Error: Unable to create directory /home/demockra/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2010/09. Is its parent directory writable by the server? Indian Elections – A Multiparty Masala

This will be the first of two articles about this year’s Indian national elections and the first in a series of pieces about major elections in Asia this year.

The largest democracy on Earth is presently in the middle of national elections. In India, three out of five phases of voting have been completed, and in only two weeks the final results will be known. Indian elections are always rambunctious. The democratic process itself is chaotic, accommodating dozens of political parties, thousands of candidates, and around 700 million voters who live in the world’s biggest cities and most remote villages, speak dozens of languages, and represent thousands of castes across a shockingly wide socioeconomic spectrum. Corruption, violence, and outlandish campaigning are a part of elections in any given year. Newspapers and news channels flood the cities and countryside with relentless election news and gossip while politicians crisscross the country in frenetic campaigning that can draw crowds of hundreds of thousands of people. The frequent involvement of cricket and film stars lends an air of celebrity and glamour to the proceedings. Hindi-speakers frequently use the word tamasha to describe elections and politics – a word meaning a “spectacle” and “amusement.” It also connotes rowdiness and a sense of being outside of normal life.

This year’s national elections are no different. But last November’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai have raised concerns about serious violence interfering with the elections. Indeed, after a right-wing Hindu nationalist candidate made inflammatory anti-Muslim remarks in public speeches, a Muslim mafia don allegedly threatened to kill him. But, this is really just par for the course. So far, the press has said little about (presumably Pakistani-based) Muslim militants planning any attacks during the elections. The larger threat – during the first two phases of polling at least – were Maoist guerrillas known as Naxalites, active in many of India’s poorest rural regions, who called for an election boycott and carried out murderous attacks on police forces, detonated bombs, and hijacked a train, leading to the deaths of over two dozen people.

With that said, the chance that India’s elections will be derailed by any violent organization or event is exceedingly small. Barring an unprecedented attack in India, this year’s National Assembly (Lok Sabha) elections will be completed relatively smoothly and on time. With the counting of votes on May 16, the election will come to a climax, and it is difficult at this point for anyone to imagine what is likely to happen. By all accounts, this election is a toss up, and the Election Commission’s ruling that exit polls and post-poll surveys be banned have made it even more difficult to predict what may happen. Complex coalition politics, which have dominated national politics in India since the 1990s, makes this election more unpredictable than the typical close US election, and this year’s addition of a third and an even smaller fourth coalition of regional parties makes these 2009 elections more jumbled than the last national elections five years ago. The stunning emergence of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) since 2004 has also complicated matters.

Consider: The ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA), led by the secular, centrist Congress Party, is currently a coalition of 16 parties. The UPA has ruled since 2004 and can claim a rather ho-hum record that is neither impressive nor a failure. The alliance that ruled from 1999-2004, and which has sat in opposition since, is the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), led by the right-wing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has recently been beset by serious infighting and an unclear message for voters. It now contains 10 parties. Until now, these two alliances were the only ones to wield enough power to gain control at the center. The Congress and the BJP have been the largest parties since the 1990s, but their support has gradually been chipped away by communist, regional, and caste-based parties. Until recently, these smaller parties had no choice but to ally themselves with the Congress or the BJP if they wanted to play a part in national politics. However, this year a Third Front has emerged, gambling that a coalition of such parties can perhaps capture as many seats as the UPA and the NDA. This would enable these parties to take power without bowing down to the two parties that have dominated national politics for the past two decades.

With this development, parties are jockeying for power and weighing their options before and after the elections. While some parties have committed to one alliance or another, other parties are waiting until after the votes are counted to pick a side. And whichever alliance is asked to form a government will, with some serious political wrangling, likely attract new parties to its side – whether they have committed to another or not.

In this day and age, this is how elections in India are won and lost. The mathematics and the political sticks and carrots necessary for building a winning coalition have all but drowned out issues, personalities, and ideologies. For evidence of this, just follow the Indian news. The vast majority of election coverage is currently speculation about likely alliances or defections, not about issues. Of course, certain events and issues may shape an election, but they must be extraordinary. Though this is a national election, voters are choosing local candidates (in India’s parliamentary democracy, the party or coalition with the most candidates elected forms the central government). And these local candidates must address local issues – issues which often don’t change a great deal in much of India. Who can ensure electricity, drinkable water, better roads, better health care facilities, and better schools? And with such a plethora of political parties catering to specific caste and religious sensibilities, many voters will simply vote their caste or religious identity. For this reason, I doubt that, aside from Mumbai and maybe other large Indian cities, the issue of terrorism will be important. Nor will the global economic crisis. What will be most important in these elections are the alliances that are negotiated. For now, those alliances have yet to cohere. And there are enough wild cards in the deck that the final outcome is anyone’s guess.