Waiting for uncertainty

If a week is a long time in politics, exit polls seem to compress time even further. A week ago, the stock market was rejoicing at the results of the exit polls that were held after the first phase of voting was over.

The polls had predicted that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) would win a simple majority, albeit a slender one. Now, after the second phase of voting, there seems to be some doubt about even that. Immediately, therefore, the market has slid.

Its concern is not out of place. If the exit polls are predicting the election outcome correctly "" many believe that they are not "" a measure of political uncertainty of the 1996-99 variety seems likely.

This uncertainty consisted of governments surviving on charity, or what in India is called "outside" support and a series of motions of no-confidence (one of which, in 1999, was lost by a single vote).

What happens is well known but worth reiterating. The single largest party is invited to form the government. Some parties join it but others don't, preferring instead to extend what they call issue-based support.

With a Damocles' sword thus suspended six inches over its head, the government begins with a badly twisted ankle and ends up fully lame. India lost half a decade because of this sort of inconclusive electoral verdict. Will another five years be wasted now?

It is probably a bit early to say because the short week of politics can work in both directions. But, that said, two things seem certain. One, with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress reduced in parliamentary effectiveness, it is the regional parties and the independents that will hold the whip hand.

If they come together, they could form some sort of a "third force", however ephemeral it turns out to be. On current reckoning it is the Samajwadi Party of Mulayam Singh Yadav that looks like becoming its fulcrum.

But there will be other claimants to the title, such as the Rashtriya Janata Dal's Laloo Prasad Yadav and the Nationalist Congress Party's Sharad Pawar. The limits to their ambitions remain to be seen as also whether these will cancel out each other.

Howsoever that turns out, if the exit polls are predicting the trend correctly, we are in for some politically very galling and troubled times.

The second thing that seems certain is the inference that the parties are likely to draw in respect of the political advisability of economic reforms.

Chandrababu Naidu, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, looks set to lose. He was a big reformer. Ergo, if reforms lose you votes and power, why reform?

The fact that the opposite also holds good in the case of the chief minister of Karnataka, S M Krishna, will be seen in the light of his party's poor performance in the Lok Sabha election. No wonder, the anti-reform lobby is rubbing its hands in anticipation. No wonder, too, that the markets have turned skittish.