India Elections 2012

8/2/2019 India Elections 2012

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reminiscent of Indira Gandhi loosing her own seat in the1977parliamentary elections, it cannot be said that it wasan angry vote, like it was in 1977,against the Congressparty. And that only makes it worse. The electorateresponded to Rahul Gandhi's undoubtedly sincereendeavours in a very calm and calculated manner andthought them worth a mere six additional seats over the2007performance ofthe Congressparty in the state.That the Congresslost Goato BJP and could not cash inonthe anti-incumbent voting tradition of Punjab andUttarakhand makes it still worse for the party, the solewin in Manipur being a poor consolation because of thespecial law and order situation in that state. Even there,the emergence of the UPA ally and the first-timecontestant, Trinamool Congress, as a major oppositionforcewith seven seats in a House ofsixty cannot be a verycomforting factor for the Congress party.TheCongress perspectiveThus, looked at any which way, Mandate 2012has been

nothing short of disastrous for the Congress party. Ithaslost Goawhich it had been ruling since 2005 to the BJP. Itfailed to win Punjab from the Akali Dal-BJP coalitionwhich it rightfully should have, looking at theuninterrupted tradition of the Punjab electorate alwaysvoting an incumbent government out. Itwas the samestory in Uttarakhand where it failed to reach the majoritymark of 36 seats, capturing only 32 against incumbentBJP's 31 seats. And, in Uttar Pradesh, where it stakedliterally everything ithad, it ended upwith amere 28seatsagainst 22in 2007 in a House of403.The figure of28winslooks even more feeble when seen against the 96Assembly segments in which it had led in the 2009parliamentary elections even though, technicallyspeaking, the two are not strictly comparable.How did the Congress party manage to bring this uponitself? First and foremost, the massive corruption scamsdo seem to be turning people away from the party acrossthe country. Thus, in states like Uttarakhand and Punjabwith a strong tradition ofanti-incumbency, the people did


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Cong TM C42.4% 17.0%MSCP NPF8.4% 7.5%NCP CP I7.2% 5.8%

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not see the Congress as a cleaner alternative. Since theCongresswas the onlyalternative they had in these states,the voters seem to have decided not to bother too muchabout throwing the incumbents out. In Goa, thecorruption of the local government combined with thecorruption scams of the UPA seem to have helped votersdecide to put their faith in the BJP.In Uttar Pradesh, the average voter had, for long, begun toperceive Mayawati as an arrogant, authoritarian andapathetic megalomaniac who had no place in the polity asthe head a democratically elected government. Theyounger sections even amongst her hardcore dalitsupporters were often seen questioning her decisions likespending more than Rs.7000 crore on statues of daliticons, particularly her own . Anecdotes about the ChiefMinister personally demanding and accepting bribes forevery file she signed were common fare at the cocktailcircuits in Lucknow, NaIDA and Mumbai. That she wasgoing to be hounded out of power was common streetwisdom for quite sometime. The onlyquestion was aboutwhowould be the beneficiary ofthis angryvote.

TheMuslim votefor the SP turned out tobeagame changer inUtterPradesh.

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The voter was, however, desperate for alternatives, anyalternative to BSP,in fact. The Samajwadi Party had beenvoted out in 2007 on the charge ofhaving unleashed thegunda raj. And the Muslims could not possibly havevotedfor the BJP and for the Congress who they continued toblame for having allowed the Babri Masjid to bedemolished. Theyhad voted against the Samajwadi Partyin 2007 simply because it had joined hands with KalyanSingh who was the BJP Chief Minister when the Masjidwas demolished. With Mulayam Singh having doneenough penance for that 'sin', the Muslims were preparedto forget and forgiveand rallied behind him once again.The Muslim-Yadav combination was thus back in thereckoning once again but that could, at best, have got theSamajwadi Party 160 seats. That iswhere AkhileshYadavstepped in with his project of transforming the publicperception of the Samajwadi Party. He started off byreversing the party's opposition to English and tocomputerization and stressing the role of infrastructurein economic development. And, just before the polls, hesignaled the party's distancing itself from gunda raj bydenying party ticket to D P Yadav and some other mafiadons. To an electorate desperate for change and forputting in place a stable government in the state, thesesignals were enough to establish the credibility ofSamajwadi Party as a viable alternative to the Mayawati'sBSP.Andthe rest, asthey say,is history.Does this mean that Akhilesh Yadav has proved to be abetter strategist than Rahul Gandhi? Prima facie, thatwould seem to be a rather hasty conclusion. AkhileshYadav was playing a field that was fairly receptive to hisovertures. He already had behind him a solid vote bank ofMuslims and Yadavs and the only thing he needed to dowas to allay the sensitivities of some sections amongst theupper castes, OBCsand educated dalits about the gundaraj and the shedding ofhis party's Lohiaite past in favourof modernity, technology, economic growth, Englishlearning and computerization.Secondly, he had the advantage ofbeing the son ofthe soilpeople could identify with. Not that Rahul Gandhi is notor that the people ofUPare soentirely parochial. Theyareperfectly comfortable with Rahul Gandhi but they viewhim more as a national leader than a provincial one. Thatexplains why they had no hesitation in voting for theCongress party in asmany as 96assembly segments in the2009 parliamentary elections. But for the state assembly,they were looking for a competent local leader who couldbe held accountable over the next five years. Incomparison, Rahul Gandhi was perceived as an outsiderwho was inUPmerely for the purpose ofmobilizing votesfor the Congress.


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The Cover Sto zerrcelsr ASIA March 2012U T T ER P R A D E SH P.p.l.li.n 20cr

Urb.n% 22 U T T A R A K H A N DV O T E S H A R EO T E S H A R E %atBPLP.p.l.li.n 33Samajwadi

Party29.2%Bahu)an

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B JP33.1%BSP12.2%

BJP Rashtriya Lok Dal G SDP 'sc om p ou nd a on ua l15.0% 37% g r .w t h ra l. (5 y rs l . . 6%C on gr es s I nd ep en de nts I Dt h er sPo r C . p lt a I n m ' !.11.6% 16% (C.rrenl p~.0).211,051

In addition, Rahul Gandhi also had the unenviable task ofselling the Congress party which has become anintrinsically unviable product in UP as in most otherstates of India. India has moved on considerably andIndians want their problems solved at the local levelsinstead of looking up to Delhi all the time. They wanthome-grown, strong, local leaders at the village, districtand state levels instead of these leaders being merenominees of some Delhi-based High Command. TheCongress needs to considerably re-engineer itself if it hasto start recapturing the state governments, one by one.Of course, the Congress can turn around andclaim that it has not, after all, done sobadly evenin these elections. Ithas improved its tally in UP,Manipur and Uttarakhand, maintained itsposition inPunjab andjust lost a fewseats inGoa.Mathematically, that argument is valid. But, indemocracies, while cold numbers do determinethe formation ofgovernments, politics, as such, isalways driven more by perceptions than by thelogic of cold numbers. And the perception thistime is that the Congress has lost out this round ofelections.

TheBJP perspectiveThe smartest thing that the BJP did in this round ofelections was to have managed to public expectationsreasonably well. Itstarted, for instance, by accepting thatPunjab and Uttarakhand had a strong tradition ofthrowing out the incumbent governments and that thesmall state of Goa was always known for throwing upunpredictable results. In Manipur, it said it wascontesting the elections only to fulfill its democratic dutyas a major national party. And, in Uttar Pradesh, itconceded that the contest was essentially between the twolocal parties, the SP and the BSP although it did, once in awhile, hint at the possibility of BJP showing some surprisewins.Thus, whatever successes have come its way are beingseen as great successes - whether it is the victory in thesmall state of Goa or giving a good fight in Uttarakhanddespite incumbency or retaining Punjab for the SAD-BJPcombine, reversing the decades-old tradition ofincumbent governments being always thrown out in thestate. In Uttar Pradesh, its tally has been reduced by 4seats but even that is being seen and projected as adetermined bid by the party in the wake of the strongwinds blowing in favour ofthe Samajwadi Party.Thus even though the BJP has nothing much to celebrateabout, it is sitting pretty on its limited successes while the

P.p.l.li.n 1 .1 cr Congress is taking all the flak for what isU r b. n % 31. being perceived as its electoral debacle.% a t B PL And it is not as if the BJP was merelyP.p.I.II.n 1.7. busy managing expectations. It hadLi l. racy ra l 8 O started preparing for these polls muchbefore and had also starting takingSa l r ai l 93 4 some strategic steps to contain the m p n d a n n .a l damage. In Punjab, for instance, itg r ow th r al . ( 5 y r s ) .. .1 0% sacked its ministers who were facingPa rC . p l la ln m l l. ti h dId th(C. r ren l Pr i ) . . IIB,292 corrup Ion c arges an rep ace emwith new faces. It told the allianceleader, the Akali Dal, that there was aperception that the pre-poll promises made by the BJP forthe urban areas had not been adequately implementedand that the situation needed to be corrected.

GSDP ' s

In Uttarakhand, just three months before the elections, itsecured the resignation of the then Chief MinisterNishank, who had widely come to be perceived as theepitome of corruption, and installed a governmentheaded by the scrupulously clean and efficient, MajorGeneral B.C. Khanduri. General Khanduri immediatelypositioned himself as being on the side of the Anna Hazaremovement by enacting the latter's Jan Lok Pal Bill. Thecontest in Uttarakhand, therefore, became one betweenthe anti-corruption crusaders and its opponents ratherthan being a BJPvs Congress contest.In Uttar Pradesh, the BJP President Nitin Gadkariunleashed the erstwhile MP Chief Minister, Uma Bharati,against stiff resistance from within his party. Uma Bharatimay not have exactly set the Ganges on fire with her fire-brand rhetoric, but her campaigning did have the effect ofre-energizing the dormant BJP cadres in UP who hadmostly given up the contest as, practically, a lost cause. In


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The Cover Sto zerrcelsr ASIA March 2012

Rahul Gandhi - what next?Nthing,he says. He tried and failed. He haschosen a path, he claims, and he will get someright and hewill get some wrong on the way up.Hewillcontinue tobewith the people ofUP.That is, indeed, the right spirit to go about it. RahulGandhi knows what is best for him and he is entitled tochoose his own path. But, isthe path chosen byhim goodfor the party he has inherited? That is, indeed, a milliondollar question which both he and his party have toanswer.Rahul Gandhi has set for himself the uphill task ofreviving the Congress inUttar Pradesh. Accordingto many analysts and, asthe current results havealso shown, this is almostan impossible task. In thecaste ridden Uttar Pradesh,the Yadavs and theMuslims are going to sayglued to the SamajwadiParty for quite some time.The dalits are similarly notgoing to desert Mayawatianytime soon. That takescare of nearly 55% of thepopulation and it is only inthe remaining 45% that theCongress and the BJP haveto compete. In the currentelections, Rahul Gandhihanded over thecompetitive advantage inthis field of 45% to the BJPby promising reservationfor Muslims. Who are these45%? These are mostly theupper castes, the non-YadavOBCsand the MBCs.Mobilizing these traditionally neglected sections ofsociety is going to be very hard work, indeed, and it isdoubtful whether the Congress organization is evergoing tobe up to the challenge.The kind of challenge this latest scion of the Nehru-Gandhi familyhas set for himself was never faced byanyof his ancestors, be it Motilal Nehru or JawaharlalNehru or Indira Gandhi or Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi.Each one ofthem has been a stalwart and a mass leaderin his or her own right and, without meaning any dis-respect to them, it must be said that they preferred toglide smoothly into succession rather than going up the

hard climb the way Rahul isdoing.In marketing jargon, there is a term Above The Line(ATL)marketing which focuses on creating a demandpull for a product with a view to increasing its sales.There is similarly a BelowThe Line (BTL) promotionwhich seeks to influence the buying decisions just atthe time of the purchase. Itwould seem that RahulGandhi is focusing on BTL promotion while hisancestors were happy concentrating the ATLstrategies.Itis not that they did not visit the villages or the poor

people's huts or did notvibewith the masses. Theydid all that but only foreffect and never madetheir climb up the ladderas being dependent ontheir success or failure inthese BTL efforts. MotilalNehru and JawaharlalNehru thus began straightaway with the CongressWorking Committeemeetings (there wasnothing higher to aspire toin those days). IndiraGandhi got herself chosenas the leader of theCongress parliamentaryparty after the death ofLalBahadur Shastri and RajivGandhi was sworn in asPrime Minister evenbefore that formality wascompleted.Rahul Gandhi has chosento be different and hiswishes need to be

respected and encouraged. That is, in fact, the way ayoung man should always aspire to go up the ladderbut hewillhave tobe tougher than hehas been ifhe hasto continue to tread this path. If the Congressorganization in UPis not up to the task, he will have torecreate the Congress organization in his own image.If the socio-economic policy package which theCongress has to offer to the UPvoters is not attractiveenough, he has to change that package.He is, surely, in a position to make these changes andone wishes him the best ofluck if he thinks he is up tothat task.a


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Generational shift? Sorry....Elections 2012 saw the next generation leaders,Rahul Gandhi from Congress, Akhilesh Yadavfrom the Samajwadi Party, Sukhbir Singh Badalfrom the Akali Dal and Manohar Parrikar from the BJPlead the efforts on behalf oftheir respective parties. Is itindicative of any generational shift taking place inIndian politics?Hardly so except, perhaps, in the case of ManoharParrikar in Goa. Parrikar is an IIT graduate and had tolose his earlier ChiefMinistership ofGoa in2005 due todefections from within his party. He is a first generationpolitician who has entered politics purely for the love ofit with a view to being able to do something substantialfor his constituents.Rahul, Akhilesh and Sukhbir, on the other hand, haveinherited their political aspirations from their celebrityfathers and, in the case of Rahul Gandhi, from hisgrandmother, great grandfather and great greatgrandfather as well. Akhilesh Yadav is the son ofMulayam Singh Yadav,the UPstrongman and erstwhileChiefMinister ofUttar Pradesh for more than one term.Sukhbir Singh Badal owes his political ambitions to hiscelebrity father, Prakash Singh Badal, who has spent hislife time in theAkali politics ofPunjab.Even in the current round of elections, both Akhileshand Sukhbir were actively guided by their respective

fathers. Rahul Gandhi was assisted by his entire familycomprising mother Sonia, sister Priyanka and brother-in-law Robert Vadera.Is there anything wrong in political families assistingtheir scions in their political careers? No, certainly not,there is nothing wrong about it. Itbecomes wrong onlywhen we start using big words like 'generational shift' todescribe sosimple a matter as a son inheriting the mantleof his father. Democracy is nothing if not an equalopportunity for all.Andwith the presence ofthese scionsin the political contest, others cannot be said to be havingan equal opportunity.And once it begins at the top, it goes down the line as wasevident in this round of elections in Goa where theCongress party gave as many as 12tickets out of 40 to amere 5 families in the State.And then there are Milind Deora, Sachin Pilot,AdityarajeScindia, Jitin Prasada and others who claim tobe leadingthe generational shift in the Congress party. They areyoung, no doubt, and they belong to the new generation.Givingthem leadership positions onmerits or as a matterofcourtesy to their celebrity fathers isfine. But,let us not,for god's sake, rationalize or glorify this feudal trait in thename ofgiving opportunities to the country's youth. Thatwould be a gross injustice to the nearly forty crore youngmen and women ofIndia. _

G A L V A N IS IN G T H E W O R L D

Exports of over 3 Million Metric Tonnesto 145 Countries

More than Rs.10,000 crores of ForeignExchange Revenues

16 Consecutive Awards fromThe Ministry of Commerce & Industry


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Anna Hazare'scontinuing irrelevance

Inything, the current elections have reconfirmedthe continuing irrelevance of Anna Hazare, BabaRamdev and all the otherwise very respectedcrusaders against corruption. Dothe results, despite theCongress having lost everywhere, reflect the agitationagainst corruption?To start with, Major General B.C. Khanduri, the thenChief Minister of Uttarakhand was being bandiedaround as the poster-boy ofthe Anna Hazare movementfor having enacted the Jan Lok Pal Bill advocated byIndia Against Corruption. Khanduri has not onlylost thestate to the Congress but was alsohimself defeated in hisown constituency ofKotDwar. Khanduri suspects that itwas a case of sabotage by his predecessor, Nishank whohad come to be perceived, incidently, as one ofthe mostcorrupt politicians in Uttarakhand. Bythe way,Nishankhas retained his seat.Team Anna campaigned extensively during theelections, sometimes calling the entire political partysystem and even the parliament as a den of corruptionand irrelevance. But the people turned out inoverwhelmingly large numbers to elect theirrepresentatives, thereby, exhibiting their commitmentto democracy, to political party system and to electionsbeing the onlymode ofbringing about an orderly changein the country.Team Anna has been advocating amendments to theelections laws to confer a right on the voters to say on theballet paper that they do not want tovote in favour ofanycontesting candidate. But this right already exists in theform of the voter having the freedom to stay away fromvoting. Yet, people queued up for hours to exercise theirchoice for preferred candidates amongst those on offer.Team Anna conducted referendums in severalconstituencies and claimed that more than 90% peopleeverywhere had voted in favour of the Jan Lok Pal Bill.Whatever happened to those referendums during thecurrent polls ?

PRAKASH SINGHBADAL

Goa, Nitin Gadkari was instrumental in sorting out theinternal dissidence and in endorsing Manohar Parrikar'sdecision to allot the party tickets to a considerablenumber ofCatholic,thus, widening the party's socialbase.And the results are there for all to see. There may benothing particularly exciting for the party inthese results but the fact remains that it hassnatched Goa from the Congress and has retainedPunjab for the SAD-BJP alliance. Ithas given agood fight in Uttarakhand, irrespective of whoultimately forms the government in that state,and it has, more or less, maintained its vote basein Uttar Pradesh. Likethe Congress, however, the BJP,too, will have to re-engineer itself in UP if it has to re-emerge as a viable alternative to the SPand the BSP.UP isalso vital for the BJP's aspirations at the national level.For this process of re-engineering, both the nationalparties will have to take on board the fact that they arenever going to get back the significant Muslim votewhichisan average of18% for the state as awhole.The National PerspectiveDo these election results have any message for thenational polity and for the country as a whole? Ofcourse,yes, and there are several messages, in fact. The first andforemost message is that the UPAgovernment, from nowon, becomes practically a lame-duck government over thenext twoyears till the 2014 parliamentary elections. Therehas already been a legislative and a policy stalemate forthe last several months and that isonlygoingto worsen.True, the state level elections donot alter the arithmetic ofthe LokSabha in anyway but they doalter its chemistry ina significant way. Electoral defeats sap the morale of thegovernment in power and affect its credibility in thecountry. As far as the RajyaSabha is concerned, even thearithmetic gets affected after a little bit of a time lag. Thenumbers in the Rajya Sabha are already against thegovernment and the next round of filling of vacancies isonlygoing tomake itworse.The results are also going to adversely affect thegovernment's ability to get its nominee elected asthe next


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OKRAM IBOBI SINGH

President of India and that is going to happen in the nextfew months itself. It will be the same with the VicePresident and the Chairman ofthe Rajya Sabha aswellasits Deputy Chairman. The ability of the UPAgovernmentto have its writ run in the states in a federal set-up is onlygoing to get worse, looking at the way the ChiefMinistershave recently taken a united stand on the issue of theNational Counter Terrorism Cell (NCTC).With allies likeTrinamool Congress, the DMK and the NCP alreadyrestive over several issues, the central government isgoingto look more and more fragile, unable to push its agendathrough.On the positive side, though, the dismal failure of theCongress party in these elections is going to lessen theinternal pressures on the government. In desperation, theparty may push for popular sops and populist schemes inorder to woo the electorate in time for the 2014 generalelections. But the government willbe in a better positionto resist these pressures on the ground that suchgimmicks like reservations for the Muslims have nothelped the party in any manner in Uttar Pradesh. But,bythe same logic,there willbe a resistance even fromwithinthe party, to controversial measures likeFDI in retail.Is the country headed for mid-term polls? The leader ofthe opposition, Sushma Swaraj, had said that she thinksso. Evenon grounds ofreal politic, it stands to reason thatparties like the Trinamool Congress and the SamajwadiParty would liketo use their current popularity to increasetheir presence in the Lok Sabha through immediateelections. But the hard reality is that no Member ofParliament would like his five-year term curtailed and thegovernment may drag on, listlessly though, till 2014. Andif Mamta Bannerjee or Mulayam Singh Yadav insist toomuch, the government could alwayslook for options likethe BSP,at a considerable price, though. In all likelihood,therefore, it seems that the status quo at the center willcontinue till 2014, with the government focusing only onwhat it can achieve, howsoever limited it may be, throughconsultations and broad consensus. Cometo think ofit, itis not suchbad thing, after all,in a federal democracy.

Good governance?

Thejury still out on whether good governanceis the way to electoral success. The evidenceon this issue from the current round of

elections is again mixed.There is no doubt, for instance, that Mayawati in UPand Digambar Kamat in Goa lost heavily because oftheir failure to provide good governance. But, didPrakash Singh Badal in Punjab and Ibibo Singh inManipur win because ofgood governance? And, howcomeGeneral Khanduri lost even his own seat? Well,opinions are divided onthat and there isno need tobein a hurry to answer these questions. Suffice to saythat good governance is a necessary though not asufficient condition for electoral success.What, after all, is good governance? In essence, itmeans law and order and rule oflaw - the equality ofall citizens before the law. Indians expected it evenfrom the foreign governments they had to sufferthrough history. Theyexpect itmuch more from theirown governments now.Good governance means steady economic growthand, in the Indian context, it also means inclusiveeconomic growth. This isbest achieved through smallgovernment rather than a big intrusive government.Indians alwayswanted the foreigners ruling them toconfine themselves to a few select areas and let thecitizens lead their own lives. They expect that muchmore now.What about corruption? Well, the concept of RamRajya is deeply imprinted on India's politicalconsciousness and people expect and demand veryhigh standards ofprobity from their rulers. They arealso aware ofRousseau's dictum 'power corrupts andabsolute power corrupts absolutely'. They are,therefore, very suspicious about their rulers and arecynical even about the perfectly rational policydecisions ofthe governments in power.Good governance, therefore, also has to beparticipative governance. Consultation confers onthe people part ownership ofpublic policy.Arroganceof power, on the other hand, repels people from thegovernment. Humility brings them closer.Allover the world, governments are merely toleratedas necessary evil. It is much more so in India, againbecause of the country's historical experience. Goodgovernance is, therefore, the least the people expectfrom their elected governments .


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e Cover Sto zerrcelsr ASIA March 2012

MAYAWATI B . C . KHANDUR I

1 1 t e l e s s o n s t o l e a r nThe first and foremost lesson to be learnt from theseelections is that the people of country have maturedpolitically and that they are deeply committed to ourconstitutional democracy, to the political party systemand to orderly change through the electronic votingmachine. Yes, they enjoy TV debates on the 24/7channels on political issues. They may also occasionallyparticipate in agitations and in candle-light protests butthey are clear about the changes that they want and theways ofbringing about those changes. That was evidentfrom the long queues before the polling booths and thehighest ever voting percentages recorded almosteverywhere. Yeteach one has voted asper his perceptionsand there has been no particular wave for or against anyparty in these elections. The winners have recorded onlya fewpercent higher votes unlike the huge margins whichused tobe seen in some ofthe earlier elections.Secondly, though the caste factor continues to berelevant, the elections have shown up considerableevidence of voting across caste and religious identities.By and large, the Jat Sikhs in Punjab voted in favour ofthe Akali Dal,the Dalits in favour ofMayawati in UP andUttarakhand and the Muslims and Yadavs in favour ofthe Samajwadi Party. Yet, there is considerable evidenceof people voting across caste and community dividesbecause, otherwise, the Samajwadi Party would simplyhave not been able to secure 224 seats or the BJP couldnot have succeeded in getting so many Catholics electedon its tickets or the Manipur Congress being able to buildsubstantial bridges between the Nagas and the Meteis.Next isthe question ofthe voting preferences of differentdemographic segments of the citizenry, namely, theyouth, the women, the men and the senior citizens. Thesequestions are being raised more frequently in the context

D IG AM BAR KAMAT

of the changing demographical profile of the countrywhere a majority ofthe population can be categorized asyoung. Ithas been demonstrated once again that theirconcerns may be different, in India, the families usuallyvote together. And, in matters political, the head of thefamilyhas a larger say.Similarly, as far as socio-economic segments areconcerned, caste and community interests continue toprevail over class interests except in the case of highlyunionized industrial labour. In the current round ofelections, no evidence has emerged of any voting on classlines in any ofthe fivestates.What about good governance? What role does it play inthe electoral context? One is not sure and the evidenceemerging even from this election on this issue is rathermixed. Else, how would one explain the fact that theSamajwadi Party which was ousted from power in 2007for having unleashed goonda raj has been returned thistime with absolute majority. The explanation that peoplemight have chosen lesser evilalsodoes not hold because areluctant electorate does not lead to record voter turn-outs and absolute majorities. Was the electorate swayedby baby-faced Akhilesh Yadav's promises of endinggoonda raj? Come on, have a heart. The electorate ofUPis not so naive. Itdid not trust any of the promises of theequally chubby Rahul Gandhi.The fact of the matter is that good governance did workagainst Mayawati as it did against the SP in 2007. Whatworked in favour of SP is, predominantly, the Muslimfactor along with a fewothers. Thus the moral ofthe storyis that while good governance is a pre-requisite for anygovernment, it is not necessarily a passport to electoralsuccess. This isas it should beThis isa sign ofthe politicalmaturity ofour electorate .

India Elections 2012

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