1990s reflected a paradigm shift in Indian politics. The first 20 years after independence saw the dominance of Congress in India’s political landscape. Rajni Kothari, the celebrated social scientist, described the Indian political system of this period as the one-party dominant state. The year 1967 is supposed to be a watershed in Indian politics, for breaking the monopoly of the congress. Non-Congress governments came to power in several states that year. The culmination of this phase was in 1977 when Congress lost power even at the Centre. But this triumph of non-Congressism was halted in 1980 and a variety of circumstances returned the Congress to a dominant position in different parts of the country. The 1980s were almost a throwback to the political scene of 1947-67 period. However, since the 90s, the Congress has lost its pre-eminent position. The Mandal, Mandir and a plethora of regional sentiments have altered the electoral scene so drastically that the Congress cannot hope to return to its halcyon days in the near future.
This analytical framework explains the political reality in large parts of India. But Orissa does not fit into this construct neatly. The political fortune of the Congress in this small eastern state has evolved at variance with the national pattern historically, the 1977-1990 phase being the exception when the debacle and the triumph of the Congress in Orissa went hand in hand with that of the north Indian developments.
Contrary to the national trends, the Congress could not secure an absolute majority in Orissa in two successive elections after independence: 1952 and 1957. It had to resort to many unsavoury practices to muster a majority. After the 1957 election, the Congress returned to power with the support of the Jharakhand Party and a bunch of independents. But the latter sought to extract so high a pound of flesh that the ruling party headed by Harekrushna Mahtab desperately sought a coalition with the main opposition party in the assembly, Ganatantra Parishad. It was an extraordinary event in the history of Orissa, nay Indian politics, when the ruling party and the leading opposition joined together to form a government.
It was only in 1961 mid-term election that the Congress secured an absolute majority for the first time, under the leadership of Biju Patnaik. But the next election in 1967 saw the Congress’s decimation, with a breakaway group of Congress led by Dr Mahatab (Jana Congress) forming a coalition with the same Ganatantra Parishad in a new incarnation, the Swatantra Party. By the time the mid-term election took place in 1971, Biju Patnaik had formed a breakaway Congress group called Utkal Congress and Dr Mahatab had returned to the fold of Congress, dissociating with the Jana Congress. This time it was the turn of the Utkal Congress to join a coalition with the Swatantra Party to form the government under the leadership of R N Singh Deo. But much before the end of the tenure of this government, Biju Patnaik decided to return to the Congress fold paving the way for the formation of a Congress government. But when his hope for assuming the leadership position was foiled by a scheming Nandini Satpathy, Biju Patnaik revived the Utkal Congress and the Congress government fell. In the subsequent assembly election, in 1974, the Congress managed to become the single largest party, but three short of majority. It formed the government with the help of Communists.
In 1977, the Congress was routed in Orissa, as was the case in most other states north of Vindhyas. The 1980 election saw the resurgence of the Congress, as the Janata experiment went disarray. The 1985 election, a few months after the assassination of Indira Gandhi, reinforced the Congress position.
The elections since 1990 have returned three Patnaiks to the positions of political hegemony. In 1990, Biju Patnaik, the veteran leader of Janata Dal, took up the mantle of the chief minister again, after a gap of almost three decades. In 1995, the lever of power returned to the Congressman, J B Patnaik, who was also the Congress chief minister for two terms in the 1980s. Since 2000, Naveen Patnaik, the son of Biju Patnaik and leader of Biju Janata Dal, has been in power, in a coalition with the BJP which lasted till March 2009 when both the parties decided to go separately.
If one takes a broad overview of Orissa politics in the last sixty years, it is difficult to find any ideological fault lines. Dr Mahtab, who remained active in state politics till late 1970s, had given a go by to any ideological commitments when looking for allies to bolster his minority government. That explains why he had no qualms in going for a coalition with the Ganatantra Parishad which was supposed to be the party promoted by the protagonists of feudatories and princely states. The Congress was, ideologically, committed to the people’s movement waged against the oppressive rulers. And that was the burden of the Congress’s campaign against Ganatantra Parishad in the preceding elections. Sharing of power between the two ideologically polarized parties exposed the politics of opportunism, though both the parties tried to celebrate it as a case of political maturity.
Biju Patnaik, a leading acolyte of Mahtab then, had played a crucial role in making the coalition possible. But when Mahtab grew close to R N Singh Deo, the pre-eminent leader of Ganatantra Parishad, it raised Biju’s hackles and he engineered a rebellion against the ‘unholy’ alliance and the government fell.
When Biju Patnaik fell out with the national leadership of Congress and founded a regional outfit called Utkal Congress, he made a clarion call to fight the injustice meted out to Orissa by successive Congress governments at the Centre but all this posturing came to nought barely three years later when he re-entered the Congress fold in the hope of political rehabilitation.
Nandini Satpathy, another major political player of the state, was a communist turned Congresswoman. She wielded the baton on behalf of Indira Gandhi during the Emergency. J B Patnaik, a well-known writer and journalist, is credited with institutionalizing crime in state politics during his reign of a decade and a half. Naveen Patnaik, who claims honesty as his forte, has no qualms in gifting away the state’s mineral wealth, the equivalent of the family silver, to corporate giants, domestic and foreign, to line his deep political pockets.
It is true ideological promiscuity and corrupt practices are not the exclusive preserve of Orissa’s ruling class; it is a reality in state politics of India everywhere. But what sets Orissa apart from most other states is the fact that the Mandal and Mandir phenomena that transformed the political processes in the country had little effect in the state.
That the Mandal revolution of 1990 had no visible impact on the state politics is borne out by the fact that three upper caste Hindu politicians have adorned the highest political office since then. Identity politics had very few takers in Orissa since independence. It is not that Oriya society is not differentiated by caste. As a matter of fact, Orissa has a highly visible upper caste which has dominated the state politics and bureaucracy. Orissa also boasts of a very high concentration of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Together they constitute about 40 per cent of the population. Because of the Constitutional provisions, these two groups have adequate representation in politics and administration.
Orissa also had the privilege of one Scheduled Caste chief minister holding office twice, though briefly (Hemand Biswal first became chief minister on December 7, 1989 after an almost decade-long reign of J B Patnaik at the helm, only to face the election and lose office to Biju Patnaik on March 4, 1990. He again assumed the high office exactly 10 years later, under similar circumstances. He took office on December 6, 1999 to lead the party in an impending election. The Congress did miserably and he was replaced by Naveen Patnaik on March 5, 2000.
The Scheduled Tribe chief minister, Giridhari gomango, also had a short stint. He assumed office on March 17, 1999 but was shunted out before a year passed, on December 6. It was clear that each of them had been picked up as a stop-gap arrangement, just for the sake of tokenism.
At least, the SCs and STs are recognizable faces in state politics, though not pre-eminent ones. But the political forces that are virtually invisible are those belonging to the intermediate caste groups (officially known as Other Backward Classes). If we take the official statistics about the strength of the upper castes as 10 per cent, then the OBCs constitute about 50 per cent of the state’s population. But their representation in the state’s politics and bureaucracy is marginal.
This was, more or less, the case in many states before 1990. But things visibly changed in states north of Vindhyas soon after V P Singh administered the Mandal dose into the state polity. Upper caste politicians were cast aside from the leadership role which was taken over by those belonging to intermediate castes.
But the post-1990 political stage in Orissa did not reflect this change at all. Not that the Mandal stirrings were not audible in the state. In fact, a concerted effort was made to mobilize the intermediate castes as a political force. Srikant Jena, a close lieutenant of V P Singh and the Parliamentary Affairs Minister in the United Front government undertook the task of spearheading the Mandalisation process in the state.
Even Rabi Ray, a noted socialist leader and a Lohiaite, who was the Speaker of the Lok Sabha when the United Front government was in power, led the campaign for backward caste mobilization during the subsequent election. But the entire gamut of efforts bore little fruit. A political outfit with backward caste hegemony could not be established. Upper castes continued to maintain their dominance over the political process.
There is no definite answer as to why Orissa behaved so differently; West Bengal case may be explained by the fact that communists were ruling over the state, before and after the Mandal plank became popular. But the ruling establishment in Orissa is ideologically hardly different from its counterparts in other north Indian states.
Castes exist in Orissa’s social milieu and count for much in social exchanges, including marriages. Even there are caste organizations which seek to promote the caste affinity and cultural bonding and try to resolve intra-caste conflicts. In the post-Mandal Orissa, many backward caste organizations came to be established with renewed zeal. But, unlike in other states, these organizations could not be mobilised as a political vote bank. Why? Neither the analysts nor the practitioners of politics have a clue to hazard an answer.
There are many who would say that the absence of caste in politics is a reflection of a politically mature community. They would consider it a matter of pride that politics in the state is not mediated by socially stratified groups. But others would see the post-1990 scenario in the state as a negative development, whereby the traditionally dominant upper castes continue to retain their stranglehold over the lower segments of the society.
Even the Mandir effect in Orissa is not very evident. It is because Orissa is one state where religious minorities play very little role in state politics, because of their insignificant number. Christians are the largest minority community, but their number is no more than two and a half per cent of the state’s population. That too, they are scattered in different parts of the state. Muslims, who constitute a sizeable vote bank in many north Indian states, are hardly a political force in Orissa. So there is no incentive for communal politics in the state.
That explains why the Jana Sangh, which represented the Hindu communal sentiment, was hardly able to maintain a toehold in Orissa politics. Even as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), its new incarnation, emerged as a major political force in the country in the 1980s, its showing in Orissa was hardly spectacular. In 1985 elections, it managed to win just one assembly seat, increasing its tally to two seats in the next election in 1990.Its best performance as a solo player in Orissa politics was in 1995 when it managed to win nine seats.
The party’s spectacular rise in the state came in the aftermath of sewing up an alliance with the Biju Janata Dal (BJD), a regional outfit in December 1997. The alliance won a handsome victory in the two Lok sabha elections held in two consecutive years, 1998 and 1999. In 1998, BJD won nine out of the 12 seats it contested and the BJP had an equally startling performance by snatching seven out of the nine seats for which it fielded candidates. The performance of the alliance in 1999 Lok sabha election was all the more better. The BJP improved its tally by bagging 10 seats, whereas the BJP had a clean sweep in all the nine seats.
The success in the Lok Sabha elections was repeated in the assembly elections too. In 2000, the BJD won 68 out of the 84 seats it contested and the BJP 38 of the 63 seats. The combine had a formidable majority of 106 in a house of 147 members. In 2004 assembly election which was held along with the general election (the government recommended the dissolution of the assembly a year before its term was set to expire), the BJD-BJP coalition came up trumps despite the debacle the NDA faced at the national level. There was, of course, a small dent in the size of victory. In the Lok sabha election, their strength came down to 18 from 19. In the assembly, though, the decline was more substantial, from 106 to 93.
A closer scrutiny of the election results suggest that after the 1999 Lok Sabha election, in which the BJP put up a better performance than the BJD, the BJD has been a better performer than the BJP. In 2000 assembly election, for example, the BJD won 68 of the 84 seats it contested (a success rate of more than 80 per cent), whereas the BJP managed to win just about 60 per cent of the seats (38 out of 63 seats). In 2004, the rate of decline for both the parties was almost similar; the BJP won 32 seats whereas BJD was successful in 61 seats, the seat allocation remaining the same. In the Lok sabha election, the BJD improved its tally from 10 to 11, whereas the BJP’s number came down from 9 to 7.
In terms of vote percentages, though, it has been a steady rise for the BJP. In 1990, it had secured a mere 3.56 per cent votes when it had won two seats. In 1995, when it managed to win nine seats, its vote rose to 7.88 per cent. In 2000, it had the best ever performance with more than 18 per cent votes, which came down marginally to about 17 per cent in 2004.
Some claim that the sharp rise in the BJP’s political success in the state owed largely to the BJD’s popular support base which was transferred to the alliance partner wherever it contested. They would argue that the BJD had hardly benefited from its association with the BJP, as the marginal support that it received from the latter was more than neutralized by the number of ‘secular’ voters that were turned away because of its association with a ‘communal’ party. This is also the view of the BJD’s protagonists who wanted to revise the basis of seat allocation between the two partners in their favour.
There are others who argue that the BJP’s rise in Orissa did not owe to the Biju legacy, but to the popularity and larger-than-life image of its leader, Atal Behari Vajpayee. They aver that the spectacular rise of the BJP came about in a period when the party had put all communally sensitive issues on the backburner and had put a premium on all-round development. If the party had gone alone and fielded candidates in the whole state, this view asserts, then it could have put up an equally impressive performance, if not better.
Whether the BJP’s resounding success owed a great deal to the borrowed support or it was a reflection of its genuine base on the ground would be known after the ensuing Lok Sabha and assembly elections in April 2009 when the party faces the electorate on its own, as the alliance split barely a month before the state goes to polls.
But one thing is certain, BJP had anticipated this break-up as its rumblings were heard for quite some time. The reasons were obvious. After the NDA’s failure to capture power again at the Centre, the influence of the BJP’s national leadership over the state government diminished. Even the illness of Vajpayee and his withdrawal from the leadership position rendered BJP’s bargaining power precarious. The installation of L K Advani as the shadow prime minister gave rise to communal overtones, given his past record.
The BJP knew that there was a re-thinking within the BJD about the cost effectiveness of the alliance. The major handicap of the state BJP was the lack of any acceptable leader to provide dynamic leadership at the state level. That is why they chose to fall back on a communal agenda to consolidate their position.
Kandhamal developments provided the necessary backdrop for the new campaign. In the wake of the anti-Christian riots, the BJP believed that at last its communal campaign had taken roots. Its runaway success in the entire tribal region was taken for granted. There were strong beliefs that even people in the coastal region were taken up by the communal campaign and the BJP’s popularity had increased by leaps and bounds in the coastal belt. It had a traditional support base in western Orissa where Ganatantra Parishad and Swatantra Party had the core strength. The BJP had usurped the same political base. So there was a general feeling within the party that the time had come for the BJP to become the major partner in the alliance. Statements emanating from the BJP quarters alluded to a re-arrangement of seat allocation in the ensuing election to that effect.
Naveen Patnaik, the BJD leader, was on the tenterhooks as he was not able to fathom the truth behind the big claims of the alliance partner. That is why he was trying his best to keep the leaders of Sangh Parivar in good humour during the Kandhamal riots, by providing all possible protection to the communal elements.
But the election results to the local bodies exposed the BJP’s false claim. The BJP did badly in municipality elections in the coastal belt, including Cuttack and Bhubaneswar. Its performance in the tribal belt of Mayurbhanj was also dismal. To top it all, the BJP drew blank even in the Kandhamal district which was supposed to be its brightest signpost of success.
For Naveen Patnaik, the icing on the cake was that the Congress, BJD’s arch rival, too fared badly in these elections. This emboldened him to snap ties with the BJP in the run up to the 2009 elections. Patnaik had covered the tracks for the BJP for some time thinking that the Hindu population of the state might have been afflicted by the communal sentiment because of the coalition partner’s sustained campaign. But when the local election results proved otherwise, he was quick to dump the BJP in a bid to retrieve the ‘secular’ ground.
The seat distribution between the BJP and the BJD was on 4:3 basis right in the beginning — though BJD, with all its Biju legacy, was an established party and the BJP was a fledgling one — only because Naveen Patnaik was a greenhorn in politics who was inducted into the leadership of the party on the demise of his father, Biju Patnaik. He was so overwhelmed by the new developments (he became a cabinet minister in the NDA government) that he buckled under the BJP’s pressure for larger number of seats, although its strength in the 1995 assembly (just 9 in a house of 147 members) did not warrant it. Now that Naveen Patnaik is a veteran with a decade-long experience in state politics, he wanted to cut the BJP down to size.
Thus, both the parties have developed exaggerated notions of their popularity. The BJP feels that its dismal performance in panchayat and municipal elections would not be reflected in the election to the state assembly and the Lok Sabha, as the issues and concerns are radically different. They hope to do better with an independent identity..
Naveen Patnaik, who has been gloating over the strategic move to drop the election partner for over a decade, may be in shock when the results are out. He has winked at the strategic blunder his father had committed in 1995 out of hubris. Biju Patnaik had notched up a more spectacular victory in 1990 (123 seats) than what his son achieved a decade later. In that election, he had some seat arrangement with the left parties. But the results boosted his ego so much that he decided to impose humiliating conditions on them, which they refused to accede.
The result was that Biju’s Janata Dal was reduced to a meager 46 seats whereas the Congress, which had become a rump in 1990 with just 10 seats, bounced back to power by winning 80 seats. It is true that the left outfits too performed miserably. They were reduced to just one seat from the six they had in the previous assembly.
But Biju’s Janata Dal was the bigger loser, as it lost the election in more than two dozen seats by a margin of just 2000 votes, which possibly it could have reclaimed with pockets of left base, had the seat arrangement in order.
Naveen Patnaik faces a reverse situation. His party has won elections in more than a dozen seats in the last election by a margin of less than 2000 votes. Those seats may slip out of its hands in the absence of the coalition with the BJP. He has, of course, announced the plan for a seat arrangement with the left parties. But how will that translate in the field is a big question as many of the left leaders, at the field level, have been opposed to the Patnaik government’s economic policy, especially the policy of handing over the state’s mineral wealth to corporate giants on a platter. How will they sink their differences, and more important, explain their new-found love for each other to the electorate is a moot question.
Another imponderable is the fate of the Congress. After its stupendous success in the eighties, it faced the ignominy in the 1990 election but bounced back in 1995 to capture power. In all the three occasions, the man who led the state Congress was J B Patnaik who is now sidelined. In the run up to the election, the Congress in Orissa is being led by a collegium, with a president and a host of working presidents. Whether it will lead to broad basing its support base, or it is an invitation to anarchy, the election results future will tell.
The fact is that the Congress ought to have been the party to gain the most from the drifting away of the ruling coalition. After all, the Congress had managed to garner 30 per cent votes in the previous two elections when it was pitted against the BJP-BJD alliance. In the absence of the alliance, it ought to fare better. But the lack of a dynamic leader at the helm and intense infighting is the bane of this party now.
If the recent local body elections are any indicators — Naveen Patnaik lays a lot of store by them — then the fate of the Congress and the BJP are sealed. The BJD will laugh all the way to power. But who knows if the local body election results turn out to be a false alarm, and the assembly and Lok Sabha elections spring a surprise?
Whatever the results, it will only help to reinforce and vindicate the premise that the politics in Orissa in the post-Mandal and post-Mandir phase has not seen a marked departure from the past. The state politics has mostly been driven by a handful of personalities, bereft of any ideology or principle, across the ruling-opposition divide But then individual factor has remained important in the political domain of all states at all times, but the distinguishing factor in Orissa is the near absence of the identity politics which political actors in other states have to accept as fait accompli. That explains the continuity — rather than the epistemological break in 1990s — in Orissa politics since independence.
Published in an edited book by CSDS (2009)
Sangharsh India 