Parliamentary Elections and Paradigm Shifts in Karnataka
Shiva Kumar M
Assistant Professor
Department of Political Science
P.E.S College of Science, Arts and Commerce
MANDYA-571401(India) shvkumarm@gmail.com Mob: 9901424345
Dr. R.N. Dinesh
Research Guide & Associate Professor of Political Science
University Evening College University of Mysore,
MYSURU-570006 rndinesh31@gmail.com Mob: 9448074889
Abstract
Democracy is the most accepted form of Government in the world today. The 2014 elections reveal that there has been change as well as continuity in the electoral politics of Karnataka. The role of caste and amalgamation of few castes for electoral success was visible. India has been considered as one of the example of successful Democracies in the world. The year 2014 will be remembered for the wind of change on the political scene. The BJP led by Narendra Modi won the confidence of the voters in the Parliamentary Elections. The verdict of this election was both astounding and imperative. The BJP had campaigned with the agenda of ‘Hindu Nationalism’, and even the observers had persuaded the same outcome for the saffron party.
Keywords: Elections, Democracy, Narendra Modi wave, Electorate, Namo Factor, Hindutva.
Introduction:
The Modi Wave - Behind the Results of 2014 General Elections in India:
The sixteenth general elections for the Lok Sabha of India were held in 2014. The verdict of this election was both astounding and imperative. It was true to the conscience of everyone that the conventional national party BJP would emerge as victorious. The BJP had campaigned with the agenda of ‘Hindu Nationalism’, and even the observers had persuaded the same outcome for the saffron party. Hence, this article examines the factors that provided this surprising result conceivable.
The Background:
Though in an essentially streamlined approach, the general elections of 2014 could be observed as a fight between the Indian National Congress Party (INC) and the Bharathiya Janatha Party (BJP). In an attempt to comprehend how the fight was ensued, and previously unfolding the fight itself, the three important contextual elements must be observed:
1) How the battle field of politics was demarcated?
2) The framework of the opposing parties; and
3) The fortes and faintness of the two contrasting frontrunners.
Important Objectives:
The main purpose of this study is to recognize and examine the important issues that influenced the process of general elections held in 2004. It also embarks on how the electoral process influenced the legislative assembly elections in the selected constituencies:
The Scope of Research:
The Battlefield of Politics:
The battlefield of politics could possibly have been surrounded by the outcomes of UPA administrations commanded by the Congress in the 2004 governments, and the astounding upshots of the Modi headed BJP rules in the state of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014. However, the term ‘potentiality’ is not employed by any chance all through the election promotion. Yet, the outcomes of the Modi regime in Gujarat developed a kind of orientation pattern. Any debate of the UPA administrations in Gujarat turned into a kind of situational model and restricted to the level of disgusting humiliations. All these restrictions had converted public dominion in the second part of UPA governments. It was connected to the breaking down of development rate and the determined high inflation, mainly for food packages, all through the equal period.
To put in other words, the Congress Party was incapable to lay the privileges and achievements of the UPA governments ever since 2004. These were considered as distant and irrelevant from the standpoint of financial justice in society. Having ruled continuously for ten years, the government of UPA had struggled through a sequence of neo-liberal transformations, well-adjusted by societal policies intended at safeguarding the weaker section of society and expanding the universe of democracy. The neo-liberal transformations had deciphered into stable development of the GNP, even if that development had braked down in the previous two years.
In addition, the UPA administrations had executed regulations like ‘National Rural Employment Guarantee Act’ (NREGA) in 2005, providing every pastoral household the right to work for 100 days; the ‘Right to Information Act’ (2005); the ‘Forest Rights Acts’ (2006), giving away land and the rights of forest to the tribes of India; the ‘Food Security Act’ (2013), providing a certain quantity of food at low prices on a monthly basis to around 80% of the populace; and the ‘Land Acquisition Act’ (2013).1
The policies of UPA government were regarded as the extension of liberal transformations. Even the initiation of an anti-poverty and anti-discrimination rule had been vociferously disapproved because of the delimitations involved in policies. However, in the situation, this could be considered as a signal that such guidelines signified a well-adjusted approach to the difficulties they were thought to resolve. This was precisely expressed by Jairam Ramesh; one of the then spearheads of the Congress party, claimed afterwards the downfall.
The Two Opposing Armies (Parties):
Narendra Modi was really geared by the army of political forces for seeking victory in the general elections of 2014. The army was made up of forces like the BJP, the RSS, and the alliance NDA. Furthermore, the real supporters of Modi were found in two influential social assemblages; that included the Indian media like ‘Call India Inc.,’ and the ‘middle class of India’.
Just like the other political parties of India, the BJP was far away from being recognized as an organization of democracy. Conversely, the central headship of the BJP was fragile after the general elections of 2004. A number of powerful leaders were required to attain the top position of prominence and to make use of the available support in their corresponding states. In the hunt for power, Modi emerged as one of the dominant leaders of state. But the other BJP state leaders like Shivraj Singh Chouhan of Madhya Pradesh Vasundhara Raje of Rajasthan and Raman Singh of Chhattisgarh were not able to be fruitful when compared to Modi in their respective states. This provides the picture that the BJP had deep roots of politics in quite a number of regional states.
Besides the party, there was great support bestowed by Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh(RSS). This is regarded as the most traditional imperative organisation based on the ideology of ‘Hindutva’. When it comes to deliberate on the RSS, it is a private, exceptionally interwoven and non-parliamentary body; which reins, more or less diligently, or impacts most of the partisan or Hindu organisations of society, comprising the BJP. In the battle of election, the strength of a party depends on its social and structured volunteers, for instance, just like the RSS.
The Two Opposing Leaders:
The electoral promotion of 2014 can be defined as a determined fight between national parties, namely, the BJP and the Congress Party, concluding up in the greatest catastrophic downfall ever agonized by the former during its entire past. No reservation, in the electoral fight of 2014, precisely as at Cannae, the huge competence crack between the frontrunners of two important authorities on the battleground – Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi, made the variance.
The new generation leader of the congress Rahul Gandhi is the successor to a partisan family that has administrated India for maximum of its account as a self-governing nation. Unfortunately, he was strapped into the political battlefield by his mother, Sonia Gandhi, who has remained as the frontrunner of Congress Party and the actual control behind the chair in UPA administrations ever since the late 1990’s. The difficulty is that Rahul Gandhi has continuously seemed to be both a particular unenthusiastic political competitor, and an individual with lack of any kind of political talents and individual personality.14
The Election Campaign of Narendra Modi:
The prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi began his campaign of election in September 2013. This campaign was started even before the ruling Congress party had started. Right from the beginning, he presented himself as the political figure accountable for the exceptionally fruitful ‘Gujarat Model’ of growth, and the individual who, if chosen prime minister, would instrument it in entire country. This overriding component was complemented by others, possibly less often reiterated, but scarcely less imperative in winning vital pathways of the electorate. This was the reality that - not like whatever had been the regulation in BJP headship he himself hailed from a low caste. This was accompanied by the consideration he provided to the schedule castes (SC), demonstrated by his statement on 3rd March, 2014, at an election promotion in Muzaffarpur, that the subsequent period will fit to the ‘Schedule Castes’ (SC) and the ‘Other Backward Classes’ (OBC’s). This was a deciding factor, predominantly in the states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, where the other backward classes and the schedule castes are plentiful and politically influential.
In the same way, the Congress party had also started to involve in the election campaign to counter the Modi led BJP. But in the process of showing aggression against the opposition, the party committed one or the other blunders. With over enthusiasm the former minister Mani Shankar Aiyar, who served in the cabinet of Manmohan Singh, made a mocking remark against Modi as ‘The Chai Wallah’. This remark was hinted at the past life of Modi; as a boy Modi served tea in the shop of his father and the remark of Aiyar meant ‘Modi gained the idea of capitalism when selling tea’. But the BJP accepted remark of Congress party and appealed that those who flourished on family politics could not even consent being confronted by somebody “whose momma used to sponge the dishes”. The clever management of the issue by the ‘Citizens for Accountable Government’ rapidly accomplished of the omnipresent ‘Chai Wallahs’ of India as numerous pro-Modi campaigners.
The Election Campaign of Rahul Gandhi:
On the occasion of election campaign, the Congress supremo Sonia Gandhi formed a committee beneath her chairpersonship, completed up with prominent leaders of the party, who were hypothetical to direct the subsequent electoral fight. Though, after conferencing only once formally, the promotional group de facto clogged functioning, Sonia Gandhi turned inactive, and the suggestions made at the conference of committee were overlooked. The responsibility of promotion conceded into the pointers of Rahul Gandhi, his beloved sister Priyanka Gandhi and an assemblage of non-political scholars, generally foreign cultured consultants.
Perfunctorily, “The electoral campaign team of Rahul Gandhi” seemed much like the pro-Modi ‘Citizens for Accountable Governance’ (CAG). But ironically there were two crucial dissimilarities: Team Rahul was not very effective, and its associates were “folks with no electoral knowledge, no tallness, vertical, admiration and trustworthiness in the party. Conceivably more dominant, Rahul Gandhi and his squad “did not eavesdrop” either to the party bands or to the Congress representatives and senior frontrunners, and did not interconnect with them. The outcome “was a crack between proletarian workers and party front-runners” with the party turning “insensitive” to commands from the highest.
The 2014 General Elections in Karnataka:
The BJP performed well in the 2014Lok Sabha elections in Karnataka by winning 17 out of 28 seats. The congress and JD (S) got nine and two seats each. The voter of Karnataka has been unique remains true because the choice of Karnataka voters in 2014 again exhibited their capacity for making distinctions between a National and State Election. One of the typical features of Karnataka election is that it generally goes against the ruling party at the centre. After a long time, Karnataka went with the National trend in a Lok Sabha poll.
The Placement of Advanced Techniques and Ancient Procedures in the Election Campaign of Modi-Centric BJP:
The election campaign of Narendra Modi during the general elections of 2014 was considered unique in numerous conducts. For the first time, the foremost candidate for the office of Prime Minister was a Chief Minister who electioneered by broadcasting his previous record in his state of Gujarat. He appealed that he would imitate at the national hierarchy what he had accomplished in his state in rapports of growth and started his crusade for the office of prime minister rapidly after he won the assembly election for the consecutive third time in December 2012. He was prearranged to the Parliamentary Board of BJP in March 2013, and befitted as the Chairman of ‘Central Election Campaign Committee’ of BJP in June, in meanness of the antagonism of senior party bests comprising Lal Krishna Advani. In an approach, then, the election campaign of Modi in 2014 was typically diverse because, in comparison with folks of Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani from 1999 forwards, the party curtailed its shared charm and that of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), in directive to endorse one gentleman only. The Modi-centric, democratic nature of promotion was obvious from the appeal of its mass statement and the correlative freedom of Narendra Modi from the party.
Conclusion:
The Lok Sabha election campaign of Bharathiya Janatha Party (BJP) in 2014 was idiosyncratic. In a way, it had linked the innovative methods with tried and tested topographies. Just for this multi-oriented party, the elevation of a single spearhead, the manner Narendra Modi had been endorsed was completely new-fangled. On the contrary, the Indian National Congress Party (INC) had worked it previously in the 1970’s during the reins of ‘Indira Raj’ (mainly owed to the authorities of mother Indira Gandhi and her son, Rajeev Gandhi). Just like Mrs. Gandhi, Narendra Modi to a certain degree liberated himself from his party by trusting more than any leaders of BJP before him; he worked to ‘mobilize the voters’ who owed their loyalty to him individually. These vigorous enthusiasts, besides with an enormous practice of different conduits of communication, empowered him to familiarize a new procedure of ‘multimedia populism’ in a way to saturate the space of public - rather some degree which was simply made impossible as possible by the outlay of unparalleled amounts of money.
Above and beyond these new characteristics, nevertheless, the campaign of BJP in 2014 reserved old features, including the refrain of anti-corruption, the catalogue of caste, the division of communal, and more importantly, the upkeep of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
References