It’s pity the so-called national parties like the BJP do not realise that an election result is not found inside an electronic voting machine. It’s found in the eyes of the common man. If they wilt with sadness, no ruling party can ever win. If they gleam with joy, no ruling party can ever lose. This is God’s own truth.
As different political commentators and television channels which should actually be called BJP NOW, instead of what they are called, and bend over, putting saffron dots across India’s map, here are some hard truths about the BJP’s performance in the five states whose results were announced on Thursday. In Assam, a three term anti-incumbency got the Congress out of power, not the BJP. Moreover Assam has been highly polarised. The issue of immigrants infiltrating from Bangladesh and managing to get virtual citizenship had enraged locals. This has nothing to do with Modi’s governance. And unlike in neighbouring Bengal and Tamil Nadu, the Congress as the ruling party in Assam, didn’t deliver on emotive basic promises. What happened in Goa in 2012, repeated in Assam
in 2016.
So then, before the hyper active social media explodes sending enough tweets to fill the Brahmaputra river by writing Assam, Assam and Assam, let us remind the BJP that they have won seats in single digits in all the other states they contested. And if democracy is a game of numbers and governments, the national party whose Prime Minister won an unprecedented mandate in 2014, has very little to celebrate, losing four out of five states which went to the polls whose results were declared on Thursday.
In Kerala, the BJP was not even in the equation. The ouster of the Congress-led UDF and the return of the Left was a triumph of a regional force getting rid of national party which has not delivered. This was the real template of this election. And it will soon be a template of India and Goa needs to understand that. Parties will pay for betraying people, and those that are in sync with people’s needs and sentiments will win. The BJP won just one seat there and is shamelessly terming this as an “inroad” into Kerala.
Tamil Nadu is a re-assertion of two principles. A performing government will be re-elected and family politics itself doesn’t stand a chance of getting electoral success. J Jayalalithaa’s return to power, the second time in 32 years that a party has been able to form government’s twice in succession (albeit with truncated seats), is an apt testimony to this. Tamil Nadu also proved that family raj for the sake of it alone, isn’t enough to beat people raj. Admittedly DMK supremo Karunanidhi’s son MK Stalin campaigned on behalf of his father tirelessly taking the DMK tally to 101 but Amma retained her government riding on hugely populists schemes which worked.
And finally, the Bengal story is what movie scripts are made of. Mamata Bannerjee version 2.0 has won an even greater majority than last time. And read this again and again. Her party Trinamool Congress won 211 out of 294 seats. And how many did the BJP win? 3. Therefore the pictures of the Prime Minister and his party president Amit Shah posing with Assamese ethnic hats, put into shade the reality of these elections. But intelligent Indians are saying “Topi maat pehnao” (an euphemism for, ‘do not fool us’).
And these are realities that should matter to Goa and Goans.
a) The new Indian, from the innermost of rural recesses to the posh-est of towns wants a simple trade off for his vote – Governance. Voters do not want promises or slogans. They want their jobs, get their water and power and roads and above all, the confidence that the government won’t sell them off. Those who call TMC a rural party should look at the results of 11 seats in Calcutta the capital. It read- TMC 11, Others 0. The entire might of Mr Modi and company couldn’t get a single seat in Calcutta. In fact, good governance is a bigger issue than even corruption for the common Indian voter.
b) Regional Parties, which tap into the aspirations of locals, aspirations which may be far removed from issues national parties think are important, will win seats and elections. And a time has come when people will vote for the best person in the local area and not to decide who should be in power in the state. And a regional party which manages to field the most number of people who can individually tap into people’s aspirations, coupled with overall delivery across the state, will win hands down. Kerala, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal now, apart from Orissa, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir are all flying the flag of regionalism.
So when we say India lives in its villages, India now votes for those who make their villages liveable.
