knowledge has no horizons

Election fever in India is over with the results in May 16, 2009. Though the results announced favoured the Congress, it happened exceeding its expectations. Of the six national parties, congress alone is grown to be the biggest party, yet with a shortage of 70 MPs to form a government with absolute majority. BJP, on the other hand, has to suffer its fate for the second term. It is also undeniable that the election, 2009, has brought forth both surprises and shocks alike to parties at national, state and regional level, and has scattered the hope of ruling the nation of many fronts recently formed. It is a miracle for congress itself to form the government for the second term, even among the wave of dislike among the people over the question of the national security, economic recession, killings of Tamils in Srilanka, and above all, contesting the elections without allies in most of the states. Wrecked is the citadel of BJP in states, where it rules, ruled, and is dominant, with particular exception in Chhattisgarh where it managed to win what it won in 2004 elections and in Gujarat. Later will be discussed the factors for the fiascos of the parties, laying special importance to once-efficiently-ruled BJP at the centre.

The election has, no doubt, left on the congress the image of invulnerability, with good number of seats from Kanyakumari to Kashmir. Karunanidhi of Tamilnadu and Mamta Banerjee of West Bengal did their tricks in their respective states, with a huge number of 52 seats contributing to the congress to form the coalition government. Andra Pradesh registered a massive victory of winning 33 seats, the highest of all the thirty states for congress, sweeping BJP completely out of the scene as in the 2004 election and the TDP-TRS-Left. People's expectation of Chiranjeevi's Prajya Rajyam Party to play a vital role proved wrong, while, at the same time, his winning of 18 seats out of 294 Assembly might give him a hold in state politics. Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan had the largest share (22 and 20, respectively) for congress next to Andhra Pradesh. The positive results – yet impossible as one expected – in Uttar Pradesh can directly be attributed to the campaign of the “future prime minister of India”, Rahul Gandhi. Punjab, Uttarkhand, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and Kerala have shown the signs of improvement that resulted in the increasing number of MPs from that of the 2004 election, while Karnataka, Jharkhand, Assam and Himachal Pradesh ask for congress to concentrate on, as they contributed the congress in number that is smaller compared to that of the previous one. Of the 30 states in India, Bihar is to be given the primary importance, and in the states like Tamilnadu, Maharashtra and West Bengal, congress is to grow in position of standing on its own foot without allies to win a good and reasonable number of seats.

Winning is winning, and the winner tells their positives alone for their winning. Congress has won the elections, no matter how it has. But, for the BJP, the election has sent a clear message that it can't just avoid, by looking into the might-be-causes for its losses.

That BJP's dream of ruling the nation came untrue is an unexpected one. It ruled and is eligible to rule the country. But the election results left the party with a thousand of questions that can't just let go answered. The election made it a must to analyze the answer the questions, intellectually and immediately, to survive its existence for the next forthcoming election. What went wrong and where?

A layman with a little knowledge of politics even knows that BJP bears the stamp of Hindutva party, the image which must be erased in all of its form, not just to gain the Muslim vote bank, but to retain the vote bank it had in the past, for example, the vote bank it had before Gujarat riots. Narendra Modi, who was projected the standby prime ministerial candidate in the future by the second-level leaders like Arun Jaitley and Arun Shourie, failed to catch the people's attention in his own state, which contributed just a one-seat increase from the 2004 election. This also can't just be avoided, as it reflected for the BJP in the negative. His image of an adept administrator was torn into pieces with the Gujarat riots against Muslims. Targeting Dr.Manmohan Singh personally as the weakest prime minister, portraying him as just a puppet in the hands of Sonia Gandhi whose tune he dances, and their slogan of “decisive prime minister for a determined government” did nothing to their expectations, and which, above all, can better be avoided in Advani's campaign. His campaign of getting back to India the black money in Swiss bank failed to reach the mass, i.e., the populace. His visit to and laying wreath at the Jinnah’s mausoleum and his subsequent panegyric note on Muhammad Ali might fester the feelings of Hindutva camps. Varun Gandhi's spoken words – which should be unspoken – which, though, helped him win for himself in his Pilibit constituency, did in fact much harm to the party. The open public spat between the party leader Rajnath Singh and Arun Jaitley has had its own share in the debacle. Its eight MPs' involvement in the bribery for asking questions in the Parliament also gave room for congress to term it a 'stained' party. Also, having failed to find out for themselves a good, young, and eloquent speaker to counter the Rahul Gandhi's impeccable campaign, particularly in the state with large number of seats, where it couldn't get not more than 10 seats as it did in the 2004 elections in Uttar Pradesh, the BJP lead its way to doom in many states.

BJP did a greater mistake by failing to keep AIADMK, Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and Trinamool Congress (TC) within NDA as its allies, which responded it with a major setback in securing more/or at least a few seats in their respective seats. None can evade the fact the Congress has registered a massive victory by allying itself with TC by making use of the wave of antipathy against the Left, which the BJP missed to. TDP’s 24.6% and TRS’s (Telengana Rastriya Samithi) 6.1% votes can’t simply be ignored in Andhra Pradesh. Yielding to her is what the AIADMK supremo J. Jayalalitha expects, and fulfilling her expectations might get for it at least a few seats in Tamilnadu. What is unbearable is that it lost to congress in many states where it is at present under power. Despite the fact that BJP is the ruling party in Uttarkhand, it lost the total five seats to congress. Its experiencing a major setback in Rajasthan needs not in the least surprised, as the result is almost know with the Assembly elections results last year, which favoured congress to rule the state. But what is pathetic is that the BJP never took into consideration the factors that caused to lose the 2008 Assembly election – like Gujjar issue, the growing hatred over Vansunthara Raja, its failing to find out a solution for the smothering animosities between party leaders, etc. Winning eight seats out of 14 in Jharkhand asks for not that much appreciation, as it is because, as everyone believes, of the breakdown of partnership “between congress and Lalu's Rashtriya Janata Dal”. But coming into conflict with Naveen Patnaik's BJD resulted in the negative. Of the three new-born states in 2005, Chhattisgarh alone made its highest contribution, whereas in states like Arunachal Pradesh and Delhi, the BJP recorded absolute swept. Having lost in Madhya Pradesh where it is ruling, in Maharashtra which is to be believed the fort of Hindutva, and in Punjab where its ally, Akali Dal, is ruling could be better termed none other than an irony of 'fate', as it may think. The BJP-ruling states, with exception to Karnataka, would have learnt the art of making votes from the congress-ruling states like Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan. Incapable of being won even a seat from Tamilnadu, Andhra Pradesh, and Kerala, the party begs for the people's sympathy. So far as Tamilnadu is concerned, the party has reasons for convincing and consoling itself with number of votes, which it never ever gained, even with alliance of 'yesterday-born' parties.

Apart from what is being discussed, what is alarming is the decrease in the percentage of votes. Though it is the second largest party with a hike in the number of seats from the 2004 election, it is to be noted that it has lost around four percentage of votes in total. With a big question mark about the future of BJP, it is under the compulsion of redefining its principles and to get notice of the hitherto ignored factors, if any. Above all, it is in the need of a leader who is impeccable as Vajpayee and who unites second, third-level leaders and party men alike under one umbrella, putting into them the same sense of purpose. Neither taking right decisions nor taking decisions and making them right is what the BJP did in the 2009 election, and if it lets continue this, no doubt, the party will be “fated” to fail in the future, too.