India’s Democracy Is More Delicate Than It Seems
After scrambles, fights, and bribes in Karnataka, the stage is set for a tough 2019 vote.
Indian politics rarely lacks melodrama. But the recent elections in the southern state of Karnataka have set a new standard for last-minute twists and moustache-twirling villainy. After a frenetic campaign that produced no clear winner, last week saw, in succession, a deadlock over which party would be invited to form the government; several controversial decisions by state Gov. Vajubhai Vala, who is an apparatchik of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP); allegations of millions of dollars in bribes; the self-imposed house arrest of scores of legislators; and a middle-of-the-night emergency dash to the Supreme Court. More drama was packed into seven days than is found in a big-budget Bollywood blockbuster.
In the end, the BJP’s archrival party — the Indian National Congress — and a smaller regional party known as the Janata Dal (Secular) formed an eleventh-hour coalition, which will be sworn in on Wednesday. It’s a temporary halt of the BJP’s yearslong drive to wipe Congress off India’s political map. But while it might be a welcome reprieve for the opposition, the tumult of power grabs, attempted bribes, and shady deals reveals the increasingly delicate state of India’s democracy.
The hysteria reached a fever pitch because Karnataka is a crucial state for next year’s battle royal, when India’s more than 850 million voters will cast their ballots in the country’s parliamentary elections.
Karnataka is a crucial state for next year’s battle royal, when India’s more than 850 million voters will cast their ballots in the country’s parliamentary elections.
However, numbers alone do not do justice to Karnataka’s symbolic importance. In 2008, the BJP won control of the state for the first time; because the party’s base is primarily in the north and west of the country, southern voters had previously viewed the party as a foreign import. Subnationalism is quite strong in the south, and the Hindu nationalist BJP has had trouble — linguistically, culturally, and politically — adapting its Hindi belt roots to a segment of the country once dominated by the Congress and now more reliably by a slew of state-specific regional parties.
After the 2008 victory, the party’s tenure in Karnataka soon crashed and burned: B.S. Yeddyurappa, the state’s chief minister, unceremoniously resigned in 2011 after authorities fingered him and his allies in a massive natural resource scam that brought governance in the state to a standstill. In the subsequent election in 2013, the opposition Congress easily triumphed, a victory made possible by the fact that Yeddyurappa quit the BJP over his forced ouster, formed his own party, and played spoiler. Five years later, Yeddyurappa patched things up with the BJP as the party made a big push to reclaim its onetime southern foothold in advance of next spring’s general election. For the BJP, reclaiming the state would have given it a prized perch from which it could launch its determined effort to make further inroads into the south.
For Congress, the race was no ordinary electoral tussle — it was an existential one. Since coming to power in May 2014, Modi and the BJP have steadily expanded the party’s footprint across India in an effort to bring about a Congress-mukt Bharat (Congress-free India). The BJP views the Congress party’s devotion to secularism, welfarism, and dynastic politics as key sources of India’s weakness, at home and abroad.
To date, their project has proceeded swimmingly. Whereas the BJP and its allies held power in just eight states in 2014, today they rule in 20.
Whereas the BJP and its allies held power in just eight states in 2014, today they rule in 20.
While many have long written the young leader off, he has appeared more consistent, focused, and invested since assuming the presidency of the Congress party last December — raising hopes that he has turned a corner. More practically, a victory would also ensure access to Karnataka’s plentiful coffers and the rent-seeking opportunities the Congress sorely needs to raise funds for national elections.
With this much at stake, the campaign turned nasty quickly. At one rally, Modi had dared Rahul Gandhi to speak for 15 minutes about the achievements of the Congress’s government in Karnataka in any language, including his “mother’s mother tongue,” and without reading from a piece of paper — a cheeky reference to his mother’s Italian origins and Rahul’s lack of charisma. The incumbent Congress chief minister, Siddaramaiah, wasted no time in challenging Modi to speak about the achievements of Yeddyurappa’s prior scandal-ridden government “for 15 minutes by looking at a paper.”
On May 15, the day votes were counted, the BJP emerged as the single largest party, but it failed to secure an outright majority (winning 104 out of 222 seats). As BJP leaders huddled, the Congress and Janata Dal (Secular) issued a surprise of their own: an opportunistic postelection pact to keep the BJP out of power. Together, they had 115 seats — barely crossing the majority mark in the legislature. Although the two sides had slung plenty of mud against each other during the election campaign — at one point, Congress dubbed the JD(S) the “BJP’s B-team” — expediency created a marriage of convenience.