In the 1996 general elections, the BJP became the largest party in parliament and Vajpayee became Prime Minister and head of the coalition government. The coalition collapsed within only two weeks, however, as no clear majority could be established and Vajpayee stepped down.

This may sound like a political failure, but it was more significant as a moral victory. According to the principles of democracy, it is necessary to have a majority. It would have taken only one or two ministers to cross over to support the BJP-led coalition, and the government would have been secured. Vajpayee did everything he could to persuade his opponents to join him, but in the end was unsuccessful. And he conceded defeat, adhered to the law and stepped down – after only thirteen days in power. Later, when he became Prime Minister again, he continued to adhere to the same principles of political accountability; after his retirement from public life, his birthday – 25th December – was declared “Good Governance Day” to commemorate his achievements.

In those days – only quarter of a century ago - there was still some honour among politicians, something that was felt across party lines. Vajpayee’s greatest rival was Rajiv Gandhi, leader of the Congress Party, but the two men held each other in high regard and did not let their political differences become obstacles to personal respect. In 1988, for example, Gandhi found out that Vajpayee was suffering from a serious illness, and took the decision to include him in a delegation to the UN on a trip to the United States. As a result, Vajpayee was able to get the treatment he needed in New York. After Gandhi’s murder a few years later, Vajpayee spoke about this act of generosity in public and referred to Gandhi as his “younger brother”.

The world has changed since then, as politicians from opposing parties engage in personal warfare and character assassination through Twitter and show little respect for each other – or for the democratic process itself. Even in the US, President Trump could not find the good grace to concede the election to Joe Biden, but instead has challenged the election results in the hope of holding on to power by any means. In India, horse trading has become the new normal.

Horse trading is now so common that it often passes without comment. Yet it goes against all the principles of democracy. In a truly democratic country, elected representatives stand for a set of values, and are elected on the basis of those values. After the election, they represent the interests of the people who voted for them at both state and national level. If they’re offered money or any other kind of material benefit in exchange for compromising those values, or failing to act on behalf of the people they represent, they have a duty to refuse. Taking money for personal gain in exchange for reneging on promises to the electorate is corruption, plain and simple. The somewhat playful expression of “horse trading” may sound less serious but it means the same thing: political corruption.

The expression derives from the fraudulent practices of horse dealers in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries – something like today’s used car dealers, with a reputation for turning a dishonest profit. Politicians today are no better. Elected members of the legislative assembly (MLAs) can be bought, and it’s rare to find one who refuses a tempting offer in favour of sticking to their values and representing the interests of their voters.

Vajpayee’s democratic spirit and Advani’s leadership making skills absent from BJP of Modi-Shah

Previous Next

Compare the actions of the BJP nearly twenty-five years ago to events of recent years: in 1996, Vajpayee would not stoop to buying his opponents, even when it would have taken relatively little to secure a majority and his place at the top of the political ladder. Instead, when it became clear that he did not have the support to form a government, he resigned. Today, the BJP maintains its hold through bribery and corruption: in November 2020, in the midst of the coronavirus crisis, the leader of the Congress party in Madhya Pradesh accused the BJP of horse trading in the state, saying that he had heard allegations that a number of Congress and independent MLAs had been offered lucrative inducements to transfer their support to the BJP. Similar situations are seen throughout the country, as Rajasthan’s Chief Minister lodged the same complaint a few months earlier, claiming that the BJP had been “increasing rates of horse trading” in an attempt to topple the state government.

No wonder that the CMS-India 2018 Corruption Study, a large-scale research project surveying national opinion over thirteen states, found that 75% of households believed that corruption in the public sphere had increased over the previous year under Modi’s government. This is very much a symptom of the times rather than the BJP itself, as other parties are equally guilty. In the Karnataka state elections in 2018, for example, neither the BJP nor the Indian Congress Party (INC) won a clear majority. In response, the INC immediately sent their MLAs to a luxury resort, where they were beyond the reach of BJP “negotiators” who would offer them tempting rewards for crossing over to the other side.