and the

Economist supported [National Election Studies] between 1996 and 1999 (Lokniti

team 2004: 5375).

42 On the other hand, it forces them to engage with the scientifically dubious, and

economically risky, exercise of predicting results,20 or explaining them immediately after

their publication. However, the consistent transparency and critical self-appraisal of

surveys conducted by the CSDS goes a long way in asserting their scientific credibility:

Within India, the NES series has sought to distinguish itself from the growing

industry of pre-election opinion polls […] The difficulties of obtaining independent

support for NES made the Lokniti group turn to media support which in turn

required the group to carry out some pre-election opinion polls and even exit polls

linked to seats forecast. The experiment yielded mixed results, some reasonably

accurate forecasts along with some embarrassing ones (Lokniti team 2004: 5380)

43 A more explicit and constructive debate has been taking place, lately, between

psephology and anthropology. Notwithstanding his refusal to ‘participate in

methodological crusades on social sciences’ (Yadav 2008: 4), Yadav has consistently

sought to situate, explain, improve and diffuse his brand of survey research on elections21

. His call for a ‘dialogue’, elaborated upon by Palshikar (‘how to integrate the methods and

insights of field study and survey research’ 2007: 25) has been answered by Mukulika

Banerjee, who is currently directing, along with Lokniti, an unprecedented project of

Comparative Electoral Ethnography, which aims at ‘bringing together the strengths of

large-scale and local-level investigations’ (www.lokniti.org/

comparative_electoral_ethnography.html accessed in May 2009).


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http://www.lokniti.org/comparative_electoral_ethnography.html

http://www.lokniti.org/comparative_electoral_ethnography.html

Political issues

44 One can distinguish three types of relationship between elections studies and politics,

which correspond to three distinct, if related, questions. Firstly, how do elections studies

meet the need of political actors? Secondly, to what extent are they an offshoot of

American political science? And thirdly, what representation of democracy do they

support?

45 Firstly, the development of survey research is directly linked to Indian political life:

In the 1950s there were virtually no market research organizations in India. The

dominance of the Congress diminished any incentive to develop political polls

(Butler et al. 1995: 41).

46 At the time of the second non-Congress government at the Centre (1989-1991), political

parties started commissioning surveys which they used to build their electoral strategy

(Rao 2009). Indian elections have been decided at the state level since the 1990s, and the

proliferation of national pre-poll survey from the 1991 election onwards can be linked to

the uncertainty of the electoral results in a context of increasing assertion of regional

parties (Rao 2009). The fact that the CSDS resumed its elections series in 1996 is

doubtlessly linked to the transformations that have been characterizing the Indian

political scene since the beginning of that decade. The rise to power of the Bahujan Samaj

Party in Uttar Pradesh and its emergence in other North Indian states, and more

generally the fragmentation of political representation, with new parties representing

increasingly smaller social groups, has made it increasingly necessary to know who votes

for which party in which state—and why.

47 Furthermore the decentralization policy adopted in 1992 has generated a lot of interest

both from actors and observers of Indian politics. Today the newfound interest for

ethnographic, locally rooted types of election studies may well have to do with the fact

that the national scale is increasingly challenged as the most relevant one to understand

Indian politics.

48 Secondly, a more covert, but no less important aspect of the debate relates to what could

be roughly called the ‘Western domination’ of survey research. Methods have been learnt

by leading Indian figures in the United States or in the United Kingdom (even in the

2000s, CSDS members get trained in the summer school in survey research in Michigan

University). Authors are often American (or working in the American academia). Funding

often involves foreign funding agencies.

49 More importantly, the key concepts of survey research are often drawn from the rich

field of American election studies,22 and particularly from behaviourism, a school of

thought which is rejected by part of the Indian academia. Lastly, the general (and often

implicit) reference to which the Indian scenario is compared is actually the United States

and Western Europe. On the one hand, these comparative efforts23 testify to the fact that

India is not an outsider any more as far as democracies are concerned. On the other hand,

one can regret an excessive focus, in comparisons, on the West, insofar as it skews the

assessment of the Indian case (for instance the Indian pattern of voter turnout, which is

qualified as ‘exceptional’ by Yadav because it breaks from the trend observed in North

America and Western Europe, might appear less so if it was compared, say, to post-

Apartheid South Africa).24


88

50 Thirdly, all election studies support a (more or less implicit) discourse on Indian

democracy; they can always be read as a ‘state of democracy report’ (Jayal 2006). In this

regard, one of the criticisms addressed to psephological studies is that their narrow focus

tends to convey a rosy picture, since elections are usually considered as ‘free and fair’ in

the Indian democracy, which is often qualified as ‘procedural’, i.e. which conforms to

democratic procedures (regular elections and political alternance, a free press) but not to

democratic values (starting with equality). The sheer magnitude of the logistics involved

in conducting national elections is bound to evoke admiring appraisals, which tend to

obliterate the limits of procedural democracy. Thus Jayal criticizes the ‘the fallacy of

electoralism’:

The scholars who subscribe to the limited, proceduralist view of democracy, are

generally buoyant about Indian democracy... Their analyses emphatically exclude

the many social and economic inequalities that make it difficult for even formal

participation to be effective (Jayal 2001: 3).

51 Moreover the huge costs involved in conducting sample surveys on ever larger samples

imply that the funders—which include the media—can put pressure on the team

conducting the survey. And one can see two reasons why survey research is so media

friendly: one, its (supposed) ability to predict results makes it an indispensable

component of the horse-race, entertaining aspect of elections; two, it contributes to the

‘feel good’ factor as it shows, election after election, that the turnout is high and that

results are unpredictable; it thus gives credit to the idea of democratic choice.

52 To this positive assessment, some Indian political scientists oppose the more critical

vision offered by case studies of Indian politics focusing not on the mainstream, but on

the margins. Here anthropology offers a way out, since the informed perspective of the

long time fieldworker allows a simultaneous perception of the mainstream and of the

margins. Thus the works of Hauser and Singer or that of Banerjee, offering a minute

description of the various ‘ceremonies’ that together constitute the election process from

the vantage point of voters, highlight both the empowering and the coercive dimensions

of voting. Their studies suggest that when it comes to elections, the relationship between

celebration and alienation is a very subtle one.

Conclusion

53 Elections are a complex, multi-dimensional social and political event which can be

captured only through a variety of methods: this literature review underlines how the

different approaches complete each other and are therefore equally necessary. While

Indian election studies, at least at the national and state levels, have been dominated,

since the 1990s, by survey research, the Lokniti based project of ‘Comparative Electoral

Ethnography’ should contribute to restoring some balance between various types of

studies. Also, academic debates around the scientific and political implications and

limitations of election studies seem to lead to a convergence: while questionnaire-based

surveys evolve towards a finer apprehension of the opinions and attitudes of Indian

voters, anthropological studies strive to overcome the limitations of fieldwork based on a

single, limited area.

54 One can regret that studies of Indian elections, by all disciplines, tend to focus exclusively

on the vote, which certainly is a climactic moment of the electoral process, but by no

means the only interesting one.25 Indeed a recent attempt by the CSDS team to


89

understand participation beyond voting, in order to qualify the ‘second democratic

upsurge’ (Yadav 2000) through a state wise analysis of the 2004 Lok Sabha elections,

suggests that a broader definition of the electoral process might significantly contribute

to solving the ‘puzzle of Indian democracy’ (Chibber & Petrocik 1989, Lijphart 1996). They

conclude that ‘comparison across social sections shows that a broader entry of the

underprivileged into the political arena is much more limited, even today, than the entry

of the more privileged social sections’ (Palshikar & Kumar 2004: 5414). The

complementarities of different approaches are here glaring: ethnographic work is much

needed to understand the implications of the fact that ‘over the years there is a steady

increase in the number of people who participated in election campaign activity’

(Palshikar & Kumar 2004: 5415).

55 One wishes also that anthropological studies of future elections deal not only with the

traditional elements of voting (the campaign procession, the inking of the finger etc.), but

also with newer elements of the process: what has been the impact of the model code of

conduct, or of the increasing use of SMS and internet in the campaign, on electoral

rituals? What about the collective watching of TV shows focusing on elections, both

before and after the results are known?

56 Finally, at a time when election surveys have acquired an unprecedented visibility, due to

their relationship with the mass media, one can only lament the absence of rigorous

studies on the role of the media, both print and audio-visual, in funding, shaping and

publicizing election studies.

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NOTES

1. Most works considered here deal with national elections, but some of them also focus on state

elections.

2. I owe this formulation to Amit Prakash, whose comments on a previous version of this paper

were very helpful.

3. Another example is a study of parliamentary and state elections in a village in Orissa at the

end of Emergency, in which S. Mitra describes the caste dynamics in the village and the way it

plays out during electoral times to show how ‘elections are used as instruments by various

sections of the society to convert their political resources and power into authority’ (Mitra 1979:

419).

4. In the early years of independent India, the Indian Council for Social Science Research (ICSSR)

commissioned a series of case studies, some of which are reviewed by Narain (1978). A more

recently published volume offers a sample of such studies, conducted in the late 1960s by the

sociology department of Delhi University under the supervision of M.N.Srinivas and A.M.Shah

(Shah 2007).


92

5. One must note that among the various disciplines producing case studies, anthropology uses

the largest definition of political participation, to include not only voting, but also participating

in meetings, supporting the campaign of a particular party or candidate etc.

6. One must also mention the ‘Chronicle of an Impossible Election’—i.e. the 2002 Assembly

election in Jammu and Kashmir - as told by the then Chief Election Commissioner, J.M. Lyngdoh

(2004), which provides an insider’s view of how election procedures are the result of a series of

(sometimes minute) decisions—aiming at asserting that the Election Commission does not

represent the Indian government.

7. This is in sharp contrast with France, where electoral geographers such as André Siegfried

have been the founding fathers of political science. For an illustration of how geography enriches

our understanding of elections, see Lefèbvre and Robin in this volume.

8. This inventory of ‘other’ election studies, that is, studies of elections that fall neither in the

‘case study’ nor in the ‘survey research’ type, would obviously become much more complex and

large if we were to include in it the large body of literature on the party system, or on the federal

structure as they evolve over time in India. However that literature does take elections as its

main focus, and has therefore not been considered here.

9. Eric Da Costa founded the Journal of Public Opinion.

10. The CSDS was meant, in Kothari’s own words: ‘One, to give a truly empirical base to political

science [...] Two, to engage in a persistent set of writings through which our broad

conceptualisation of democracy in India was laid out [...] And three, institutionalise not just the

Centre as a place of learning but as part of the larger intellectual process itself’ (Kothari 2002:

39-40). Over the years, the CSDS has retained a unique place in the Indian academia, as it remains

distinct from universities even while engaging in a number of collaborations with their faculty—

Lokniti being a case in point.

11. The CSDS did not even study the 1977 election, on which we fortunately have Myron Weiner’s

monograph.

12. The CSDS entered into a stable partnership with the new channel six months before it went

on air, which testifies to the saleability of this brand of research. One week before the results of

the Fifteenth election were announced, huge signboards bore a picture of the star anchor of CNN-

IBN along with Yogendra Yadav, asserting the latter’s increasing popularity.

13. The ‘notes on elections’ published in Electoral Studies favour a strongly institutional

perspective, concerned almost exclusively with political parties (the alliances they form, the

issues they raise, the candidates they select etc.) Interestingly, nothing is said about voters.

14. Both Brass (1985) and Palshikar (2007) make a forceful argument in favour of taking the

constituency as a unit of analysis.

15. For instance, the first National Election Study, conducted by the CSDS in 1967, did not take

women voters into account! (Lokniti team 2004: 5374).

16. Emphasis mine.

17. The debate on the scientific legitimacy of survey research as opposed to more theoretical, or

more qualitative, approaches is by no means restricted to India. Political science is a relatively

young discipline, defined more by its objects than by its methods, and by a scientific community

that strives to assert its scientific credentials. In this regard, electoral surveys have an ambiguous

record. On the one hand, the highly technical aspect of quantitative methods gives an image of

‘scientificity’; on the other hand, the proximity (in terms of sponsors, institutions and

publication supports) of electoral surveys to opinion polls (characterized by a large margin of

error, and a close association with marketing techniques) maintains a doubt on the scientificity

of this sub-discipline.

18. The preference for qualitative methods actually extends to other disciplines among social

sciences in India: ‘A tabulation of articles in Contributions to Indian Sociology and the Sociological

Bulletin [...], though not a comprehensive account of scholarship in sociology and social


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anthropology, did nevertheless seem to substantiate the fact that ethnographic methods far

outpaced any other kind of research method’ (Sundar et al. 2000: 2000).

19. In this regard, Mukherji’s account of State elections in the early 1980s in a constituency of

West Bengal dominated by Naxalites is an exception among monographic studies of elections.

The book offers a candid evocation of the methodological dilemmas, constraints and solutions

inherent in studying elections, and particularly of the political agenda behind election studies (in

this particular case, the author, engaged in a study of the Naxalite movement, presents himself

early on as a Naxalite) (Mukherji 1983).

20. Thus in spite of the continuing efforts of NES to improve its methods, it failed to accurately

predict the results of elections, both in 2004 and in 2009.

21. See, for instance, Lokniti Team 2004, in which the methodological flaws and evolutions (in

terms of sample size, number of languages used, decentralization of data entry and analysis etc.)

of National Election Studies are discussed in detail.

22. This problem is not restricted to survey research alone: thus Mitra evokes the

‘Americanisation of [the study of] ethnic politics in the Indian context’ (Mitra 2005: 327)

23. Linz, Stepan and Yadav 2007 represents a good example of the changing status of the Indian

case in comparative studies of democracy—from an exception to a major case.

24. See Fauvelle 2008.

25. For instance anthropological studies tend to focus on the short period comprised between the

beginning of the electoral campaign and the announcement of results. A larger timeframe is

needed if we are to understand how clientelism operates through the electoral process.

ABSTRACTS

Election studies (which are here defined as scholarly work focusing on the major phases of the

electoral process, i.e. the campaign, the vote, the announcement of results and subsequent

government formation) constitute a distinct sub-genre of studies on democracy, which focuses,

so to speak, on the ‘mechanics’ more than on the ‘substance’ of representative democracy. This

sub-genre, being relatively more visible than other studies of representative democracy, has

specific implications, in the academic but also in the political arena, which are the focus of this

critical review of the literature on Indian elections since the 1980s. The paper argues that

election studies are really in between science and politics, and that it is important, therefore, to

contextualize them.

INDEX

Keywords: elections, political science, India, media, democracy, methodology

AUTHOR

STÉPHANIE TAWA LAMA-REWAL

Research fellow, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris


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