The opposition is rudderless in the face of the prime minister's advance across the states
By A.R. | DELHI
EVEN though the results were not surprising, they are significant. So large was the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) victory in general elections in May 2014, led by Narendra Modi, that his party was widely expected to triumph again in state elections in Maharashtra and Haryana, held on October 15th. Results on October 19th confirmed it: the BJP came first in both states, winning an outright majority of 47 seats (out of 90) in Haryana and taking 122 seats (of 288) in Maharashtra. It will lead the governments, and supply the chief ministers, of both states. Perhaps more important, it shows that Mr Modi's "wave" of support continues unabated, and the prospects of the main opposition look more desultory than ever. Congress came third in both states. That party looks leaderless and without a strategy to match the BJP.
The BJP had briefly wobbled in a set of by-elections in September (to fill seats of members of legislative assemblies who had moved up to the national parliament). It slipped in Uttar Pradesh under the divisive leadership of a local MP, Yogi Adityanath, who tried and failed to use Hindu-Muslim tension as a vote winner. The absence of Mr Modi in those elections was also a factor. By contrast the state elections in Maharashtra and Haryana were co-ordinated by Amit Shah, now the BJP president, who had orchestrated affairs so masterfully in the national polls, deployed advertising companies and active social-media campaigns. Crucially, he had Mr Modi closely involved.
Maharashtra matters in particular. Congress, in a coalition, had run the state for the past 15 years. It is the most industrialised part of India and one of the wealthier states. It is also an example of extreme inequality: it is home to Mumbai and a well-off stretch along the Indian Ocean coast, but also to inland areas that are drought-stricken, poor and attacked by Maoist revolutionaries. Local factors naturally play a big part in most elections. Marathi nationalism, the demand by some that the state be divided, concern about bad infrastructure in India's financial capital and a series of corruption scandals might all have been decisive issues at another time. Now, however, it appears that the national wave, and the presence of Mr Modi, were more influential. So confident was the BJP that it broke a 25-year electoral alliance with its local ally, Shiv Sena, right on the eve of voting, so it could contest all the seats it chose. Though the BJP fell short of winning an outright majority in Maharashtra (no one has done so since 1985, and no party other than Congress has ever done so), the victory was large indeed. The alliance with Shiv Sena will probably now be reconstituted, as the smaller party picked up 63 seats: enough to give a BJP-led coalition a big majority.
The BJP did well in Maharashtra despite failing to put forward an obvious, strong candidate to be chief minister. Nor did the party have a particularly powerful local organisation. The same was true in Haryana, which suggests voters might be hoping that Mr Modi—through proxies—will do much to guide the BJP in both states. In both states, as in the general election, it appears that the BJP appealed to “aspirational” voters from different caste backgrounds, for example those from the "other backward classes" category (to which Mr Modi belongs) and Dalits (formerly "untouchables"). These factors will give the BJP confidence that led by Mr Modi it can break through in other states where its local leadership and party organisation have been weak. Certainly the BJP has its eyes on Bihar, which goes to the polls late next year, but other possibilities open up too, for example in West Bengal, and even among southern states. The next two electoral tests come in Jharkhand and Jammu and Kashmir, which hold state-assembly elections within three months. The BJP expects to do well in both.
In Haryana, just to the west of Delhi, a decade of Congress-led rule is now over. The departing chief minister had played his hand disastrously, favouring the Jat community to such a degree that many colleagues in Congress either jumped ship or gave up campaigning. The BJP did well in Haryana during the national elections, so the scale of its success in state polls is not shocking. That said, in 2009—at the last state assembly elections—the party had mustered just four seats and ranked fourth place; this time it raised that tally to 47 seats and first place. That is a dramatic gain.
The results have national implications. First, the elections represented the first chance for voters to respond to Mr Modi's opening spell as prime minister. His popularity looks as strong as ever: he is a far more dynamic a leader than India has seen in decades, and crucially he has laid emphasis heavily on economic, development and social initiatives, not on the divisive Hindu nationalism he once made his trademark. He appears to be lucky, too. Falling global prices for oil, and inflation rates that are dipping as a result, suggest easier economic times ahead.
Second, the elections out of the way, Mr Modi can get on with taking much-needed (but potentially unpopular) decisions to liberalise the economy. To his credit, a host of welcome initiatives have just been announced in a flurry. On October 16th he rejigged bureaucrats in several ministries, most importantly bringing in a reformer from Rajasthan to lead the finance ministry. The same day he appointed Arvind Subramanian, a sharp and liberal economist, as his chief economic adviser. He also made a small but welcome change to India's labour laws, making it harder for 1,800 of the government inspectors who check up on labour standards to act capriciously. Subsequently the government deregulated the price of diesel (petrol prices have been set by the market for some years), and restarted a scheme to use bank accounts linked to the Aadhar, a biometric unique-identity scheme, to pay subsidies for cooking gas directly to families. That suggests the start of a process to target subsidies in the form of cash, to reduce corruption and stop market distortions. In addition, the moment looks right for Mr Modi to complete his government. One theory concerning the defence ministry—currently run by the finance minister, Arun Jaitley—was that the post was being kept open in case it was needed for an ally in post-election haggling. Given the BJP success, Mr Modi can go ahead and pick a candidate of his choice.
The third implication of the elections concerns the political long term. As the BJP spreads its influence across more state assemblies, its political capital is growing. Within a few years it could become the largest party in the upper house of parliament, significant for passing legislation, and could have the votes to decide who becomes the next president in 2017, a more symbolic matter. By contrast, the opposition parties are in a funk. A year ago the Aam Aadmi Party was bursting into life as a political force; yet it failed to contest a single seat in Maharashtra or Haryana. Congress, with Rahul Gandhi as a lacklustre leader who does not deign even to take charge of his reduced party in parliament, can only hope matters do not get worse. Coming third in both states is a worse result than second place in the national polls. Congress's share of the votes, at around 20%, matched the national ones. It has done nothing to excite voters yet. But since Congress—like most parties in India—is woefully short of internal democratic processes, it is all but impossible for an alternative figure to challenge Mr Gandhi, however weak he may be. A depressing assumption in the party is that it must have a Gandhi in charge, or else it will splinter (since it lacks an ideological purpose). One possibility is that Mr Gandhi's sister, Priyanka Gandhi, might step up. But she is burdened by her marriage to a businessman, Robert Vadra, whose property dealings in Haryana are the subject of many accusations of corruption (which he denies).
For Mr Modi, and the BJP, fortunes could hardly be brighter. The greatest risk may be that popular expectations rise too fast and Mr Modi's grand promises of "good times" clash with the need to make difficult political decisions—reforming tax policy for example, or changing the law on land acquisition. But with significant elections, state or national, far in the distance and the opposition in tatters, he has a freer hand to act than any prime minister has had for decades.
