New Delhi: Sage Publications India, 2015. xxiv, 427 pp. (Figures, tables.) US$59.95, cloth. ISBN 978-93-515-0187-9.
The 2014 national election in India is seen as a seminal one. In fact, shortly after the results were announced a prominent journalist wrote a book called 2014: The Election That Changed India. One reason why many saw the election as a game changer was due to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) becoming the first non-Congress party to win a clear majority on its own. It was also the first time since 1984 that a party had a majority on its own in the Lok Sabha (lower house of parliament). Moreover, many felt that under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who ran a presidential style campaign in 2014, the BJP, with its Hindu nationalist leanings, could redefine the idea of India.
The book under review is the fifth in a series—the first four were edited by Paul Wallace and Ramashray Roy—which analyses India’s national elections normally held every five years. The series has been of immense value for anyone interested in election data and its analysis. In recent times, the Election Commission of India’s website has been an invaluable storehouse of data on Indian elections, minimising the need for publications on electoral data. But the commission does not tell us about campaign strategies, how and why voters voted the way they did, and the impact of elections on national and state politics. This is where books like India’s 2014 Election, edited by Paul Wallace, are useful. The book is divided into two parts: the first treats broad themes, such as Modi’s role in the BJP victory, and the second is composed of state or provincial-level studies. Not all of India’s 29 states are covered, with Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Kerala being some of the notable exceptions.
Of the thematic chapters, Christophe Jaffrelot and Gilles Vernier’s essay gives a good overview of the elections and makes the argument that despite the clear majority won by the BJP, the “era of coalitions is far from over” (43). They note the “noticeable geographical concentration” (29) of the BJP’s vote, with the Party winning 190 of the 225 seats in the Hindi belt comprising Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, and Jharkhand. They also note that whereas the BJP won 31 percent of the national vote, in the Hindi belt (plus Gujarat) it won 45 percent of the vote. They make the important point that the regional parties have held their own, winning 46.6 percent of the vote share, which was roughly the same as in the 2009 national elections. There were, of course, variations in the performance of the regional parties with parties in the east and south—the Trinamul Congress (TMC) in West Bengal, the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) in Orissa, and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) in Tamil Nadu—doing exceedingly well while the parties in the northern states underperformed. Another important essay is that of Jyotirindra Dasgupta and Anshu Chatterjee on how civic associations in the run up to the 2014 elections have enriched democratic politics.
Of the states, Uttar Pradesh (UP) contributed a whopping 71 seats to the BJP’s tally. Sudha Pai and Avinash Kumar’s analysis of the UP results suggests that it was not so much a Modi wave but a combination of Hindutva and development that paid off for the BJP. They argue that the BJP followed a strategy of creating a “broad Hindu vote bank encompassing the upper castes, the backwards, and also the Dalits” (120). This was apparent in the vote swing in favour of the BJP, according to the National Election Study by Lokniti-CSDS, cutting across castes. Thus, in addition to a majority of the upper castes, 53 percent of the Kurmis/Koeris and 45 percent of Dalits (leaving aside the Jatavs) voted for the BJP. Pai and Kumar also credit Modi’s close aide and current BJP president Amit Shah for the way he ran Modi’s “hi-tech, US presidential style, plebiscitary campaign” (135).
Bihar was another Hindi heartland state where the BJP did very well winning 22 of the 40 seats. According to Maneesha Roy and Ravi Ranjan, the BJP was successful in stitching together a “collation of extremes” despite chief minister Nitish Kumar contesting on his own. Because of the BJP’s alliance with parties like the Lok Janashakti Party and Rashtriya Lok Samata Party, it won votes across castes. Conversely, Nitish Kumar, despite his considerable personal popularity, did not have the caste arithmetic on his side. However, the authors are prescient when they point out that an alliance between the Rashtriya Janata Dal, Janata Dal (United) and Congress would be a “robust social combination,” as was proved by the 2015 state assembly elections.
There are insightful essays on several other states. Andrew Wyatt, for instance, argues that the appeal of national parties in Tamil Nadu is limited and that they can “only win elections when they are integrated into alliances with regional parties” (335). Interestingly, he also argues that the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, which suffered a heavy loss in the 2014 elections, was reasonably well placed for the state assembly elections in 2016. However, some chapters, including the one on West Bengal, disappoint.
Wallace in his introduction notes a transition in 2014 from coalition politics to one-party majority rule under a strong leader, namely Modi. At the time of writing, however, the latter model seems to have hit road bumps as testified to by the state election results in 2015 and the impasse in national parliament.
Ronojoy Sen
National University of Singapore, Singapore
pp. 172-174