Assembly elections results show that voters seek empowerment, not patronage

bjp-and-congress

What do the election results from Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir imply for the national polity? Neither the BJP nor the Congress rides any countrywide wave of popularity that would mow down all opposition, rendering it an unstoppable force. India’s states retain their specificities that make local problems, local socio-political dynamics and local leaders the decisive factors in their political fortunes.

Takeaways for BJP

Narendra Modi does not come out of these elections as the all-conquering hero BJP spokespersons would have us believe him to be, giving him all the credit for the Haryana victory while ignoring the BJP’s abject failure in Jammu&Kashmir. The BJP has done extremely well in Hindu-majority Jammu while it has been rejected elsewhere. The thesis that all Kashmiris were waiting for a messiah to deliver them from the isolation from the national mainstream into which Article 370 had, according to the BJP narrative, trapped them has been resoundingly disproved.

The J&K result does not quite burnish Brand Modi. What could burnish it is the lesson, should he choose to draw it, that electoral success in one of the most active battlegrounds over the controversial farm bills warrants another go at reforming India’s hopelessly messed up farm policy.

Rahul Gandhi fails again

Rahul Gandhi has proven himself, once again, to be a poor leader. He neither inspired the people of Haryana to vote Congress nor persuaded the different factions of the state party to be less fractious, at least during the elections. His contribution to the Haryana campaign was to try and foist a wholly irrelevant and disliked alliance with the Aam Aadmi Party on the Haryana Congress. That possibly had the transient merit of uniting all factions of the Congress in not allowing the AAP weed to grow on their soil, to replicate the ruin it had wrought on the Congress crop in Punjab.

The Congress must realise that the Mandal agenda that Rahul Gandhi has excavated from the past and holds up as a brand new winning formula for the party has no traction, that merely counting on the sins of the incumbent party to overthrow it in an election works only in special circumstances, that the Congress needs a new national narrative of empowerment and prosperity, one that focuses on building the nation as a secular, prosperous democracy in which everyone participates with dignity and joy.

Empowerment, not handouts

The way to end poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity is primarily through empowerment, not through handouts and government schemes. Empowerment is not achieved by enacting laws in a country that takes ages to settle a case beyond the final appeal. Empowerment is to be achieved through organization and agitation, something which Ambedkar urged and the Communists carried out in those parts of the country where they had influence.

At a time when the polity is being moblised through sectarian hatred and clever orchestration of sectional aspirations via empty but still emotive symbolism, a holistic vision of a prosperous nation that has geopolitical salience and varied, indigenous industrial capacity, and focuses on building human capability at mass scale has enormous potential.

The Congress party has to reclaim its own legacy, to build on it, rather than wallow in past glory. If the Gandhi family is a hindrance to such renewal, the party should look beyond it. There is no progress to be achieved by staying on the present course. That is the clear message from the election results of Haryana and J&K.

Farm reforms need attention

India’s farm sector cries out for reform. India produces rice and wheat in excess of its needs, and not enough of oilseeds and pulses. It grows crops like sugarcane where the soil is arid, on the strength of free pumped water and subsidized fertilizer, instead of on the floodplains of Bihar. It keeps ratcheting up minimum support prices without reference to globally benchmarked efficiency prices.

The government spends on subsidy – on irrigation, power, fertilizer and procurement and storage – and not enough on investment. India has the capability to engineer genetic varieties that will increase yield and minimize the use of plant protection chemicals, but will not deploy it. Indian farmers have traditionally had the market savvy to use forward markets for their produce, but today’s India will not allow futures and options to work for most crops.

This policy mess has to be sorted out. The three farm laws that were hastily introduced and dropped like a hot potato when farmers turned out against them are not the solution. Sane policy advice is available. The point is to find the political courage to accept it and implement it.

The election results from Haryana show that people can still trust a political leadership that has disappointed them in the past, provided it promises something better. India’s political leadership should take courage from that and begin a process of consultation with experts and farmer groups, to revamp our broken farm policy.