Which were the states where the non-Congress parties were able to resist this surge of the Congress? These were essentially those states where the governance record of the non-Congress parties had been good. The non-Congress parties won an overwhelming majority of seats in Orissa, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka. In the face of this Congress surge, they still managed to win a majority of the seats in Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. The second message of the electorate was thus equally clear: it wanted good governance. Even in the face of the Congress surge, it spared the opposition in states in which the chief ministers had governed well.

Additionally, there are a large number of regional/ local factors which may have influenced the electorate in several states. The in-fighting within the Left in Kerala, the sympathy for the Sri Lanka Tamil cause in Tamil Nadu, the division of non-Congress votes in Andhra Pradesh, the MNS effect which helped the Congress in Maharashtra and the inability of the BJP to field more young candidates could be several other factors.

Why did the benefits of political stability accrue to the Congress and not the BJP? A possible reasoning could be that the Congress had a larger pan-India presence. The Congress was a victim of obstructions caused by the Left, the Samajwadi Party. The prime minister’s own image created a sense of sympathy, that a man who wanted to deliver was being obstructed from proceeding further.

But there are other important lessons the political class can gleam from the results. Sober governance helps, shrillness does not. Moderation and understatement are virtues.

... contd.