TRS’ missteps, the BJP’s rise: How southern politics is going to change forever

By the time you read this, the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) elections have concluded and the winner has been announced. The TRS has emerged the single largest party with the BJP a close second. The TRS may not be able to form a government of its own and will have to depend upon AIMIM to win the mayor’s post and for the government.

A few things have become clearer with the result. Despite the TRS result, the influence of regional parties in India’s electoral landscape is clearly on the wane. TRS may have won but has lost a lot of support to the BJP and it is now having to depend on other parties like the AIMIM and share power. The BJP has managed to garner significant support in one of India’s biggest cities and right under the nose of the biggest party in Telangana. Last month, the JD (U) in Bihar suffered a humiliating loss of vote share and seats. Rival RJD could not put together a winning coalition despite the tailwinds of severe anti-incumbency.

Leadership/succession issues, internal squabbling, absence of structured, coherent agenda, over-dependence on a charismatic leader and on wedge issues like linguistic and regional pride have dented the prospects of regional parties and their appeal to a broad swathe of local and national electorate. We have been seeing this play out since 2014 when the BJP’s electoral triumph left the regional parties gasping for air. Since then, support for the Shiv Sena, the JD (S), the JD (U), Telugu Desam, the AIADMK to some extent, the SP and the BSP has only shrunk. Some of these parties would probably not last out the next decade as a coherent, relevant electorally significant player. The high mark for the regional parties actually came in 2015/16 when the JD (U)-RJD combine won in Bihar and the TMC trounced the Congress-Left in Bengal. Since then, the journey has been one long, downhill slide.

It is difficult to see how these parties are going to recover from the series of sharp setbacks. The BJP’s grand ambitions and its relentless pursuit of power has put most of them on the backfoot and they are finding it difficult to cope with the immense pressure on resources and talent. In the coming months and years, the battle will only become tougher.

The second key aspect of the GHMC elections has been the stunning collapse of the Congress. The party, which granted and approved statehood for Telangana, many years ago in the hope of tasting electoral success, has now been driven out from the two Telugu states. It came a poor second in the Telangana assembly elections of 2018 and a poor third in the Lok Sabha polls in the state six months later. In Andhra, the story is even more pathetic. The fight between the YSR Congress and the TDP and now the BJP means that the Congress is now reduced to a hapless bystander. The drubbing in the 2014 Lok Sabha and assembly elections in Andhra was repeated in 2019 showing that the party had learnt nothing from its stint in the wilderness. In neighbouring Tamil Nadu, the Congress could never recover the ground it ceded in the historic 1967 state assembly elections and had to rely on either of the Dravidian parties to win elections. It is now faced with the same fate in the Telugu states. This means that the Congress is now not even in a position to compete effectively on its own in three out of the five southern states comprising 82 Lok Sabha seats.

The GHMC results biggest impact will be on southern politics. Years ago, the BJP was just a small party in neighbouring Karnataka. Over the years, it built up a formidable cadre, recruited grassroot level politicians and support across every district in the state. The result: It became the Congress party’s biggest opponent. The same strategy is now being adopted in the Telugu states. Tamil Nadu is a far more difficult nut to crack and so is Kerala but the BJP now seeks to be in an unassailable position in three out of the big five southern states. In tamil Nadu, the two Dravidian parties are under tremendous pressure and have to deal with a host of pressing issues. A loss in 2021 would be catastrophic for both. For DMK, it would be the third successive assembly defeat and would doom MK Stalin’s attempts to keep the party united. For AIADMK, defeat would expose old fault lines exposing the party to aggressive factionalism. The BJP is too small in the state but is preparing for 2024 Lok Sabha elections and its success in both Karnataka and the Telugu states could have a significant impact on Tamil Nadu politics. Southern politics is set to change forever.