indian election

May 13, 12:30 pm EST. Color me stunned. India's electorate has once again rubbished the conventional wisdom. The ruling Hindu fundamentalist BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) was expected to win the national elections on the basis of a strong economy and possibly because of the recent rapprochement with Pakistan. Indeed, most of the commentary was over whether they would win an outright majority or would need, as is typically the case in India recently, to form a ruling coalition.

Well, the results are in and the Congress Party, which was once associated with the Indian Freedom Movement but more recently with inertia and corruption, has won 149 seats and the BJP only 136. 272 are needed to form a Parliamentary majority.

Atal Behari Vajpayee is stepping down as prime minister and the Congress is going to join with the left parties to form the government.

I'm happy to see the BJP out. What they have done to whip up religious hatred internally and to ally with the United States and Israel externally is inexcusable. On the other hand, the "world's largest democracy" now faces the almost certain prospect of being ruled by an Italian, Sonia Gandhi, whose claim to leadership of Congress is her marriage to Rajiv Gandhi, whose claim was that his mother was Indira Gandhi, whose claim was that her father was Jawaharlal Nehru.

Explanations for the BJP's disastrous defeat are legion. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council), part of the Hindu fundamentalist complex of organizations, has said that the BJP lost because it "betrayed Hindus" and "compromised national security" by easing tensions with Pakistan. The RSS, the fascist organization at the core of the Hindu fundamentalist complex, has also claimed that voters perceived a dilution of ideology from the BJP.

On the other hand, India's economic growth has not been like China's. It's much more modest -- the current per capita income of $480 per year is 30% higher than it was four years ago, but not exactly something to write home about. Second, the wealth hasn't been spread around as much. In China, you have simultaneously an increasingly impoverished rural poor and a huge new class of moderately affluent people. In India, the poor are in much the same situation they were in four years ago and understandably have voted to throw the bastards out.

Is the BDP in India like the PRI in Mexico?

Published: May 13, 2004

EW DELHI, May 13 — The opposition Indian National Congress scored a resounding victory in parliamentary elections today, forcing Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and his governing coalition to resign.

The Congress emerged as the single largest party in the poll results announced today.

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The party, led by Sonia Gandhi, the Italian-born widow of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, therefore appeared poised to form the country's next government with the likely support of its electoral allies and the country's Communist parties.

It is not yet certain — although it seems likely — that Mrs. Gandhi herself will stake claim to be prime minister, since even some of the party's allies have questioned whether a woman of non-Indian origin should lead this nation of more than 1 billion people.

Still, the verdict represents a totally unexpected resurrection for the Congress Party of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, which governed India for 45 of the 57 years since independence but had floundered so badly in recent years that it was being written off as an historical relic.

Early returns showed the Congress and its allies with 220 seats to the 189 of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., and its coalition partners, a result that no pundit or exit poll had come close to predicting.

"I have seen my mother fight with her back to the wall and she has won," Rahul Gandhi, the son of Sonia and Rajiv Gandhi, and himself a newly elected legislator, said today. "She has won against odds."

The results amounted to a stunning upset of the Hindu nationalist B.J.P., which had expected to return to rule on the strength of the 79-year-old Mr. Vajpayee's popularity. The party had called early elections, hoping to capitalize on a monsoon-fed economic boom and Mr. Vajpayee's peace initiative with Pakistan.

Instead, the party earned even fewer seats than in 1999, and Mr. Vajpayee will now be denied his chance to be the first non-Congress prime minister to complete a five-year term.

"I am half heart-broken and half stunned," said Pramod Mahajan, a key campaign strategist for the B.J.P.

The implications for the direction of the country will take time to emerge. Some business leaders have expressed concern that a change in government could slow economic reforms, although it was Congress, under the finance minister at that time, Manmohan Singh, that initiated those reforms in 1991.

The fate of peace with Pakistan — which had been predicated to an extent on the trust built in recent months between Mr. Vajpayee and the Pakistani president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, and their aides — also hangs in the balance.

The end of Hindu nationalist rule could bring other changes as well, such as the possibility of less culturally conservative policies in the face of the country's burgeoning AIDS crisis, and the end of efforts to introduce Hindu nationalist themes into educational curriculums.

The B.J.P. had constructed an American-style presidential campaign around Mr. Vajpayee's perceived popularity, but it ran aground on the realities of the Indian parliamentary system, in which voters turned on incumbent legislators who they felt had delivered little. Indian voters are known for their anti-incumbency, and that was in evidence today.

But even more, voters — particularly, but not exclusively, in rural areas — rebelled against the idea of "India Shining" that had been peddled by the incumbent government in a glossy, costly public relations campaign.

The resentment of the B.J.P. and its efforts to peddle the "feel-good factor" was almost palpable today among a small knot of working-class men gathered to watch the results on a news ticker in New Delhi. Many expressed dismay, common among Indians nostalgic for the quasi-socialist economy of India's first 40 years, at the economic reforms with which the B.J.P. had proudly identified itself.

"Basically it is the anger of the working class," said Sawali Rai, 34, who works in a public sector bank. "Privatization, no government jobs, prices rising. On the pressure of the World Bank they are pressuring the common man."

And unlike in the United States, where the most prosperous also vote the most, in India it is the poor who turn out in greatest numbers. That means that the very voters for whom India has been shining — urbanites from the middle and upper classes who benefited from globalization and reforms — are also least likely to vote.

The B.J.P. also seemed to suffer from its association with the Hindu nationalism that had powered its rise. Muslims, still repelled by the anti-Muslim carnage in the B.J.P.-controlled state of Gujarat in 2002, resisted the party's efforts to woo them, as did many Indians concerned about the weakening of the country's secular identity. Congress and its allies had united around a secular platform.

At the same time, hard-core Hindu nationalists have been disillusioned by the party's tempering of Hindutva, or Hindu-ness, in its time in power and in this campaign. Ram Madhav, a spokesman for the Association of National Volunteers, the parent Hindu nationalist organization, said today that the B.J.P. had campaigned on Mr. Vajpayee's personality and policy, he said, but ideology — "an emotive issue" — was missing.

"There was a general lack of enthusiasm among the core voters and cadres of the party," he said.

Hindu nationalist groups and some leaders of the B.J.P. had sought to find that emotive issue in Mrs. Gandhi's foreign origins, and her Christian roots in this majority Hindu nation, but it failed to take with Indian voters.

"She's a citizen of the country," a retiree, Uday Singh Rawat, 63, said of Mrs. Gandhi. "The Constitution says she can be prime minister."

Still, Mr. Mahajan of the B.J.P. could not resist revisiting the issue today. "It's a democracy; Indians have a right to choose, and if they have chosen, she has a right to rule," he said. "Still I maintain that it's shameful for me if a foreigner rules this country."

Mrs. Gandhi, 57, is a shy, politically stilted woman who endured the assassination of her mother-in-law, Indira Gandhi, and then her husband. She then went into a seclusion of sorts, emerging in 1998 to try to halt the Congress Party's decline.

Critics say she has preserved the party's feudal, dynastic nature, and lacks both the political adeptness and intellectual depth to be prime minister. But her defenders credit her with saving the party and proving herself a dedicated student of India and its politics, and a defender of its secular values and its poor. On the campaign trail, she has shown herself a fighter who withstood sometimes withering personal attacks.

"She has shown herself to be a great leader," said her son, whose entry into politics this spring is also credited with reviving Congress fortunes.

i thought it was rahul that was being groomed for the pm job. or his sister priyanka.

but this woman is the fourth generation leader, and that run makes me nervous that this is more of a ingrained power suck up, a majarajas (sp) dynasty.

no answers

BJP coming back hard.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/19/india-elections-hardliners-narendra-modi

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/06/world/asia/modi-gujarat-riots-timeline.html?ref=world&_r=0#/#time287_8190

Difficult not to blame Congress for fostering even more corruption than normal but horrific all the same.

Very interesting Q&A with Arundhati Roy that touches on election-related issues among many other things:

http://www.bookforum.com/interview/13124

The recent massacre in Bodoland highlights how complicated the situation is for minorities.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/City/Guwahati/Parties-student-bodies-condemn-Bodoland-Territorial-Areas-District-killings/articleshow/34579724.cms

As far as i can tell, the BJP has been whipping up a lot of enmity towards Bangladeshi migrants, accusing them of distorting voting blocks and using a lot of unpleasant rhetoric about deporting them en mass. The killing of 40+ Muslims (including 23 on a recent polling day) appears to have been carried out by the Bodoland People's Front - a largely Christian association allied to the ruling Congress Party. Congress and the BJP are now blaming each other for stoking the violence. In fairness, they're probably both right.

Exit polls suggest the BJP will have the largest majority of any party for thirty years and will be able to form a government without any need for partners / alliances. This is not good.

Why the fuck are Muslims voting for this guy? I get that there's clearly been a massive charm offensive + voting on the economy but still idgi.

http://i.imgur.com/xku238t.png

Less than 10% of Muslims voted for the BJP but it's still quite a lot. Around 43% stuck with Congress. It's a reflection of how badly Congress is perceived. India has always been enormously corrupt but there's a feeling that it has become much worse in recent years. India's GDP has increased 300% in the last ten years, and people know that, but they aren't necessarily feeling the benefit. At the same time, the number of "high net worth individuals" with links to government has rocketed.

Get a feeling of 'Ayn rand has won' to a lot of Indian Capitalism so its an option that Indians ae taking right now. Lets accelerate capitalism, which kinda mirrors the european option of taking the austerity medicine.

India's GDP has increased 300% in the last ten years, and people know that, but they aren't necessarily feeling the benefit. At the same time, the number of "high net worth individuals" with links to government has rocketed.

lol BJP certainly the guys to sort that out

Yep, they're just as bad but the corruption is slightly less visible. AAP had a lot of good will on the anti-corruption front but i guess weren't seen as a viable alternative government.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/16/what-next-india-pankaj-mishra

The difficulty of assessing his personal culpability in the killings and rapes of 2002 is the same difficulty that Musil identifies with Moosbrugger in his novel: how to measure the crimes, however immense, of individuals against a universal breakdown of values and the normalisation of violence and injustice. "If mankind could dream collectively," Musil writes, "it would dream Moosbrugger." There is little cause yet for such despair in India, where the aggrieved fantasy of authoritarianism will have to reckon with the gathering energies below; the great potential of the country's underprivileged and voiceless peoples still lies untapped. But for now some Indians have dreamed collectively, and they have dreamed a man accused of mass murder.

Lol @ using the most well-known quote from MwQ

It certainly from the narrative I'm seeing w/Thomas Piketty's book, and the anniversary of WWI too - we have returned to the those early years of the 20th century in all sense - economically, socially, politically. Which of course means I'll be looking at where that's wrong.

how did ayn rand get big in india?

I've no idea if that's true or not but given the number of people in India who believe in their innate superiority to people below them economically I wouldn't be particularly surprised.

I don't think it's true at all that we're returning to the early days of the 20th century but at this particular historical moment it's extremely tempting to draw those parallels, especially looking at Russia/Ukraine. Has the establishment of a welfare state been an electoral issue in India at all?

wow BJP cruised in this shit huh

Taking a stab at the Rand question:

Rand is very much get-up-and-go, only you can do it and nobody else type guff, so its perfect in a place where (i) that welfare state security net isn't in place and (ii) where there are quite a lot of management and IT opportunities that pay crumbs (where you need to 'work hard and get on' to make this type of arrangement work for you). That runs in tandem with India as a place where Marxism is/was strong -- from Maoist insurrections to unionization -- so Rand (as someone who left the Soviet Union) speaks to a lot of people who yes want to 'get on' but see the things blocking India from reaching its potential. All of that is intermixed with the cast system -- the unclean, the explosion in population -- and religious fanaticism.

A lot of the 'class that made it' (say about 200 million) would be up for not only a bit of cleansing of the Muslims but also of those undesirables who live in dire poverty and defecate on the streets.

All of which reminds me that my cousin -- Indian MBA grad, working in the Middle east -- recommended an Ayn Rand book on Linkedin. I always wanted to have erm strong words to her about this.

this makes me sad 4 india, and the world

The concept of the welfare state is also very much tied in to giving a fair(er) deal (economically, socially, politically) to minority groups which i would expect the BJP to push back on over the next few years. 'State social programmes' code as 'Muslim appeasement' to a lot of their hardliners.

Mishra is otm, i think, about the growing perceived need for a muscular, powerful leader who will punch India's weight on the international circuit. There's a lot of rhetoric about Gandhi being a 'child clinging to his mother's skirt' and Modi being the caudillo India needs to be respected.

Its expected, voters dabble in this and worse when there are no alternatives. Comes back on them too, Modi's program isn't going to work. India has too many religions, cultures, politics.

In Europe we have widespread austerity - do we think that the elites will be untouched when a quarter of European youth are left to rot? xp

is this win really bad news for india/pakistan relations?

I'm no defender of the BJP, by any stretch, but, out of curiosity, was anyone here particularly excited by Rahul Gandhi or the 2014 INC platform?

is this win really bad news for india/pakistan relations?

― panettone for the painfully alone (mayor jingleberries), Friday, May 16, 2014 11:12 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i wonder that too, but i imagine that the approach will be the typical "pragmatic" mix of positive overtures and occasional bellicosity which serves to maintain the status quo

Pakistan’s prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, met on Tuesday with his new Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, in a swiftly arranged bilateral session that caught many by surprise and offered some hope that the two countries may resume a tentative peace process after a year and a half of frosty silence.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/28/world/asia/india-pakistan.html

The Delhi election results are amazing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delhi_Legislative_Assembly_election,_2015

67/70 seats going to the AAP, 3/70 to the BJP and 0 to Congress.

Really feel for Roy.

Blunt and crisp... Not mincing words. pic.twitter.com/b8k8Iw5vS6

— چشمِ نم (@chashmEnumm) August 8, 2023