The results of the state elections in India, with big wins for the ruling coalition parties, Congress and the Communists, show India in healthy democratic form — not that there has ever been any doubt about that. However, there are few national conclusions that can be drawn from the voting, other than that there is a strong public desire for government that is socially concerned, both at the center and at state level. Largely local issues and each region’s political realities drove these elections. That the Communists did well in West Bengal and Kerala has as little significance for the rest of India as the defeat in Tamil Nadu of one local Tamil party, the AIADMK, at the hands of the local rival, the DMK. The Communists’ successes should not be interpreted as signifying a shift to the far left in India; West Bengal and Kerala are the bastion of Indian communism; the Communists were bound to do well there.
The world’s longest-serving democratically elected Communist government in West Bengal owes its success to the support of tens of millions of impoverished peasants, but in modern India it is also reinventing itself to attract middle-class urban votes. West Bengal’s Communists have changed tack in the past five years to woo foreign and domestic investment, boosting the economy and impressing capitalists. The left government in Kerala, however, continues to hold onto its rigid past policies. And it is likely to miss out on the nation’s economic boom. No sane businessman is going to invest in this state; there are too many strikes, too many regulations, too much red tape; labor is too politicized. It is so much easier to go elsewhere — to Tamil Nadu, to Karnataka or north to Rajasthan, which is fast developing as a center of light industry in India.
It is not just West Bengal but Kerala too that needs a government which will cut regulations and encourage investment. Handicrafts and tourism, prime areas of the economy in Kerala’s case, cannot meet the employment needs of a growing population. Keralites are the best-educated, the most highly skilled, of all Indians. But without jobs, they will have to continue to go abroad for work. That is what having a Communist government actually means.
As for Tamil Nadu, where politics have been wholly regional ever since Congress was voted out of office 39 years ago, and where the controversial and self-aggrandizing chief minister, Jayaram Jayalalitha, has now been soundly defeated by her archrival, the equally controversial and equally self-aggrandizing M. Karunanidhi, the most intriguing aspect of the result is Congress’ showing, its best in years. Does it signal an end to the love affair with Tamil regionalism and a move back to the Indian mainstream? Are Tamils finally getting sick of the corruption at the heart of Tamil Nadu politics? Congress will now be in coalition with Karunanidhi’s DMK: Will the new coalition government be a cleaner government, or will the change merely provide yet again the chance for bitter rivals to settle old scores? That remains to be seen.
