Why Vajpayee Won

On that hot April 17 afternoon when the conspiracy to topple Atal Behari Vajpayee’s government succeeded by one vote, victory came donning the look of a shock defeat. Triumph lay hidden in the tears that rolled down the faces of those who followed, in slow steps of disbelief, the prime minister as he came out of the Lok Sabha and walked towards his chamber in Parliament House. It took 173 days for the conspirators to find that their misadventure had backfired and that the nation’s tallest leader whom they had unseated was back in the saddle with a bigger, more emphatic mandate from the only kingmaker in our democracy—the Indian voter.

I had to submit a column for Outlook on that day analysing the trust vote debate in Parliament and its outcome, and the extended deadline was in the afternoon. Anticipating victory for the government, I had nearly finished writing it in the morning itself. But the night had written a secret script for the day that followed. I rushed from Parliament to my office in South Block, scrapped my article, and hurriedly re-wrote it. And this is what I predicted in the column that appeared on April 26. "With the success of ‘Operation Manipulation’, the combination of Harkishen Singh Surjeet, Subramanian Swamy and Arjun Singh has proved its lethal destructive power. But what has it really destroyed? Vajpayee’s popularity? No way. Let him hit the roads, and Sonia Gandhi’s sycophants will see what it takes to be a mass leader. The Vajpayee magic will hit the manipulators like a thunderbolt." The polls have vindicated this prediction.

Of all the issues that figured in this election, the one that stood out above all, and the one that subsumed all in its sharp singularity, was this: "Do the people want Vajpayee as their prime minister or not?" The answer was available in April itself. Events of June and July only highlighted it. When the Congress-led Opposition, in a show of irresponsibility as reckless as it was unprecedented, tried to paint Vajpayee’s victorious handling of the Kargil war as betrayal and worse, only the purblind could miss the inevitable.

The people have given their verdict unambiguously. Unlike what the cover story in this magazine said a couple of issues back, the race between Vajpayee and Sonia was never "closer than you think". In a democracy, what you get for indulging in reckless destabilisation—and let’s not forget that three non-Congress governments were toppled at her behest in three years—is not reward but rejection.

Voters have punished the Congress by rejecting it in ’96, and now in ’99. But there’s a reason why the Congress cannot learn the lessons from its defeat. It has sold its soul to the undemocratic principle of dynasty. And dynasty thinks it’s born to rule. As is only to be expected from any durbar culture, many Congressmen think that members of the Nehru dynasty have a birthright to rule India. (A small digression here: it is wrong to call it a Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. The derivative benefit that its members have been reaping from the name "Gandhi" is because it establishes a non-existent association with the hallowed legacy of Mahatma Gandhi. Had Feroze Gandhi been born into a family with a different Parsi surname such as Antia or Sopariwala, India’s post-Nehru history would have been quite different!)

The Nehru-Gandhi name retains its appeal for its capacity to symbolise national unity. Every nation needs certain organic symbols as powerful reminders to its people of their unity and their concern for security. After independence, Congress was the only party around that fulfilled this need in the political arena. But once its decline started and no stable alternative emerged, Indira Gandhi transformed the Congress as a borough of herself and her sons, so that the Family could serve as the sole political symbol of India’s unity. If an inexperienced Rajiv Gandhi could lead the Congress to a 400-plus victory in ’84 in the wake of his mother’s assassination (it was a wave election in which even Vajpayee lost), it was because he symbolised Indian people’s concern for national unity and security.

By the same logic, if his widow has failed to lead the Congress to victory in the ’99 polls, it’s due to two inter-related reasons. One, by no stretch of imagination can she project herself as a symbol of our national unity; she couldn’t even keep the Congress united. The second reason is more important. In the ’90s, India has for the first time seen the emergence of a stable non-Congress political formation, the bjp, in which the people see the picture of India’s unity. Also, for the first time in many decades, India has seen in Vajpayee a leader with a pan-Indian appeal who belongs neither to the Family nor even to the Congress and yet answers to their urge for unity and security. The bjp’s success in striking alliances with parties that previously would have nothing to do with it, and Vajpayee’s success in gaining equal acceptance in the multi-hued alliance, are the most significant political phenomena after the failed Janata Party experiment in the late ’70s.

Vajpayee has fulfilled two criteria for electoral success—democratic stability and national unity. The challenge before him now is to successfully meet the third criterion: development. No longer can polls be won on slogans of "garibi hatao". The bold message of election ’99 is that development-oriented reforms, if sincerely implemented, make not only economic but also electoral sense. Vajpayee gave advance notice of his resolve to make development his primary agenda during the campaign when he said he would implement ‘Operation Vikas’ with the same determination that helped him pursue ‘Operation Vijay’ to victory.

So, here’s another prediction: the next few years will see bold economic reforms helping India develop with unprecedented speed. Like Kargil, that too will be the triumph of the entire nation, and not of any party or leader. But, as again in Kargil, the leader will make the difference.

(The writer is an aide to Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee)