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The South also rises

The election results have been very satisfying for me, even though it turns out I was wrong:

I forecast a hung Parliament in my column On disappointment, elections, and fat ladies singing. I am happy to have been wrong in this case. I am delighted that the NDA has a slim, but workable majority; I am also happy that my redoubtable friend Varsha Bhosle will not have to enjoy the rough hospitality of Tihar penitentiary at least for the moment.

In the wake of all the usual finger-pointing and the slaughter of innocents, there is one fact that stands out in my mind: the decline of the Gangetic Plain's influence. There is an old chestnut, bandied about by all and sundry, that "unless you win Uttar Pradesh, you cannot win at the Centre". This has been proven utterly wrong: the BJP lost hands down in UP, but it didn't matter! Admittedly, their losses in UP were offset by gains in another cow-belt state, Bihar. UP, it turns out, is like California -- it is important to win it, but it's not crucial.

For, it is the South that has provided the winning margin for the NDA. My definition of the South is essentially the Peninsula, whatever is south of a line drawn due east from Bombay.

The South has another characteristic -- it is the most happening part of India. Consider the cities of the Peninsula -- Bombay, Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad, Madras, Coimbatore, Cochin. This is where the action is -- this is the India of the future; not Delhi or Calcutta or Kanpur or Bhopal (although admittedly Ahmedabad and Chandigarh are happening places too).

Some time ago, The Economist suggested that an imaginary line drawn due North-South from Delhi would divide the country into a thriving Western half (with exceptions like Kerala) and a miserable Eastern half (with exceptions like Tamil Nadu). I think it is more instructive to draw the East-West line from Bombay. The entire South is better placed for growth and prosperity than the entire North, on average.

And consider their voting record: Andhra Pradesh votes in, with a thumping majority, the most effective leader in the country, Chandrababu Naidu, despite his lack of populist schemes. Tamil Nadu defeats the querulous Jayalalitha. Karnataka massacres the ineffectual J H Patel who had done little of note. Maharashtra shows the unpopular Shiv Sena-BJP combine the door. (Kerala, as usual, maintains its contrarian nature, and that is a shame, indeed.)

This is the way democracy is supposed to be -- those who govern well are rewarded for their pains; those who do not are consigned to the garbage can. All politics, of course, is local. For all the noise about Madame Gandhi the Younger's alleged status as the nation's daughter-in-law, it turns out nobody bought it. She remains a foreigner, and a very average one at that. Her lack of a track record -- and general air of incompetence -- did hurt her badly.

For it is sweetly ironic that the purported saviour of the Grand Old Party has not exactly helped. Veni, vidi, vici it wasn't. The huge crowds that cheered Madame Gandhi apparently found only entertainment value in her. This election has been a disaster for Madame Gandhi personally, and the Congress has taken its worst-ever drubbing. The numbers are very clear:

Congress Leader	Seats	Comment
Sitaram Kesri, 1997	140	Kesri ousted in a palace coup after this poor showing
Sonia Gandhi, 1998	141	Sonia, Priyanka, Robert Vadra and Rahul together managed exactly one more seat than the despised Kesri
Sonia Gandhi, 1999	109	Sonia, Priyanka, Rahul, Robert and Michelle Vadra together managed 32 seats less than in 1998

Isn't it now time for Madame Gandhi the Younger to hang up her gloves (just as Kesri did) and retire into well-deserved obscurity, taking her brood with her? Yes, I know it is churlish to pummel somebody when they are down, but I continue to be appalled at the unquestioning adulation in the English-language media for these people.

I mean, projecting Priyanka Vadra as a future prime minister? Why on God's earth? Personally, all I saw was a slender, light-skinned, nubile young woman of no particular accomplishment or leadership qualities whatsoever. Perhaps light skin and nubileness is enough for the -- I imagine -- panting male hacks.

If the Congress must have a Nehru dynasty person to lead it, why not Maneka Gandhi? At least she has some accomplishments of her own -- championing the environment, animal rights, etc. She too has everything Sonia Gandhi has: Nehru family widow, daughter-in-law of Indira. And she has been in Parliament and a minister, that too as an Independent.

I do hope this is the end of the heavily over-rated Nehru dynasty. The Great White Hope, Sonia Gandhi, has certainly been a major disappointment: she, personally, has been trounced, as this election was a personal referendum on her vote-gathering capability. I think the Nehru dynasty should now leave it to others to 'sacrifice' for the country.

I found it interesting that there is no 'wave' -- no Sonia wave, no Kargil wave, no sympathy wave for the BJP. One could speculate whether there would have been such waves had the elections been held earlier. On average, the voter has concentrated on local issues and rewarded good governance, and punished bad governance -- with the singular exception of Madhya Pradesh. In all honesty, Digvijay Singh deserved much better.

Thus, the Indian voter, whose sagacity I questioned earlier, has made me eat my words. He has humbled Laloo Prasad. He has trounced the Shakuni of Indian politics, Subramanian Swamy, who deservedly lost his deposit. I thought Swamy would get about 10 votes, but he somehow managed 21,000. And he's indestructible: I imagine him swearing, MacArthur-like, "I shall return."

And I noticed there has not been a peep out of the normally irrepressible Jayalalitha Jayaram. I guess the media has lost interest in this enigmatic personality, who has reason to be subdued -- she does have a few criminal cases to ponder, which the Centre may now pursue with a vengeance.

I am disappointed, though, that Manmohan Singh and P Chidambaram both lost. I think the nation needs to seriously consider putting non-politicians in charge of economics. It would be a good gesture for the new BJP government to invite both of them into its economics-planning cell. Manmohan Singh, in particular, has appeared distinctly uncomfortable being forced to be a sycophant to Madame Gandhi -- he's too dignified a person to be a mere flunky.

There is another interesting pattern in the results that bodes ill for the Congress and well for the BJP -- based on exit poll data from India Today, October 4, it is clear that the more educated the voter, the more likely they are to vote for the BJP. Furthermore, the BJP is leading not only amongst the 'upper castes' but also getting a respectable percentage of 'lower caste' votes. The biggest shift towards the BJP -- 15.3% -- is amongst the Other Backward Communities, OBC, the silent majority; and this is a very encouraging move for the BJP.

Demographic	BJP + allies %	Congress + allies %	Others %	BJP swing	Congress swing
Illiterate	39	43	18	7.0	1.2
Middle School	47	37	16	8.0	2.7
High School	52	32	16	9.1	-0.2
Graduate	53	28	20	5.6	-1.6
OBC	52	34	14	15.3	3.5
SC/ST	34	46	20	4.7	3.1
Muslim	20	62	18	5.5	1.7
Upper Caste	56	25	19	2.3	-5.1
Urban	51	33	16	7.4	0.5
Rural	46	37	18	8.1	0.7

Furthermore, while the 'Others' have quite a few seats in Parliament, this is primarily due to the surprising strength of the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party in UP. Of course, the Marxists have won their customary seats in West Bengal. But there simply is no possibility of a 'Third Front' government any more. The eclipse of the Left is a reality.

All this points to one thing: the party to beat, the one that has managed the arithmetic of coalition politics, is the BJP. It is essentially a straight fight between the Congress and the BJP, as the 'Third Front' has ceased to exist. That doesn't mean that the regional parties are not important; on the contrary, the federal nature of the polity has been considerably enhanced by the success of regional allies. Strategic alliances have worked wonders for the BJP.

Finally, going back to the South, it is clear that in Karnataka, local issues like the Cauvery dispute seem to have buttressed the public's animosity towards the ineffectual sitting government. Sadly for the BJP, this happened to be their ally -- and the result has been a thorough defeat in this large and important state, which the BJP had been making some inroads into. But you can't blame Karnataka voters -- they did the right thing.

In Maharashtra, resentment against the ruling Shiv Sena-BJP combine has translated into a strong vote against them in the assembly elections, but fortunately for them the split in the Congress has certainly helped them gain a number of seats.

In Andhra Pradesh, the average voter has shown that empty promises do not impress them. Chandrababu Naidu is one of the most important people in India, for he has shown that with that small ingredient, leadership, it is possible to work miracles. Similarly, Murasoli Maran of Tamil Nadu's DMK is an able technocrat. I have had the privilege of meeting both of them -- these are the people who can take India forward, not the tired old populists of the Grand Old Party.

It is Kerala, though, that deserves the 'class dunce' award. For, Trivandrum had a golden opportunity to send O Rajagopal of the BJP to Parliament: and this would have almost certainly brought with it a Cabinet seat. Instead, an unknown Congressman won handily. And what will Kerala get from the Centre in the near future? A big fat zero.

This most literate of states is also perhaps the most communal in the country, with caste and religion-based voting the norm. There are three large blocs, each accounting for about 20 per cent of the vote: Christians, Muslims, and the OBC Ezhavas. The Muslims and Christians have always voted for the Congress.

That leaves the Ezhavas, who, with a large number of peasants amongst them, have consistently been the power base of the Marxists. However, the Ezhavas are increasingly disenchanted with the Marxists, who are not particularly doing anything for them. Furthermore, Marxist ideologue Harkishen Surjeet confused matters mightily by suggesting that a vote for the Congress would be a vote for 'secularism', indirectly suggesting to the Marxist faithful that they should vote tactically for the Congress. And so they did, to the chagrin of the local cadres.

The BJP ought to woo the Ezhavas seriously now -- that would enable them to gain more than a foothold in Kerala, thus completing their penetration into the entire South. This will get them away, once and for all, from the Hindi-fanatic, caste-Hindu, Gangetic-plain-dweller stereotype. For the future of India will be determined by increasingly prosperous Southerners -- and as they get more wealthy, they will be inclined to vote for the BJP anyway.

This election is a turning point -- it shows that the decline of the Congress continues apace and that Sonia Gandhi is certainly not its saviour; that the South is getting to be a key player and federalism is crucial; and that the voter is able to recognise and reward good governance.

Postscript: I received an enormous amount of response to a previous column on Nehru. Almost all of it was positive, and I thank you for it. However, I have to emphasise to all those who wrote so kindly to me that I am unable to respond to each one of you, much as I might wish to, because I couldn't possibly carry on a hundred simultaneous conversations. I do hope you will forgive me. I have also had some mail system problems and haven't been to read my mail lately, either.

I also don't have a pathological hatred for Nehru, as one reader suggested -- I simply do not accept the prevailing mythology that he was some superman. He was merely a human being with failings, lots of them. There is no point pretending he was God's gift to mankind.

My staggeringly well-informed friend Gopikrishna from Toronto informs me that it was Nandlal Nehru, Motilal's brother, who built up the family fortune. According to The Dynasty, the companion book to the BBC show, Nandlal went from schoolteacher to chief minister of a minor state in Rajasthan. I stand corrected.

Many people also asked me to send the column on barbarians within India that had not been published. I'm sorry, but I'd prefer not to send it out the way it stands, and it is stale anyway. I will, however, include it in the book that I am beginning to write. Incidentally, I would appreciate your suggestions for what you'd like to see in this book, and I will gladly steal the best ideas. I expect it will be a collection of essays, mostly expanded and updated versions of things already published on rediff.com and elsewhere. So here's your chance to influence the contents of a book in progress. Remember, though, that I will not be able to respond to you individually. I have created a new email id: rajeevbook@yahoo.com

Rajeev Srinivasan