Which way will Punjab go?

Electoral mood cannot be gauged from one victory or a defeat

Elections are supposed to be a barometer of popular will. They definitely indicate what people are thinking and which way the wind is blowing. But over a period of time, I have found that one cannot associate long-term political trend with one election here and there. The mood of the entire state or region, leave apart the country, cannot be judged from one victory or one defeat.

Every election is unique. Mood of the people keeps changing from an election held in one constituency to the other, from one state to the other, from one issue to the other and from one month to the other.

Recently, I observed some bye-elections in Haryana and Himachal Pradesh and the elections of the Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee in Punjab. I find it difficult to spot a pattern and predict the course of political events which are likely to take place in the next six months or a year.

Take for instance the Hisar Lok Sabha by-polls held in the backdrop of Anna Hazare’s anti-graft crusade and his call to vote against the Congress. The grand old party was defeated and various reasons were ascribed for the victory of the HJC-BJP candidate Kuldeep Bishnoi. It was thought that the tide was turning against the Congress due to Hazare at the national level and it indicated the things to come in the future. It was said that Congress had lost its momentum and was on the back-foot after the so called assault of civil society. When I went to Hisar and talked to a cross section of people and juxtaposed it with the facts, figures, prevailing sentiments and the respective strength and weakness of the candidates, it was easy to predict that Congress was a distant third. Hazare or no Hazare, Congress was defeated the moment it announced its candidate.

But six weeks later, Congress won Ratia Assembly seat after a gap of 29 years. It was undoubtedly a difficult seat but Congress wrested the seat from Indian National Lok Dal with remarkable ease and the theory ascribed for the Hisar defeat now went for a toss. After Ratia victory, Congress leaders and Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda claimed that this indicated the outcome in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, elections which are slated next year.

Now, only an amateur would believe in the self-patting assertions of Hooda. Anyone who follows politics closely would say that it was a boast which has no ground at all, no reasons to substantiate and based entirely on a premise which has nothing to do with politics at the grassroots.

Let us move on to Himachal Pradesh. Elections were held at Renuka and Nalagarh constituencies at a time when Assembly elections for the state are almost a year away. Ideally, the outcome could have indicated which party, BJP or Congress, would form the next government in the Hill state. And what do you get. BJP won from Congress stronghold of Renuka while the Congress won from a seat (Nalagarh) where the BJP was traditionally strong. Both the seats fell vacant due to the death of sitting MLAs. Both Congress and BJP tried to cash in on the sympathy factor by fielding the son of the sitting Congress MLA from Renuka and the wife of the sitting BJP MLA from Nalagarh. Both the parties failed. Now can anyone stick his or her neck out and say which way the political wind is blowing in Himachal Pradesh, presently ruled by the BJP at this point of time.

I find only one common thread in Ratia, Renuka and Nalagarh. People did not vote for the family members of the deceased MLAs. You cannot count “sympathy” as the sole poll factor these days as voters look for other qualifications and leadership qualities in a candidate. But then, in Hisar Kuldeep Bishnoi won after his father Bhajan Lal died and in Adampur, Renuka Bishnoi won after the seat was vacated by her husband. So, sympathy may not have worked in Ratia, Renuka and Nalagarh but it indeed worked in a limited way in both the seats won by the Bishnoi family. The point is one cannot draw a theory after a poll outcome. A variety of factors, grassroots issues, delicate sub-regional and village level problems etc. contribute to the final outcome.

Coming to Punjab, it was the Shiromani Akali Dal which swept the SGPC polls held in September and won an unprecedented 157 out of 170 seats. But can any political pundit come out and predict with certainty that the outcome in the Assembly elections would be even close to what happened in SGPC. Also can anyone guarantee that all the voters who voted for SAD in SGPC polls, would vote for the same party in Assembly polls? It’s simply not possible to predict outcome of election on the basis of a given set of facts, figure and history. The electoral behaviour is dynamic and keeps changing week after week, region after region.

I have another example, an election which I covered as a journalist extensively. In Delhi, BJP won the municipal elections held in April 2007 by a decent margin. Leaders of the party were expecting that BJP would be voted to power in Assembly elections of 2008. More so as Congress was making a bid for power for the third time in a row and there was supposed to be an anti-incumbency factor. But what happened, Congress was again swept to power and those who were predicting a BJP victory on the basis of results of civic polls, simply had to eat a humble pie.

My point is that there is no mathematical theory or a rule to gauge the mood of the people and then predict electoral outcome. Issues and factors vary from one village to the other, from one constituency to the other in the same state, one profession to the other and one community to the other.

Punjab, which goes to polls in less than three months from now, has three regions – Malwa, Doaba and Majha. All have their own set of issues, problems, social composition and electoral trend. Only a close and detailed field analysis could gauze electoral mood and trend. It has to be juxtaposed with a host of factors and even after that predicting the poll outcome could still be a risky proposition even when 7-8 weeks are left for polling given that there is no visible wave in support or against any party at this point. (11.12.2011)

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