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COVER
STORY: INDIA TODAY/ORG-MARG SURVEY
NDA
Loses Majority
To gauge
the mood of the nation at the dawn of the third millennium, India Today
commissioned ORG-MARG to conduct an opinion poll and forecast the possible
composition of the House should a Lok Sabha election be held immediately.
Questions not directly related to voting preferences but relevant to major
political issues were also asked. These ranged from Ayodhya to privatisation
and from what the agenda should be for the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Government
to the phenomena that make Indians proud or ashamed of their country.
The opinion
poll covered 17,461 carefully chosen interviewees spread across 514 parliamentary
constituencies in 16 states. The sample was representative of urban and
rural areas, males and females and all age groups of Indian adults. The
sampling for the survey was based on the stratified systematic random
sampling method. The field work for the opinion poll, which was overseen
by ORG-MARG Associate Research Director Vivek Kumar, was undertaken in
the final week of December 2000.
The findings
are piquant. Though Vajpayee continues to be the most popular politician
in India, there is an erosion in the popularity of the BJP-led National
Democratic Alliance. And the Congress and its allies have gained. The
undisputed winner, as usual, is Indian democracy.
By
Swapan Dasgupta
 |
Despite
his government's slipping ratings, Atal Bihari Vajpayee is still the
tallest leader in popular reckoning |
Who
will make the best prime minister?
Vajpayee: 43 |
For
the past 15 months, India has been basking in the glory of what in recent
times is a slightly unusual phenomenon: spectacular political stability.
There is a National Democratic Alliance (NDA) Government that enjoys a
clear majority in the Lok Sabha, though not in the Rajya Sabha. In Atal
Bihari Vajpayee the country finally has a prime minister who is both popular
and politically acceptable to a coalition. There even seems to be a TINA
(There Is No Alternative) factor in operation. True, there have been a
few hiccups but compared to the upheavals of the past these, apart from
the never-ending insurgency in the Kashmir valley, look like roadside
brawls. Finally, the focus seems to have shifted to fundamental economic
issues. Barring Ayodhya that jumps in and out of the public consciousness,
the passionate debates of the day are centred on subjects like subsidies,
privatisation, foreign investment and globalisation.
 On
the face of it, India has come a long way in the past 15 months. But appearances
can be remarkably deceptive. Underneath the surface, there are early signs
of a listlessness that, if not arrested, could jeopardise the idyllic
stability of the Vajpayee Government. The India Today-ORG-MARG nationwide
opinion poll doesn't sound a red alert for the Government, it merely alerts
it to the initial signs of a decline in its popularity. Unchecked, India
could witness instability even before the 13th Lok Sabha runs its full
term.
 Some
erosion of support is inevitable. Anti-incumbency is an ingrained political
habit in India, the only exceptions being moments of high emotionalism
like wars, assassinations and sectarian conflicts. To that extent, a national
swing of 0.5 per cent against the Government can be overlooked as a very
insignificant blip and well within the acceptable margin of error of opinion
polls. It is also a position from which any government can recover.
 Unfortunately,
national aggregates rarely tell the whole story. It's when the statistics
are disaggregated that a more realistic picture emerges. And that picture
should send alarm bells ringing for the entire NDA. Not least because
in the event of a snap election the Government is likely to be a whisker
short of an outright majority. Within the Opposition, the Congress gains
significantly with a 2.5 per cent national swing in its favour and an
accretion of some 70 Lok Sabha seats. The so-called Third Front continues
its steady run into irrelevance. It's still not entirely a two-horse race
but India is coming very close to uncluttered competitive politics.
 A
reason is the underlying presidential dimension of India's parliamentary
politics. Vajpayee has comfortably retained the top slot as India's most
preferred choice as prime minister, with Sonia Gandhi a distant runner-up
and Jyoti Basu a remote third. Like in the past, Vajpayee has retained
his broad national appeal, including in states like West Bengal, Assam
and Kerala where the NDA is weak. His appeal also stretches into the ranks
of the illiterate and agricultural workers who are traditional Congress
voters. Sonia outpaces Vajpayee only among Muslims, Sikhs and members
of the Scheduled Castes and Tribes. Vajpayee's popularity grows with each
rung of the income and education ladder.
But Sonia's
personal ratings have improved significantly this time. She leads over
Vajpayee comfortably in Andhra Pradesh and Punjab and very narrowly in
Karnataka. In Vajpayee's home state of Uttar Pradesh, she trails the prime
minister by less than 3 per cent. Yet, her acceptability problem persists.
If, as in 1999, the personal popularity of Vajpayee exceeds the vote share
of both the BJP and the NDA collectively, Sonia's own ratings fall well
below the stated voting preferences for the Congress and its allies. Whereas
Vajpayee's presence lifts the fortunes of the NDA in a Lok Sabha election,
Sonia's leadership depresses the extent of Congress support. This may
be a reason why the Congress fares better in state assembly elections
than Lok Sabha polls. It also indicates why, despite losing ground, Vajpayee
benefits from the TINA factor.
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| Sonia
Gandhi 28 |
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| Jyoti
Basu 2 |
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| V. P.
Singh 2 |
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| Sharad
Pawar 2 |
The cumulative
effect of Vajpayee's four-year leadership of the party now seems to be
rubbing off on the BJP's overall performance. For the senior partner of
the NDA, this poll combines glad tidings with bad news. Although the party's
popular vote seems to be holding, its position as the single-largest party
may be threatened by the Congress. This is solely on account of its extreme
vulnerability in Uttar Pradesh, politically India's largest state. Its
support base seems to be shrinking steadily and its disgruntled voters
are increasingly looking to the Congress as an alternative rather than
the sp or the BSP. So great is the disenchantment that even the momentary
resurrection of the Ram mandir issue hasn't made any visible impact in
Uttar Pradesh. To the extent that even Vajpayee's personal ratings in
Uttar Pradesh are below the national average.
At the same
time, there is extremely good news for the party elsewhere. Not only is
its support holding in the rest of the country, including states like
Delhi, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh that were lost to the Congress in
the "onion election" of 1998, it is actually increasing in its
non-traditional bases. In Assam, for example, there seems to be a spectacular
surge in favour of the BJP at the cost of both the Congress and the Asom
Gana Parishad. Likewise, there are indications to suggest that the BJP
may end up overshadowing its alliance partner, the Biju Janata Dal (BJD),
in Orissa.
Unlike the
1999 general election when the alliance partners (except the Akali Dal)
fared marginally better, the present trends suggest that the BJP is developing
independent bases in both the south and the east. In Tamil Nadu and Andhra
Pradesh, anti-incumbency appears to have left the BJP relatively untouched.
If this trend persists, it could arouse nervousness among the regional
parties in the NDA of the BJP becoming too big, too soon. Alternatively,
it could also point to the emergence of the BJP as the second pan-Indian
party.
For the
regional parties in the NDA, the polls couldn't be gloomier. With the
exception of Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress, all the others-Akali
Dal, Telugu Desam Party (TDP), BJD and DMK-have suffered significantly
in their popularity ratings. The reason has less to do with the Centre
than the performance of state governments. In Haryana, a state where the
respondents are conscious of their increasing prosperity and where there
isn't any anti-incumbency mood in evidence, the BJP has a far larger identification
than Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala's INLD.
That's not
good news for Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu who has
repeatedly used the federal principle to both get his way and form a trade
union of regional parties. If anything, this poll suggests Naidu's precipitate
fall from grace in his own state.
The most
important reason for this drift seems to be rising prices. If 44.5 per
cent of the total sample identify rising prices as the most important
issue before the country, almost double the number feel that way in Andhra
Pradesh. Indeed, a much larger share of the Andhra Pradesh electorate,
compared to the national average, seem to feel their quality of life has
deteriorated in the past year. This is despite a higher than average belief
that they are better off today than in the past year.
It is these
bread and butter issues that appear to be generating a fierce anti-incumbency
mood against the TDP in Andhra Pradesh. Given the fact that the margins
in the 1999 general election were precariously thin, this shift in the
popular mood could well see the decimation of the NDA in the state. In
bringing down the predicted seat share of the NDA to below the 270 mark,
the contribution of Andhra Pradesh is seminal. This realisation could
force Naidu into either exemplary restraint or reckless adventurism.
Of course,
anti-incumbency seems to have affected all the states barring Gujarat,
Maharashtra, Haryana and Karnataka. Rising prices and the deterioration
in the quality of life are the factors at work in Orissa and West Bengal,
government corruption in Madhya Pradesh, Assam, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh,
and law and order in Kerala. Tamil Nadu is a curious case where a perceived
improvement in the quality of life hasn't yielded handsome returns for
the ruling DMK. But that is due to a change in electoral arithmetic resulting
from a decline in the Third Front.
The larger
picture seems to point to the fact that the liberalisation of the economy
hasn't induced a feel-good factor among at least half the electorate.
But since nearly 30 per cent of the sample feel they are better off today
than in the past year, as against 15.6 per cent who believe they are worse
off, there is an underlying note of optimism. Predictably, the degree
of enthusiasm increases with the levels of education. Even on the issue
of radical economic prescriptions, there seems a greater willingness to
accept change.
Take the
case of the privatisation of sick public-sector units. A majority still
oppose the move but that 34.4 per cent are willing to give privatisation
a chance is not without significance. It suggests a growing climate of
opinion for reforms.
Pg. 2
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METRO TODAY
As
the Government brings in more people and mops more money in taxes, it
must be seen to be rewarding those who come forth and pay up, writes India
Today Associate Editor V. Shankar Aiyar in 
