Hindustan Times

Roshan Kishore

What caused the shock defeat of the NDA in 2004? A clutch of factors was responsible, but the single biggest reason was a Congress revival. Let charts outline the phase.

A non-Congress first: A full term in power

The 1999 election elected India’s first non-Congress government that would complete a full term in power. While this was an important milestone in India’s political history, contemporary political observers agree that the 1999 result was always a matter of when rather than if.The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won the same number of Lok Sabha seats (182) in the 1998 and 1999 elections and its politicaluntouch graph was rising steadily since it fought its first election in 1984.What really surprised political observers was the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance’s (NDA) shock defeat in the 2004 election, and the even bigger defeat for the BJP in the 2009 polls. In fact, when the Congress crossed the 200 mark in the 2009 Lok Sabha election, it led to the question of whether it had managed to successfully reverse its long-term decline in Indian politics, which is the cornerstone of what political scientists call the evolution of the party system in India. While these conclusions were laid to rest in the 2014 election, it is worth looking at the 1999-2009 decade in Indian elections in detail.

<h2 style="text-align:center;">Vajpayee’s moderate face helped BJP gain more allies (and a majority) in 1999</h2>

The 1999 Lok Sabha election saw the BJP emerge as the single largest party for the third consecutive time. However, what really made this performance special was the fact that the party managed to win 182 Lok Sabha constituencies in 1999 by contesting fewer constituencies than it had in 1998 and 1996.It was this increase in strike rate in 1999 that allowed the BJP to forge a coalition that brought it pretty close to the halfway mark of 272 in the Lok Sabha.The distance between being a “political untouchable” and the party of choice for a large part of the regional party spectrum was made possible by Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s moderate face and a tactical decision to put issues of core Hindutva in cold storage. When the BJP decided to bring forward the 2004 election, it seemed that nothing could go wrong for the NDA.(See Chart 1 above: BJP share of seats contested and strike rate from 1984 to 1999)

<h2 style="text-align:center;">But the Congress inflicted two back-to-back surprise defeats on the BJP, in 2004 and 2009</h2>

Many factors are attributed to the shock defeat of the NDA in 2004. Some cite a backlash against the India Shining campaign, others call it a counter-polarisation in the aftermath of the 2002 Gujarat riots, and still others credit seasoned coalition politics and the formation of a stable coalition in the United Progressive Alliance (UPA).While these factors could be partly responsible, the single biggest reason for the BJP’s back-to-back defeats — 2004 in terms of direction and 2009 in terms of magnitude — was a Congress revival. Not only did the Congress finish as the single largest party in both 2004 and 2009, it also crossed the 200-mark in the 2009 election — for the first time since 1991. This raised the question of whether the Congress was on its way to a long-term revival in Indian politics.Of course, the 2014 election, in which the Congress collapsed to its lowest-ever tally of just 44 MPs in the Lok Sabha, laid that question to rest. And how!(See Chart 2 above: Congress seat share and vote share in Lok Sabha elections)

<h2 style="text-align:center;">The real story of the decade was the rise of non-Congress non-BJP parties</h2>

Counter-intuitive as it may seem, what truly differentiates the period from 1999 to 2009 in India’s political history is that the proverbial third force (read, non-BJP non-Congress parties) was the strongest in Indian politics during this period.When the BJP won 85 MPs in the 1989 Lok Sabha election and then went from strength to strength between 1989 and 1999, it laid the ground for bipolar polity in India. The birth of the UPA after the 2004 election results, an alliance that even had outside support from the communist parties, was a clear indication of this trend.A historical comparison (1984 onwards) of vote share and seat share shows that the combined vote share and seat share of the Congress and BJP fell to their lowest during the 1999-2009 period. This trend would be reversed from 2014 on, and the BJP, as the new national political hegemon, would eat into the support base of not just the Congress but of regional parties too.(See Chart 3 above: combined vote share and seat share of BJP and Congress)