Month: May 2011

This week’s links:

• Social Media’s secret weapon – Email: by Fred Wilson. “The rise of alternative notification channels; sms, mobile push notifications, direct messages on twitter, facebook messaging, etc are going to move some of this kind of thing off of email over time. But today, if you want to drive retention and repeat usage, there isn’t a better way to do it than email.”
• A Long-Wave Theory on Today’s Digital Revolution: An interview with historian Elin Whitney-Smith in strategy+business. “There have been six information revolutions in human history. Each represents a major change in the organizational paradigm — a change in how people form themselves into groups.”
• Social Protection for a Changing India: A World Bank report.
• The perfect state: from Pragati. “What would a “Ramarajya” administration deliver? A good quality of life, where people live in good health, enjoy a good livelihood and dignity, appears to be the first element of good governance by Ramarajya standards.”
• Illusions of Democracy: by Esther Dyson. “The newly freed people of the Middle East must toughen their idealism with hard realism.”

Let us start with two facts. First, if one actually analyses the BJP’s Lok Sabha performance through the years (and a similar analysis can be done for the Congress), it will be seen that the party has won at least once in about 300 of the 543 Lok Sabha constituencies.

Second, the BJP is in power directly or with an ally in 9 states which account for 170 seats. The party is competitive in states with 219 seats, and almost absent in states with 154 seats. Thus, for the BJP, the pool of seats where it can hope to win is about 389 (170+219), with about 55-60 seats going to its three current allies (JD-U in Bihar, Shiv Sena in Maharashtra and Akali Dal in Punjab). That leaves the BJP competing to win in about 330 seats.

States in which the BJP can get allies are states where the BJP has little or no presence. Thus, there is little benefit for a party to ally with the BJP prior to the election. In fact, the perception has been created that an alliance with the BJP may cost the ally votes from specific communities.

So, the BJP’s best bet is to focus on these 330 seats and aim to win 225-250 of them. With the three present allies, they must aim to reach the half-way mark of 272 on their own. Only then can they deliver the governance and development to the country that they have been doing at the states.

For this, the BJP does not need a leader who can win more allies. In fact, according to me, it needs no more allies because none will come. On the contrary, the BJP needs a national leader who can help the party win the maximum number of seats in the ones they contest.

Much of the narrative that I have read post these Assembly elections is that the national parties (Congress and BJP) need to factor in coalition politics as the way forward since none of them are strong across the country. The Lok Sabha elections will be but an aggregation of the state electoral math – as has been the case in the past few elections. In fact, the last time a single party got a majority on its own was the Congress in 1984 led by Rajiv Gandhi after Indira Gandhi’s assassination.

I have a different take on this. I think various factors are coming together to create the foundation of a possible wave election in 2014. For one, look at the 90% hit rates that have happened in places in Bihar, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu. (Assam came quite close.) The same concerns and issues have resonated across a state. I believe that something similar can happen nationally in 2014.

I will analyse the situation from BJP’s perspective. Currently, it has 116 seats in the 543-member Lok Sabha. (The Congress has 206, and with its alliance partners about 273.) BJP cannot win by trying to ape the Congress. It has to tread a different, bold path – one that is counter-intuitive to what the commentators are saying.

The refrain seems to be that the BJP can only win about 150-175 seats on its own – the best performance came in 1998 and 1999 with 182 seats. It doesn’t have a presence in states with 150+ seats (TN, WB, Kerala, Andhra, North-East) and therefore needs allies, and therefore a leader that is acceptable to the allies. In other words, the BJP should opt for a leader who can maximise allies.

This approach is plain wrong.

Tomorrow: The BJP’s Path to 2014

The way India’s political system is structured, elections happen every year, sometimes multiple times in a year. So, some state or the other is always going to the polls every few months. In this situation, there is a sort of N+1 syndrome that creeps into policy-making – the hard decisions are put off because the next election is round the corner.

As a result, it is almost as if the Union government in India stumbles along. Because of these state elections, the oil companies haven’t increased the price of petrol and are losing hundreds of crores daily. Key reform bills are stuck because of either lack of initiative or because some regional alliance partner doesn’t want it to disturb the equation due to elections.

As a result, the engines of India’s growth have now become the states. With a central government that is paralysed and almost seems to be working on auto mode, the states are where the real innovations in policy and service delivery are taking place. We are seeing many states now starting to focus on better policies – for them, they have five years of clear runway to deliver.

Tomorrow: Allies or Alone

There are three takeaways that I see in this election.

The first is the importance of good governance and development, as perceived by people (the voters). They want more – well-paying jobs, better lives, greater opportunities. The government that can deliver this to them can hope to get re-elected. Anti-incumbency is not the norm. We are seeing this time and again – a government that can deliver can expect favourable verdicts.  In other words, performance matters.

The second is that corruption matters. For long, the belief was that voters are for the most part blind to corruption. But this time around, something tripped. Perhaps, it was the figure of Rs 1,76,000 crore in the 2G scam case, or it was a series of never-ending scams coming out one after another. Blatant corruption will never become the only issue, but it is an important consideration. In other words, politicians have a choice – be clean and hope to win, or be corrupt and make money for a single-term only.

The third takeaway is that local leadership matters. It is still astonishing how many elections are fought without strong leaders at the helm of their parties.  National leaders are important, but is also very important to have regional leaders who understand issues in their state better than the ones in Delhi ever can. Political parties will need to encourage the emergence of this second- and third-line of leadership if they want to create a sustainable advantage.

Tomorrow: The Powerful States

After almost exactly two years, it was the day when lots of votes get counted and political fortunes are decided. This time around, it was the four major states of West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Assam, along with Puducherry. All the national political parties had plenty to fight for – some more than the others.

That West Bengal would go the TMC way was a foregone conclusion. It was only a question of how much the Left would be destroyed after 34 years in power. The answer: almost completely. The hard work starts now, and Mamata Banerjee will need to show that she can run a state better than she ran the Railways. The Left still has 40% of the votes in the state.

Tamil Nadu also saw an annihilation that most pollsters had failed to foresee. Jayalalithaa’s AIADMK alliance notched up a 90% hit rate and destroyed the DMK-Congress combine across the state. Obviously, corruption matters and Jayalalithaa did a great job personalizing the impact of the scam on people.

Kerala ended up being much closer than was expected a few months ago. Here too, the corruption issue played a role in denting the final Congress-led UDF’s majority. Assam was a great win for the Congress, with Gogoi winning a third time. He was helped by peace and development, and also by the ineptness of the Opposition parties (AGP and BJP) to officially ally and take a positive message to the people.

So, what are the key lessons?

Tomorrow: The Lessons

A long series I wrote a year ago. Here is how I ended the first part:

Focus on the future of the country and our children. We are watching what is happening. If 10-15 years from now, your then grown-up child were to ask you, “You saw what was happening. Why didn’t you do something about it?” What will be your answer? That answer – and the action we take (or choose not to take) now – will determine the fate of this country.

This week’s links:

• Atoms, Not Apps, Will Power the Next-Gen Phones: by Christian Lindholm on GigaOm. “By “atoms,” I mean widgets, essentially, that provide contextually relevant links to service APIs. You may have an atom in the phone book for instance, which provides a contextual link to send a Facebook message right from a contact’s entry in the phone book.”
• IT Disruption: from WSJ. “Technology is bursting out from the shackles of its desk-bound past. It has the power to disrupt business like never before.”
• The Merits of a Liberal Education: by Arthur Dudney in Outlook. “India will be a fairer and more productive society if more students graduate with not only a set of specific skills but also a liberal arts-inspired capacity to acquire new ones.”
• Democracy, Elections and Voting: by Atanu Dey. “Let’s look around, at the very least, to see if other ways of implementing democracy have been figured out by others.”
• Why is Sonia Gandhi scared of Narendra Modi? by Francois Gautier in DNA. “Because, he seems to be the only alternative to her son Rahul Gandhi becoming prime minister in the next general elections.”

In a few hours, we will know the results of the five states that went to the polls and many questions will have answers:

• Will it be 5-0 for Congress? Or does Corruption matter to people in India?
• What will be Mamta’s margin in West Bengal?
•  Which way will Tamil Nadu vote?
• Is this the end of the road for the Communists?
• What will be Jagan’s victory margin in the Andhra by-poll?

With high voting percentages in all of the states, the results are eagerly awaited. Two years ago, I sat watching the Lok Sabha verdict. Today, I will watch which way the wind is blowing in the Assembly polls.

I wish the two national political parties in India would set themselves a goal of winning 300+ seats in the next Lok Sabha elections (2014, or when the UPA Chairperson decides).

Congress won 206 and BJP 116 in the last elections. BJP’s highest has been 182 in 1998 and 1989. No single party has won 300 seats since Rajiv Gandhi’s landslide in 1984.

The reason I mention this is that from a governance perspective, it would be a lot easier. India needs many tough decisions and big ideas to be converted into action. That doesn’t seem to be happening now. The approach to winning 175-200 and getting 25 more than the other national party puts parties on one approach path. If, however, they decide that they will aim to win 300 on their own, the approach will be very different. And that will set in motion a chain of events that can only work for the good of the country.