Apologists touting the economic story to show which way the election wind will blow this summer, had better take note. The state of the economy has never quite been the benchmark for the ballot.
The outcome of successive Lok Sabha elections since the reforms were ushered in 1991 have almost entirely discounted the economic story while deciding who got to govern the country every successive five years.
The 1996 ballot following the first full blast of economic reforms ushered in by the Narasimha Rao-Manmohan Singh duo resulted in hung Parliament. This, despite a record 7.6 per cent growth in the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 1995-96 (the first five years of reform) after decades of proverbial Hindu rate of growth.
Result: Three successive prime ministers, HD Deve Gowda, Ike Gujral and Atal Behari Vajpayee failed to steer both the administration and the economy through a full five-year term.
The April 1999 general election once again failed to establish Vajpayee in power despite a healthy 5.8 per cent growth in GDP in 1998-99, in the face of the Asian economic crisis. The Congress’ bid to ride back to power touting the 1991-96 reforms too fell flat on its face.
What’s worse, in the September ’99 polls that followed the one in April, Manmohan Singh, Congress’ reforms mascot, lost to BJP’s post-Partition old-timer Vijay Kumar Malhotra by 30,000 votes in the prestigious South Delhi seat, where the reforms measures were felt to have made the maximum positive impact. Singh never contested a Lok Sabha election again.
In fact, the second try at the ballot in September saw Vajpayee ride back to power, not on a rebounding economy, but on a massive surge in patriotic hysteria unleashed by the high voltage nuclear blasts and the Kargil War of May-August that year.
Credit must be given to Vajpayee’s NDA government for spurring the economy to unprecedented heights in the next five years till 2004. The economic narrative truly and most comprehensively evolved into the India Shining story, culminating in an unprecedented 8.2 per cent growth in 2003-04. Alas, that was only just.
Year 2004 saw Vajpayee and the BJP lose the ballot to Congress, which returned as many as 335 members to the Lower House out of the 543 seats up for grabs. And mascot Manmohan became prime minister without facing a single voter ever again.
Team Manmohan came back to power for a second term in 2009 at the height of the global financial meltdown. It had still little to do with the economy, what with growth falling to 6.7 per cent in 2008-09 after peaking at 9 per cent the year before? What probably got Singh and his team back were leadership issues with the Opposition, notably the BJP, whose veteran Vajpayee was practically decommissioned from active service, owing to deteriorating health. There seemed to be no alternative to the Congress, then.
And yet, the second five years for Manmohan, from 2009 through 2014, witnessed massive “trickle-down” prosperity unleashed by unprecedented financial and construction scams. The housing boom and the Commonwealth Games saw large scale white-washing of black money and political kickbacks flowing between the formal and informal sectors.
Result: Almost everyone from the neta, babu, auto rickshawallah to the poor, homeless, migrant construction worker had a hand in the proverbial till. Who doesn’t know that story? Who wasn’t enriched by graft?
And so, while the parallel economy grew by leaps and bounds, enriching every Tom, Dick and Hari, the formal ‘slow-coach’ economy too climbed back to 6.2 per cent in time for the 16th Lok Sabha, up from a debilitating 4.9 per cent the year before. And still the Congress fell out of favour.
So, which way will the wind blow this summer?
Accept it or not, patriotism, as in 1999, seems to be the flavour of the season. No doubt about that, going by the public euphoria after the recent surgical strikes across the border... and the unprecedented box office success of Bollywood potboilers championing the ‘India Story’. It is said that those who have nothing to lose, take pride in patriotism. They also want a ‘navaratri-special-mata-ka-langar’ style free lunch any day.
Which is why the manifestos talk about throwing cash at the poor, not pump-priming the economy. They are about robbing Paul to pay Peter.
Small wonder, French storyteller of poor economics Thomas Piketty has been repeatedly pulled out of the woodworks to make a political statement ever since Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s 2015 garibi Budget.
Piketty has now been appropriated by the Gandhi khandaan.
If only we could hear the whispers of a vast majority of those who vote, the elections have a different story to tell.
In any case, no matter which way the election wind blows, it should pay to remember that it’s not the economy, stupid! Politics is about much more, or, perhaps, far less than that.
Watch this space!
Disclaimer: This writer does not subscribe to a political ideology, but casts a conscience vote every election!
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