By-poll in Kairana: One small location, one big sign
The intensity of interest that both the electronic and print media have shown towards the by-election in an otherwise nondescript constituency like Kairana may surprise someone who is not too well-versed in the intricacies of Indian electoral democracy. The bewilderment of this observer would increase even more if s/he is made to see this small episode of an electoral contest through the prism of the idea of “the mandate”.
As established wisdom goes, a mandate is synonymous with the right to rule that is bestowed upon a political force in the name of the people, if it wins a majority of seats in a legislature. It is pretty obvious, therefore, that our relatively less informed observer would ask: what the hell is the fuss about Kairana?
After all, the result of this by-election is not going to alter the political equation either in the state of Uttar Pradesh or at the Centre, simply because the party in power is enjoying an absolute majority in both legislatures. When the government is stable, what is the need to talk about “the mandate”?
But, in fact, the case of Kairana is not an isolated one. The question of the mandate was, and still is, in the centre of the debate that arose in the weightier context of the Karnataka assembly election. Though the alliance government has proved a majority at Bangalore’s Vidhan Saudha, public opinion is yet to digest the fact that a party of a mere 39 legislatures got the post of chief minister over the parties that won 104 and 78 legislatures respectively.
The issue of "the mandate" was also raised when, in the Uttar Pradesh of the 1990s, Mayawati, with fifty-odd MLAs, was made chief minister thrice. Even Kumaraswamy was given this opportunity way back in 2011. In both cases, the BJP played this game for garnering short-term benefits. It is another matter that the same party is now at the receiving end.
I would state directly here that, in the given conditions of Indian democracy, the idea of "the mandate" should not be taken as a singular one – in fact, Indian democracy contains a multiplicity of mandates that at best work as indicators, not as a democratic principle about who should be ruling at the Center or in states. Secondly, the function of political stability is not directly proportionate to the presence of a numerical majority in the legislature.
For instance, instead of weakening or strengthening the present mandate, the result of the Kairana by-election constitutes the future mandate for either of the contending forces.
If the BJP had won against the combined might of the opposition and over a presence of nearly 35 per cent Muslim voters, a two-fold perspective could have emerged for the next Lok Sabha elections. Firstly, it would have seem that non-BJP-ism, demonstrated strongly in Karnataka, is not a consistent threat to the incumbent party. It might create difficulties, but may not necessarily undermine its dominance.
Secondly, it would have assured the BJP that the non-efficacy of Muslim votes will continue and the forces of Hindutva would be able to achieve a kind of Hindu mobilisation needed for it.
Since we have now an alternative scenario, where the BJP has lost this western UP seat, a two-fold inference can be drawn: firstly, this reduces the possibility of a BJP majority radically – the complete decimation of the BJP would depend upon the continuous replication of Kairana, Gorakhpur and Phulpur at a larger scale.
Secondly, it will relay the message that at least, a local anti-incumbency against the Modi government has finally ticked in at the constituency level – this can only snowball in the next six months.
Two types of other mandates are workable for the post-election situations regularly thrown up by Indian politics. In India, the game of politics is heavily laden with the presence of innumerable parties, a situation that has made bigger parties less national, and smaller parties far more ambitious than their actual strength.
Under the "first past the post system", if one party gets a simple majority, it will obviously claim the mandate to rule, simply because even if other parties join hands, they will not be able to form a majority.
In an alternative situation, where no party gets a clear majority we tend to call this a "fractured mandate". This is patently wrong – it is undermining the democratic will which is calling for a mandate for an alliance government.
Here lies the discursive truth that everybody hesitates to highlight.
An alliance government is not a lesser or an illegitimate achievement for a multi-party system – in that sense, a fractured mandate is a misnomer for a democracy like ours.
The issue of a smaller party getting a bigger slice of cake leads us to the examination of the status of the institution of parties in our Constitution. To the surprise of many, our Constitution does not mention this institution even once. Had it not been the ill-drafted anti-defection law, the institution of "the party" would not have got a simple legal status. It would have remained an informal instrument of political mobilisation.
According to the book that we all claim to adhere to, the majority on the floor of the house is never constituted by a party or parties, but by legislatures only – that means MLAs and MPs. Once two or more parties come together in a post-election scenario and form a joint legislature party, from the angle of the Constitution, it becomes a whole and ceases to remain a combination of small and big. In the context of the distribution of power, haggling for plum portfolios is not special to alliances and can be seen as a regular occurrence, even in an one-party government.
While discussing the relationship of political stability with one-party rule, one can cite a number of examples where powerful majorities were reduced to lame duck governments due to various reasons, though they continueD to rule technically.
Hence, the delinking of "the mandate" from a one-party majority is necessary for a more robust understanding of India’s political reality.
Going by the Kairana and other by-poll results seen today, it seems that in all likelihood, this reality is going to express itself strongly as another round of the dominance of alliance politics. And this will put the fantasy of one-party rule in serious jeopardy.