An altered reality

In India’s poorest state, free bicycles for schoolgirls win votes. So do promises to turn subsidies into cash payments and create jobs other than farming.

As he winds up a rally in the mid-afternoon heat, Nitish Kumar, chief minister of Bihar, has a final message for his audience. He tells the women in the multitude thronging around him that they should not feed their menfolk unless they have voted. The men laugh; the women stay strangely silent, in a region where malnutrition is rife and child mortality high.

Bihar, the undeveloped “cow belt” of India, bears little resemblance to the “fast-growing wonder” that Rahul Gandhi, general secretary of the ruling Congress party, calls the country. Rather, the state remains an agrarian economy, fertilised by the Ganges, where livelihoods have been unchanged for generations. Last year, when the rest of India was enjoying the last days of the economic boom, Bihar was suffering devastating floods.

The three years of economic growth running at about 9 per cent that India achieved under the Congress-led government barely touched Bihar. Call centres, laboratories and information technology outsourcing prospered elsewhere, forcing Biharis to travel to cities such as Mumbai, New Delhi or Bangalore if they were to participate in modern India’s growth story.

“My only ambition is that I succeed in fulfilling the aspirations of the people,” says Mr Kumar over the roar of his helicopter’s rotor blades on his way to the next rally. “I want to see a prosperous Bihar. I’m trying to do my best. Work has already started. If I got some support from the centre, that would change Bihar.”

The disconnect with Delhi is not only economic; it is political. Manmohan Singh, the prime minister, describes India as “fissiparous” and the country’s fiercely independent regional political leaders are just that. This fracturing of the political landscape in the world’s largest democracy, in which regional state-based power is asserting itself, will be underscored this weekend when results emerge of month-long parliamentary elections.

No one expects this to be a straightforward matter. With dozens of established parties and scores of charismatic leaders with strong local power bases, political analysts predict a confusing outcome likely to produce an unstable coalition government at what is a time of heightened regional insecurity.

The appeal and reach of big national parties has declined over the past 30 years. When Indira Gandhi was prime minister in the 1960s-1970s, her Congress party could win 300-400 seats in the 543-seat parliament. Now it or the Bharatiya Janata party, the Hindu nationalist opposition, might be considered in a strong position if either won more than 150 seats.

Nowhere is the Congress party’s retreat more pronounced than in the north Indian states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Of the 120 seats these states command, Congress won only 12 in the 2004 election. In its place have risen parties and politicians whose vision is less pan-Indian than local and often communal.

Their rise has been propelled by an appeal along the lines of caste, religion or local issues about service provision in a country where the bulk of the population lives in the countryside. A national government, these days, is almost unthinkable without these power-brokers.

Putting together the next national government will begin in earnest next week in post-election bargaining. So far, alliance making and breaking among a handful of powerful personalities has dominated the election, eclipsing national debate on high food prices, jobs or security in a country wrestling with its diversity and entering an economic downturn.

In the days ahead, cabinet seats will be traded for the loyalty of these regional barons. Only one thing is clear in a five-phase vote stubbornly defying prediction: any national party – whether the Hindu nationalist BJP, secular Congress or the Left Front – will rely on a large coalition of regional leaders and smaller parties to form the next government.

Just as the British relied on a network of kingdoms and their rulers to rule India during imperial times, coalitions of up to 20 parties are needed to form a national government.

These latter-day nawabs and nizams – the regional princes in the time of British rule – include a Dalit (“untouchable”) champion, a Tamil former film star and the man famed to have brought Bill Gates to India. They will have a big say in who occupies Race Course Road, the office of the prime minister, in less than a month’s time. One of them may even become the occupant.

Only days away from the vote count, Congress finds itself in a desperate scramble for allies to help it build a coalition to rule the country once again. Mr Kumar, although allied to the BJP, is one of those whose support it seeks.

“A lot of like-minded parties like Nitish Kumar, J. Jayalalithaa …who were once part of NDA [the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance] …feel that the NDA will not win. The NDA exists only in the mind of the BJP and thereby post-poll options are open with these parties,” Mr Gandhi said in a blatant piece of political flirtation.

“Like-minded” is not a description that comes easily when speaking of India’s regional leaders. “Distinctive” is more apt.

The most feared is Kumari Mayawati, chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. Presiding over India’s most populous state, of 190m people, the leader of the Bahujan Samaj party represents the Dalits at the bottom of India’s caste system. She could capture upwards of 35 seats in her 80-seat state and is expected to extract a big price for her joining an alliance.

To the east, Mamata Banerjee is head of the Trinamool Congress and is expected to deliver a hefty defeat to the entrenched Communist party in West Bengal. She broke away from Congress in 1997 and allied with the BJP but is now fighting her campaign in an alliance with her old party. Ms Banerjee has dedicated herself to loosening the grip of Communist rule in her state, yet she dimmed its industrial prospects by chasing out Tata Motors’ Nano car project last year.

To the far south in Tamil Nadu, where secessionist instincts run deep, most of the state’s 39 seats could go to Ms Jayalalithaa, a former actor who served as chief minister in the 1990s.

Another comeback politician is Chandrababu Naidu of the Telugu Desam party in Andhra Pradesh, a state transformed from agriculture to high-tech courtesy of its role as India’s IT pioneer. Displaying chief executive-like qualities, he won acclaim for developing Hyderabad, the state capital, as a hub for the IT industry but was undone by losing the rural vote.

Finally, Naveen Patnaik, chief minister of resources-rich Orissa who attracted big steel and mining companies to the state, in the spirit of the age is going it alone. He was previously aligned with the BJP.

Some analysts predict that when the election arithmetic is done in the coming days, a weak and unstable government will take office for as short a time as 18 months to two years before it falls. Then, another election would bring in a more consolidated and focused government behind Congress or the BJP.

Bookmakers still wager that a Congress-led government will return with support from the Left and with Mr Singh at its head. But, in the worst-case scenario for many in business. the regional politicians could take power backed by the Left. The diverse policy agendas of the so-called Third Front and its barons threaten paralysis around national issues of financial stability and security at a time of a slowing economy and turmoil in neighbouring Pakistan. Some economists predict fiscal mayhem.

Amit Mitra, secretary-general of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, warns of the role of the Left in any new government as far more threatening than any of the regional leaders. The Third Front, he claims, would be particularly susceptible to leftist economic policy promoted by well-organised neo-Marxist allies. “The Third Front will have a very complicated nature. There’s absolutely no ideological coherence. So the Left [as part of the alignment] can star.”

But Mr Mitra is confident that regional politicians will adapt to the national stage. “I think these regional leaders will become national leaders. They all want to become prime minister,” he says. “All these regional leaders have great ambition.”

For now, business is taking a sanguine view of the political chessboard. Gautam Thapar, a young industrialist and head of the Avantha conglomerate, says the increasing alignment of minority power with economic power is the strength of India’s “enlightened” constitution and part of the country’s political journey. “We don’t have a dominant majority. We have dominant minorities,” he says. “We have fractured mandates. As each minority moves up it fractures the mandate a bit more.”

This mood is also reflected in the political establishment. Few claim to understand voting patterns. Equally few seek an electoral overhaul that would substitute a presidential model for the current Westminster-style parliamentary system. On the contrary, the parliamentary model accommodates the multitude of minorities, and many fear autocracy.

“The present system is bringing instability but the present system at least ensures that all the diversities are represented in the Indian parliament,” says Arun Jaitley, general secretary of the BJP. “The closest we came to a presidential system was when Indira Gandhi was prime minister and she became a bad dictator.”

As one of his closest aides adds: “Coalition politics works in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, South Korea. So why not in India?”

NAWABS UNDER THE RAJ: ECHOES OF THOSE WHO RULED THE ‘PRINCELY STATES’

The power of regional political leaders, becoming increasingly evident in India’s current general election, is hardly an unfamiliar notion for a country that in its colonial era knew not only a British viceroy as national governor but also the local nawabs who ruled over the “princely states” of the Raj, writes Farhan Bokhari.

The nawabs survived the collapse of the Mughal empire during the 1857 war of independence by quickly offering allegiance and administrative services to Britain. Under UK rule, in some instances the title of nawab was also awarded to other individuals and families who extended their loyalty. Such awards of honorary titles ensured support from influential parts of Indian society.

Those nawabs with territory were often able to collect enough revenue to run a system of public welfare. Although some were despots, many strove to win the support of their public.

After the partition of India and creation of Pakistan in 1947, the nawabs lost their authority: the princely states were merged into provinces administered by India or Pakistan. The shock of partition forced most to settle for quiet lives. From the 1950s, accounts circulated of some of them living more modestly than in their previous days of glory.

The absence of a modern banking system that would have allowed them to transfer wealth offshore meant the nawabs were left holding assets that were were mostly illiquid.

Notable exceptions to the reduced profile of many such aristocrats include Mansoor Ali Khan, the former nawab of the Indian state of Pataudi. Rising to fame as captain of the Indian cricket team – an honour previously held by his father – Mr Khan married Sharmila Tagore, a film actress. Their three children include Saif Ali Khan, a well-known actor. A newly promoted Pakistani general is a cousin of Mr Khan from a branch of the family that migrated after partition.