The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) jubilation over its victories in the Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh elections, and the near-panic that defeat has sown in the Congress, are measures of the increasing fragility of our democratic system. It shows that even after 16 Lok Sabha and innumerable Vidhan Sabha elections, neither party’s leaders, nor the country’s media pundits understand how the simple majority voting system (SMS) – that our constitution makers adopted in 1948 – works.
Had the Congress understood this, it would have known from the start that the elections were likely to swing the BJP’s way in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, and possibly Chhattisgarh, for exactly the same reason they had swung the Congress’ way in 2018. This reason is a phenomenon that political scientists, especially those who have studied Indian politics, have labelled the “anti-incumbency factor”.
The anti-incumbency factor is no more than an accumulation of disenchantment with the ruling government that arises when it fails to meet the expectations of all of those who voted for it in the previous elections. This makes a proportion of them decide to try their luck with the other side in the next election.
The impact of the anti-incumbency factor is much greater in the SMS than it is in proportional representation. This is because it invariably magnifies the ratio of seats won by the largest party to the votes cast for it and correspondingly reduces it for all the remaining parties. In the theoretical limiting case, where the vote is equally divided between all contending parties, an increase of even 0.1% in the vote share of one party will give it 100% of the seats. The seat-to-vote magnification then is close to infinite.
Also read: Three Things BJP’s Definitive Victory in the Assembly Elections Tells Us
SMS has one important advantage over proportional representation, the other widely used system of voting in democracies. The advantage is that the compression of seats in relation to votes gets more pronounced as the political parties get smaller. Over time, this forces the fringe parties to merge with their closest ideological neighbours in order to retain some say in policy making. This need for compromise discourages the adoption of ideological – as distinct from pragmatic – programmes of governance.
As a democracy matures, this creates a two-party system in which both parties have shed extreme ideological positions in order to woo the uncommitted vote at the centre. In a fully mature system, therefore, even a small increase in the vote share of one party enables it to win a disproportionately larger number of seats.
That is what happened in the elections this year. In Rajasthan, the BJP won 115 seats against 73 in 2018, an increase of over 60%. But this was brought about by a mere 2.3% rise in its vote share. The Congress, on the other hand, lost 31 of the 100 seats it had won in 2018 despite increasing its share of the vote by 0.2%.
In Madhya Pradesh, the BJP’s seats increased from 109 in 2018 to 163 this year. While this increase came on the back of a 7.5% rise in its vote share, the victory was at the expense of a large number of smaller parties as the Congress’ vote share only fell by 0.5%
The table below shows that this is not the first time there has been such anti-incumbency swings in these states. The Congress won the election in Rajasthan in 2008, lost it in 2013, won again in 2018 and lost again this year. The BJP has shown the obverse pattern. The common feature of all the elections is the notable feature of all of these elections has been that small shifts in votes have caused huge gains and losses in seats.
Seats won and vote shares in Rajasthan, MP and Chhattisgarh 2008-18:
| Year | 2008 | 2013 | 2018 | 2023 | |||||
| State | Party | Vote | Seats | Vote | Seats | Vote | Seats | Vote | Seats |
| Rajasthan | BJP | 34.80% | 78 | 45.20% | 163 | 38.80% | 73 | 41.10% | 115 |
| Congress | 36.80% | 96 | 33.10% | 21 | 39.30% | 100 | 39.50% | 69 | |
| Madhya Pradesh |
BJP | 37.60% | 143 | 44.90% | 165 | 41.02% | 109 | 48.60% | 163 |
| Congress | 32.40% | 71 | 36.30% | 58 | 40.90% | 114 | 40.40% | 66 | |
| Chhattisgarh | BJP | 40.30% | 50 | 40.30% | 39 | 33% | 15 | 46.30% | 54 |
| Congress | 38.60% | 38 | 41% | 49 | 43% | 68 | 42.20% | 35 |
Both the triumphalism in the BJP, and the loss of self-confidence in the Congress this year stem from the seat count alone. The Congress voter base has remained utterly stable. It is the the BJP’s vote share that has risen. This has not taken place at the Congress’ expense, but at that of other smaller parties which have habitually attached themselves to the dominant party in their state.
What the Congress needs to take note of is that the shift of the vote of independents and smaller parties has been mainly towards the BJP, especially during the past decade. Over these four elections, approximately 10% of the vote that used to go to smaller parties and independents has shifted to the Congress and the BJP. But of the this 10%, two thirds has gone to the BJP alone.
This is the impact that Modi’s relentless drive to polarise the vote on communal lines has had. It is not enough to create Bharat. But it has sounded a warning to the vast majority of Indians who have so far taken Indian secularism and ethnic diversity for granted that both are now in deadly danger.
For secular India, forming the INDIA alliance was an essential first step. But its hopes will be dashed if it remains the last. Congress present Mallikarjun Kharge’s statement that INDIA needs to “rebuild and revive itself” shows how close INDIA had come to becoming moribund when the shock of the Vidhan Sabha defeats hit it.
That revival needs a clearly articulated and well publicised basis for the allocation of seats among its members; a common programme; a common platform from which to project it; and a strong research team that identifies issues and collects the data needed to expose the BJP’s failure to meet Modi’s promises, and to show how the INDIA alliance will meet the peoples’ most pressing needs.
Above all, it needs to show its unity in action. In the last three months, Modi’s administration has attacked every leader of the INDIA alliance who is capable of formulating such a response – be it Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Arvind Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia, or Mahua Moitra – with not a peep out of any member of the alliance in their defence.
This absolute silence is creating a walkover for Modi and his brand of Hindutva in the next Lok Sabha elections. INDIA has only four months left in which to break its paralysis and create the alternative image of India’s future that the majority of India’s people are hungering for.
Prem Shankar Jha is a veteran journalist.