The power of one

They came in buses, trucks, autos, bicycles and, of course, on foot. Beating the afternoon sun and the swirling dust, they waited for Amma. A heavy police bandobast and the barricades ensured that would get to see the leader only from a distance. Cutouts of the Red Fort and Parliament dominated the ground. The loudspeakers blared: Ithu Chengottakkupokum rayile, varunga, varunga/ Delhi simhasanathil Amma amarum katchiye kanunga, kanunga (This is the train to the Red Fort/ Watch Amma sit on the Delhi throne).
A roar went up when the crowd spotted Jayalalithaa’s chopper. She drove in an open jeep from the helipad to the stage and addressed the crowd. She listed her government’s achievements, blasted the DMK and the Congress and called on the people to vote for her candidate so that Tamil Nadu’s interests would be taken care of. The local candidate , R Gopalakrishnan, stood on the stage all through her speech, hands folded and spine bent like a question mark.
Gopalakrishnan won the Madurai seat with a convincing margin. So did 36 others Jayalalithaa fielded.
Her presidential-style campaign was similar to Narendra Modi’s . It was focused : Vote for my candidates to strengthen my hands. She dominated the ads and posters. Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal and Naveen Patnaik in Odisha ran similar campaigns, projecting themselves as strong leaders who can deliver. The opposition in these states, divided and led by men who could not brand themselves as leaders with a mission, failed to counter these high-voltage campaigns.
Take a look at the figures. In Tamil Nadu, the AIADMK got 44% of votes and 37 seats while the DMK-led front mopped up 27% votes but failed to win a single seat. In West Bengal, Trinamool won 34 seats with 39% votes while the Left Front with 30% votes managed just two seats and BJP with 17% votes, three seats. BJD almost swept Odisha with nearly 44% votes and 20 of the 21 seats whereas its opposition, Congress and the BJP polled 26% and 21% votes respectively. Clearly, a divided opposition boosted the profile of the party and leader in office.
With Modi’s campaign, the national mood, was set for someone who projected herself as a strong leader. Jayalalithaa, Mamata and Naveen were lucky that their territories weren’t saffron strongholds. Nitish Kumar too ran a similar campaign but sank in the BJP wave.
Indian elections are not new to Presidential-style campaigns. Jawaharlal Nehru sought votes for his party almost like a presidential candidate. But schooled in the traditions of British parliamentary democracy, he kept it fairly subtle. The socialists and communists had brilliant minds like Ram Manohar Lohia and AK Gopalan but they projected themselves as representatives of the collective party leadership. The nation still yoked to its feudal past and in the hangover of Imperial rule was not ready for collective leaderships . After a stuttering start, Indira Gandhi consolidated her hold over the Congress by projecting herself as the Iron Lady. Her party president Devkanth Barua did the rest when he coined the slogan: Indira is India, India is Indira. She met her match in Jayaprakash Narayan, who assumed the mantle of a messianic leader in the run-up to the Emergency.
Modi, more representative of the Indira tradition than Vajpayee, preferred the presidential mode as was clear in Gujarat. Jaya, Mamata and Naveen have disciplined leaders who tried to project an independent view.
Two decades of coalition politics and self-effacing leaders seen as men without real mandate seem to have triggered nostalgia for strong leaders. Modi, Jaya, Mamata and Naveen exploited this to the hilt. Nehru, the quintessential liberal, knew the perils of leader-oriented politics and produced a self critique that warned against the leader becoming an autocrat. It is a useful tract to read in the times of presidential-style elections.