What do the three outgoing chief ministers, Bengal’s Mamata Banerjee, Tamil Nadu’s M.K. Stalin and Kerala’s Pinarayi Vijayan have in common? The obvious answer is that they’ve all received a bruising thumbs down from voters in their states after long stints in power.
They’re also all over 70 – Mamata is 71, Stalin is 73 and Vijayan a crusty 82 – a reminder of how Indian politics, particularly at the state level, has often been dominated by veteran leaders even as the electorate itself undergoes rapid change.
By contrast, their voters are getting younger than in earlier elections, a demographic shift that is beginning to reshape political outcomes. Both in Bengal and Tamil Nadu, voters below 30 form about 20 per cent to 22 per cent of the electorate.
Many are first-time voters and have only witnessed one government that has been in charge from the time they came of age and gained voting rights, making anti-incumbency sharper and less forgiving than in the past.
What happens next to the three losing chief ministers? Mamata is defiant, making it clear that she doesn’t accept the election results and is girding up to fight it out, in keeping with her long-standing reputation as a street fighter who built her career taking on more powerful opponents.
Calling the outcome a “murder of democracy” and insisting she will not resign, she has signalled a long battle ahead. Mamata has always been a scrappy politician but it’s hard to see her coming out in front in this battle. The governor can impose President’s Rule and dismiss her government as a last resort.
The key question here: can Mamata hold her party together for five years in opposition?
She has always been a fighter but even that may not be enough to defeat the forces against her, especially if defections begin to gather pace. Bengal politics could be about to turn nastier than anyone imagined
There's a second thought too that must be worrying all political leaders like Mamata and Rahul Gandhi. The BJP now controls eastern India, the north and also the west, or to put it another way, the party rules in all the states between the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea, giving it an unprecedented geographical sweep.
Will this be treated as the green signal to steamroller ahead with contentious cultural and legislative goals like the Uniform Civil Code?
The Tamil Nadu tangle
In Tamil Nadu it initially looked as if Vijay, the baby-faced 51-year-old movie superstar, had romped past the post and was the clear winner by a mile. But now fresh political developments are rapidly unfolding.
The AIADMK and the DMK are holding talks and there is some buzz they could join hands and form an alliance. But the numbers here are still tricky. The DMK’s 59 seats and the AIADMK’s 47 add up to only 106.
Vijay has 108 but he needs another 10 seats to reach the necessary 118. Vijay had been promised backing by the Congress which has five seats and it was hoping to get support from the CPI and CPM which both have two seats each and another party the VCK has one.
Tamil Nadu Governor Rajendra Arlekar has ordered his officers to halt plans for a mega-swearing in and confirm if any party or group actually has a majority.
If Vijay does make the numbers and scramble to power Stalin has an almost existential question to ponder on: is this the death of the Dravidian movement that rose to power after the anti-Hindi agitations of the 1960s, culminating in the watershed 1967 Tamil Nadu election? All the chief ministers from C.N. Annadurai onwards have been staunch Dravidians.
Nobody really knows where Vijay, the baby-faced 51-year-old movie superstar, stands on the issues that are central to that ideology, including language, federalism and social justice. But the action hero’s father is Christian and this is reflected in his name Joseph Vijay Chandrasekhar (his name has also been the subject of many memes, focusing on Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and the coincidence that Tamil Nadu has long been ruled by leaders sharing that name).
According to pollsters, voters between 18-39 who make up 42 per cent of Tamil Nadu's electorate were particularly strong supporters of Vijay who declared the election was to “bring change”.
Women also were big backers. Voters flocked to Vijay despite the impressive 11.2 per cent growth the state logged under Stalin last year.
One question is being asked: did voters tick his name because of the extraordinary promises he made in his manifesto including six free gas cylinders per year for every household in the state. Other extravagant promises include Rs 4,000 for unemployed graduates and even 8gm of gold as marriage assistance and a silk saree for economically weaker section brides
Stalin was impressive in defeat, striking a conciliatory and disciplined tone that suggested an eye on the long game. “There is no victory we have not seen; no defeat we have not faced,” he said, before adding that he accepted the people’s verdict. The next day he visited the DMK party office and thanked the workers there.
Then on Tuesday he visited his constituency Kolathur in an open-top vehicle. He got a rousing reception from the crowd, a large number of whom may not have voted for him. There’s no question that the DMK will hold together though there are beneath-the-surface murmurings about his son Udayanidhi.
His rapid rise, seen as driven by lineage rather than long administrative experience. At another level it looks almost certain that the AIADMK will not be able to hang together on its own. .
The Kerala file
In Kerala, the story has a different narrative shaped by the state’s unusually stable ideological alignments. It’s not Pinarayi’s defeat that is the key talking point. But almost everyone seems certain that the Left will not disintegrate even though it has been swept from power.
Says one senior journalist: “The roots here are too deeply entrenched and in different fields.” He adds: “If you take out the Pinarayi factor there is still a lot of leftism in the society.”
Besides that, the CPM in Kerala has plenty of strong second-rung leaders who will still be around five years from now, reflecting the party’s cadre-based structure.
Pinarayi Vijayan still won in Dharmadom where he has won many times before, underlining his personal hold over his constituency. But his winning margin was sharply reduced and he was even behind his opponent after one round of counting, a symbolic dent in an otherwise formidable record.
He will be 87 by the time the next scheduled election takes place. By then, the generational shift already visible among voters is likely to have reached the Left’s leadership with younger figures taking over.