Contests in Context : Indian Elections 2009 India ’ s 2009 Elections : The Resilience of Regionalism and Ethnicity

The 2009 Indian general elections saw the Congress Party-led United Progressive Alliance retain power, with a remarkable increase of seats in the National Assembly (Lok Sabha), leading to claims of a ‘renationalization’ of the party system as well as of the voting pattern. However, evidence from the results themselves show that, on the contrary, the process of fragmentation of the party system and the electorate is still progressing, Indian voters having opted for regional and local players more than they ever did before. The distorting effect of the majority electoral system (‘First Past The Post’) provides the central explanation for this apparent paradox. A close look at the electoral results also demonstrates the resilience of ‘ethnic voting’, despite the recurring discourse on the predominance of ‘economic voting’. Jaffrelot, Christophe ; Verniers, Gilles ‘India’s 2009 Elections : The Resilience of Regionalism and Ethnicity’, South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal Online since 23 décembre 2009, Connection on 09 janvier 2010. URL : http://samaj.revues. org/index2787 To quote a passage, use paragraph (§). [1] The Indian elections, which started on 13th April 2009 and ended more than one month later on May 16, broke one more record since 714 million people were eligible to vote and about 58% exercised their right to franchise1. These elections were also exceptional because of their outcome as, for the first time since 1984, the ruling party was spared the anti-incumbency reflex, which had become almost systematic till then. With 206 seats and a comfortable majority in the Lok Sabha thanks to its allies, the Congress is bound to rule for five more years with some room for manoeuvre. Indeed, the defeat of the Communists and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) brings Indian politics back to the centre, the favourite political space of the Congress. Does this mean that the Congress is back to its heydays, where it had a dominating hand on the polity, and that the phase of fragmentation of Indian politics, which accelerated in the 1990s, is over? While many analysts have gone that far in a rather hasty way, a close look at the election results suggests, instead, that the fragmentation process is still progressing. This paradox can be explained partly and firstly by the distorting effect of the majoritarian electoral system, as well as by the growing propensity of various social groups to vote according to regional and ethnic identities. The ‘re-nationalization’ of Indian politics, as opposed to the fragmentation process of the electorate and party system – characteristic of the 1990s and early 2000s – is far from being back on track, as will be developed here. This article draws essentially from a double set of quantitative data. The first set is made of the ‘raw data’ provided by the Election Commission of India, which we examined for some states at the constituency level. The second set originates from the National Election Study (NES) 2009, conducted by the Centre for Study of Developing Societies (CSDS). This study also provides segmented qualitative analysis that inspired, or is reflected in, some of our own analysis. Combining these data enabled us to crosscheck our own analysis while not depending entirely on the survey data. I. The ‘Comeback’ of the Congress: An Outcome of its Policies or of the Rise of Regional Parties? [2] Since the 1990s, India seemed to have entered into the post-Congress phase of its political history. The fate of the dominant party of yesteryears seemed to be sealed for good. It had lost its capacity to rally groups, which sometimes were poles apart, like the upper castes, the 1 The traditional cleavage between the North and the South persisted, as both displayed highly contrasted participation rates: where no Southern state registered participation rates below 63% (in Karnataka), no state of the Hindi belt exceeded 52% (in Delhi). Jaffrelot, Christophe ; Verniers, Gilles ‘India’s 2009 Elections : The Resilience of Regionalism and Ethnicity’, South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal Online since 23 décembre 2009, Connection on 09 janvier 2010. URL : http://samaj.revues. org/index2787 To quote a passage, use paragraph (§). Dalits and the Muslims. Indeed, until the early 1990s, the Congress’ dominance formula had lied upon this capacity to encompass contending social groups. It was a genuine ‘catch-all party’. In the 1967 general elections for example, the vote in favour of the Congress did almost not vary according to the level of income (Madsen 1970: 100). In North India, it was more specifically based on a ‘coalition of extremes’ to use the terms of Paul Brass (1980: 5), since its principal supports came from the Brahmins, the Scheduled Castes and the Muslims. The party thus blurred two cleavages, the one opposing the high and the low castes, and the one separating religious communities. The same technique turned out to be successful in other regions too. The all India opinion polls conducted by the CSDS show that till the 1980s, the Congress party was able to attract between 35.8% and 50.5% of the voters from any social group2. In 1989, the Brahmins, the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes and the Muslims were still overrepresented within the Congress (I) electorate. According to an opinion poll survey, carried out after the 1989 elections, where the Congress (I) won 39.5% of the valid votes, it received the support of 41% of the Brahmins who were interviewed, 44.2% of the SCs/STs and 45.8% of the Muslims. [3] But, as Table 1 shows, the 1990s witnessed an erosion of the Congress attraction amongst all sections. The BJP and a large number of regional parties were the chief beneficiaries of this decline, of this disintegration of the social coalition that sustained the party’s electoral success (Chandra 2004, Chhibber 1999, Jaffrelot 2003). And if the Congress could not play the role of a catch-all party anymore, some argued that the national character of Indian politics would be at stake (Yadav 2000). 2 Raw data collected at the CSDS. Jaffrelot, Christophe ; Verniers, Gilles ‘India’s 2009 Elections : The Resilience of Regionalism and Ethnicity’, South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal Online since 23 décembre 2009, Connection on 09 janvier 2010. URL : http://samaj.revues. org/index2787 To quote a passage, use paragraph (§). Table 1: Evolution of the Congress vote (in %) by social group (1967-1998)* Castes & communities Election year 1967 1971 198