The missing apple

Patronage is always cynical. Politicians have convinced themselves that the Congress model for Muslims continues to work -- that they can ignore the Muslim need for education, empowerment and an economy for five years and woo them with a religious crumb or two just before they queue up to vote. Mulayam Singh Yadav thought that the Muslims of Uttar Pradesh would do some extra rikat of namaaz in order to beseech the Almighty for his electoral success when he ordered state institutions to shut down for Friday prayers. The Muslims replied that they did not need Yadav to lead them towards Allah. Thanks, but no thanks. He could take his sops elsewhere.

It is possibly the first time in electoral politics that a community has placed rational logic above prejudice. I am proud of the fact that Indian Muslims have taken a lead that others should emulate. Such crumbs come with a heavy if hidden price tag. This is the sort of thing that lends weight to the BJP charge of minority appeasement. A rather evocative phrase from the language of Uttar Pradesh describes the syndrome rather well: "Lene ke dene parh jaate hain (Instead of receiving you end up giving)." Muslims have suffered enough of such exploitation. Within 24 hours Mulayam had to withdraw from such unwanted generosity.

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Ironically, it was Yadav who played a critical role in the maturing of the Muslim vote when he called the expanding bluff of the Shahi Imam of Delhi some half a dozen years ago on the eve of yet another crucial election. The Shahi Imam's self-appointed status as the wholesale dealer of the Indian Muslim vote began life with the 1977 general elections when he mobilised the community against Indira Gandhi's Emergency. But it acquired credibility only when Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna and Indira Gandhi signed a "pact" with him before the 1980 general elections. The balloon had been expanding ever since, until the Yadav pinprick. Yadav simply told the Shahi Imam that he could not care one way or the other what the Imam said or did. The Muslims proved Yadav right, for they ignored the Imam and voted for Yadav. Why then such a silly mistake in 2004? The only explanation can be weak-minded advice from the cluster of insecure Muslims around Yadav. But explanation is not expiation.

The curve balls and googlies of UP politics are important because the fate of the next Lok Sabha will be decided in the three big, uncertain states of UP, Bihar and Maharashtra. The definitive word is "big"; the operative word is "uncertain". Between the three they command 168 seats. The electoral situation in the rest of the country is more or less evident, barring a slip-up or two. The Northeast will vote against the establishment; Bengal will remain with the Left. Jayalalitha should pull in Tamil Nadu, as should Navin Patnaik (despite surrendering some seats), both with BJP help. Ditto Chandrababu Naidu, once again with BJP help. Kerala will turn Left, and Karnataka will split three ways. Gujarat, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh/Chhattisgarh have become BJP fortresses. Punjab will turn against the Congress while Haryana will vote for the Congress.

But if the BJP thinks it has already won the elections, it should invest in a cold glass of water, known to be good for premature hangovers. The BJP may not lose out to the Congress in 2004, but it can always be defeated by itself.

The BJP's biggest shock could come from Maharashtra, where it has fallen in love with itself. It has, in the company of the Shiv Sena, set up fat cushions and slipped into comfortable recline, on the assumption that anti-incumbency will rake in votes. True, governance is a debilitating business. But Sushil Shinde is not a pushover like his predecessor Vilasrao Deshmukh. Shinde and Sharad Pawar have been old allies who as an alliance are at least one street ahead of the Sena-BJP combination. In Uttar Pradesh the BJP corrected some of its weaknesses precisely because it was not complacent. In Bihar the party knows that it has a difficult battle. But in Maharashtra it is taking the vote for granted.

Here is a tip for all BJP candidates: get out of Atal Behari Vajpayee's way. Don't come between the Prime Minister and the voter. Don't, for instance, waste any money on posters showing any candidate's face. The voter is interested in only one picture, the PM's. Without Vajpayee in this election the BJP slips back to its 1996 tally of 120-odd seats. With Vajpayee the BJP can hope to become the first ruling party since 1957 to increase its number of seats after five years in power, even if that increase is by half a dozen seats. It is not entirely coincidental that Jawaharlal Nehru rode to power in 1957 on the twin wheels of peace and prosperity, themes that are at the heart of the Vajpayee message. (1957 came after the Avadi Congress in which Nehru mapped out an India progressing in planned five-year leaps.) Vajpayee has always admired Nehru even though he has never had time for the Congress.

There will be those who argue that Indira Gandhi pole-vaulted the Congress to a two-thirds majority in 1971 after its thin victory in 1967. But that is not an exact parallel. Indira Gandhi split the Congress in 1969 and left the incumbency baggage on the rump she left behind.

The Congress is suffering from evident depression since no one in the party seriously believes that it can form a government this year. The prospect of another five years in the wilderness can weaken the heart of any sixty-year-old (check the age of the "young" leaders of the Congress: they are staring at 60 if they haven't crossed it already). But the party could have done immensely better were it not for some critical strategic mistakes. Sonia Gandhi is chasing the tail when the battle is for the head.

The biggest mistake has been to let the BJP determine the battleground on which the election will be fought. This is elementary absence of strategic thinking. The Congress response to the BJP agenda is total denial. The shine in India is certainly not as lustrous as the BJP advertising suggests, but the answer is not to make a virtue of darkness. The Congress is always vulnerable to the charge that since it won the elections in 1971 on the slogan of "Garibi Hatao" it has acquired a sort of vested interest in poverty. The party's criticism of the BJP campaign should have been part of its response, rather than the whole of it. It should have shifted the battleground to an alternative vision of a better future that promised growth along with equality and justice. Instead of promising a future it has become embroiled in a losing argument about the immediate past.

There are other problems. Those who advise Sonia Gandhi are clearly oblivious to echoes. For instance, a mass-contact programme is something you do between elections, not during them. Visiting the far corners of the country is something a Congress president should have been doing over four years, not over four months. Care for farmers is not something you discover a few weeks before they head for the polls. Where was the mass-contact programme after the Gujarat riots? If there had been one then, the dividends would have been visible today.

Such shortcomings are not going to be filled by the induction of the next generation. Priyanka Gandhi might energise a single constituency; she is not going to deliver Uttar Pradesh. And those in the Congress who think that she should replace her mother as the next president in case the Congress drops even below the level of limited expectations, should rise above sycophancy. There is nothing wrong about Priyanka Gandhi becoming Congress leader when she has shown the maturity to do so. There is everything wrong about turning the Congress into family property.

Defeat is not an option that the BJP is willing to consider, but embarrassment is always a possibility. The real danger before the BJP is not that it could lose the elections -- but that it could end up one apple short of a picnic.

That missing apple could be somewhere in Maharashtra or Uttar Pradesh.

MJ Akbar is Chief Editor of the Asian Age.