While it is the near-total absence of the BJP’s influence in three of the four states going to the polls – West Bengal, Kerala and Tamil Nadu – which will blunt its anti-Congress stance, the possibility of losing in West Bengal and Kerala will put the communists on the defensive. Arguably, if the BJP was able to reach an agreement with the Asom Gana Parishad in Assam, it might have been able to claim that it wasn’t a total washout where these elections were concerned.

But the very fact that their proposed tie-up did not materialize showed that the BJP no longer had the kind of influence it had during the heyday of the anti-foreigner agitation in Assam in the early 1980s. Nor has the AGP, thereby showing that political gains from the motivated whipping up of sectarian feelings tend to dissipate quickly. Had the elections been held in, say, Gujarat or Rajasthan or Madhya Pradesh, where the BJP would be expected to fare well, the party would have received a moral boost to persist with its offensive. But not after the latest round of elections.

The communists are in an even weaker position. Unlike the BJP, which is known to be without any influence in the east and in the deep south, these regions are supposed to be the Left’s strongholds. But if it falters, particularly in West Bengal where the Left Front has been in power for more than three decades, it will be huge blow to the communists. Although the Congress will not be a direct gainer in West Bengal, it will still be able to shine in the Trinamool Congress’s reflected glory.

In Kerala, where the Left and the Congress have been holding power alternately every five years, it is the latter’s turn now. However, the simultaneous setback for the Left in both Kerala and West Bengal will be a watershed event, marking the end of the era which began with the coming to power of the communists in Kerala in 1957. Although the results in these two states will be the outcome mostly of local events and perceptions, any reverses suffered by the communists cannot but be seen in the context of the turnaround in the Left’s policies in 2008. It was the withdrawal of the Left’s support to the Congress-led government at the centre on the nuclear deal, which can be said to have marked the starting point of the Left’s decline.

For the BJP, too, the exposure of its inconsequence over large parts of the country will be a reminder that its dreams of glory of the Ramjanmabhoomi days in the 1990s have faded away. It is not that the party has been totally without success. After all, it still has stakes in power in eight states either by itself or in the company of allies. But the dilution of its earlier religious-communal thrust, including in Gujarat where the government’s emphasis is now on development rather than on turning the state into a Hindutva laboratory, means that the party will have to reinvent itself if it wants to capture power at the centre. Its disadvantage is that even after shelving the key points of its Hindu agenda – Ayodhya temple, uniform civil code, Article 370 – it is still unable to win the trust of the minorities and liberal Hindus.

The Left’s position is somewhat different. Unlike the BJP, it hasn’t watered down its ideology. Instead, communists have been stressing it with increasing vigour, targeting American “imperialism” and the Manmohan Singh government’s neo-liberal economic policies. But the impact on the popular mind, particularly on the youth, is nowhere near what it was in the days of the Vietnam war. In contrast to those years, the Left is increasingly seen as being out of sync with large sections of the people. To make matters worse, the highhandedness of the Left Front government in Nandigram and Singur, as acknowledged by an RSP minister in West Bengal, has dented its image even among sympathizers.

Whether or not the election results provide a whiff of oxygen to the Congress, they will be a reminder to the BJP and the Left that insincere tinkering with policy formulations or dogmatic rigidity are not the recipes for organizational revival. Neither a belief in Hindu rashtra nor in worker’s paradise is of any help. (IPA Service)