The lesson from the Assembly elections is clear: anti-incumbency is no longer a factor, development is. In Delhi, the reason why Sheila Dixit won three times in a row is because she has changed the face of Delhi in every possible way, from the electricity privatisation, to a metro, a bus corridor, and so on. The BJP, in sharp contrast, had little to offer by way of future projects and certainly very little to offer by way of a past track record.
The results should get the BJP’s top brass into deep introspection. Their new planks of terror, inflation and joblessness have made virtually no impact at all. A poll done by Yogendra Yadav for the Delhi assembly elections found the impact of the Mumbai blasts was to raise the voting share for the BJP by just one per cent.
This also means voters, in the capital and in Rajasthan, have seen the BJP’s terror campaign for what it is — an attempt to simply fan the flames. When the BJP was in power, there were an equally large number of terrorist attacks and BJP Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was also soft on terror. This is why, despite all the talk of ‘hot pursuit’ into Pakistan, there was no action taken by the BJP when it was in power.
News reports of an alliance between Jayalalithaa and the Left parties should also get the NDA into a panic. It lost the last elections when it dumped the DMK in favour of Jayalalithaa, and now when it looks as if she will sweep the polls in the state, she does not want to tie up with the BJP. All elections now, and in the future, are going to be fought on the basis of alliances — the BJP could not even keep its own party united in Rajasthan where, given the numbers polled by the rebels, the party should have won hands down. The party has some serious introspection to do. It remains to be seen whether Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar will stay on with the NDA — if there is any problem there, you can write off the NDA’s chances. The Congress Party may not be in much better shape but, at least for now, its ability to attract allies seems better.
Shravan Gupta, Mumbai