Amidst the worldwide economic slump, some landmark elections have occurred in which left-wing parties surged to power. In March, Mauricio Funes of the party of former Marxist rebels stormed the conservative bastion of El Salvador through the ballot box. Funes? triumph was a repudiation of the highly iniquitous economic policies of right-wing parties.
In Iceland, a country that faced national bankruptcy due to untrammelled financial sector speculation, an alliance of Social Democrats and Left Greens achieved a majority in elections held in April. Voters resoundingly rejected the conservative Independence Party which had been ruling for 70 years and which was blamed for the collapse of the banking-saturated ?Nordic Tiger? economy.
The left also extended its domination of Latin America by winning Ecuador?s presidential polls a few weeks ago. The socialist economist president Rafael Correa scored an easy re-election and became the first candidate to be victorious in 30 years without a run-off.
Come May, however, a completely out-of-turn verdict has been delivered by one-sixth of humanity in India. The centrist Congress-led alliance defied pollsters? oracles of a close contest and won another five-year term. Parties on the extreme right and left?the BJP and the Communists?bit the dust and broke the recent global electoral patterns.
Historically, economic depressions hand election victories to parties that are on far ends of the ideological spectrum. Hardships drive voters to throw caution to the wind and choose parties that promise radical shifts in policy. Since economic downturns are not normal times, they are ripe for communists, socialists and fascists.
Not so in India. The gains of the Congress and its allies even in left bastions like Kerala and West Bengal are monumental setbacks for the communists who had forsaken their ideological distinctness. The same is true of the BJP, which attempted to steer away from its Hindu nationalist roots and reinvent itself as a party of ?good governance?.
If there is one big-picture lesson from the elections, it is that diluting one?s core ideology confounds voters and pushes them into the fold of centrist parties. The fiasco of the left in Bengal is a lesson in how not to antagonise the poor after mouthing the rhetoric of workers? rights.
Why has India bucked the worldwide trend and reposed trust in the Congress-led centrist alliance? Political scientists rue that India has always been an ?outlier? in theories of democracy and democratisation. It has forever defied the theoretical expectations of regime type and voter choice generated by demographic and socio-economic characteristics. As a stable democracy that is poor with somewhat high income inequalities, religious and caste polarisation, India is an oddity and a hard nut to crack.
But what is certain is that the incumbent government of Manmohan Singh was rewarded for stewarding record levels of economic growth until last year. Poverty levels have fallen over the last five years (except if one uses the new $1.25-a-day yardstick) and more Indians have benefited from rising prosperity. The global economic crash has dented some of these achievements, but India is among a few Asian economies that are still growing above 5%.
In an election that downsized the tallies of identity-based and ideology-confused parties and crowned a moderate ruling alliance, pocketbook voting for bread and butter mattered. It was a reassuring message that economic performance garners popular support.
As the Congress-led alliance embarks on its second stint at the helm, it should speed economic reforms that benefit more Indians and develop a calibrated foreign policy doctrine to suit the new global power configurations. The election of personalities like Shashi Tharoor should spur the Congress to incorporate globally experienced Indians into the charmed foreign policymaking circle in New Delhi. How India fares in its economy and foreign policy will be most keenly followed abroad. The winners of this election have to forward-plan the country?s role on the world stage.
?The author is a researcher on international affairs at the Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs in Syracuse, New York