1. After four hung parliaments and minority governments in a row, the 1999 Lok Sabha elections have produced a government with a clear majority. The last government with a decisive majority was installed after the November 1984 elections. But the NDA's current majority is still a far cry from the kind of stability the ruling classes and their parties would have liked. In its second term, the NDA is unlikely to prove significantly more cohesive than its previous run. The BJP's own tally of seats remains more or less stagnant at the 12th Lok Sabha level. The largest ally of the party is the TDP with 29 seats and it has chosen to support the NDA from outside. The BJP's relationship with the second largest ally, the newly formed JD(U) with 20 seats, is also quite tenuous. While the Akali Dal has all but disappeared from the coalition owing to its dismal showing in Punjab, the Shiv Sena has substantially increased its bargaining power by raising its tally from 6 to 15 seats.

2. The BJP has had to suffer heavy losses in its northern citadel of Uttar Pradesh. The party's tally of 29 seats is just marginally ahead of the SP's 26. Its vote share has dropped sharply from 36.5% to 27.6% and the party has won as many as seven seats with a slender margin of less than 5,000 votes. Karnataka is another state where the party is credited to have its strongest independent electoral base in the south, but where its tally has gone down from 13 to 7. But the fact that the party has managed to compensate this loss from the rest of the country points to a more widespread all-India profile of the party in the new Lok Sabha. Indeed, the party has further improved its position in its traditional strongholds of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Delhi and Madhya Pradesh; it has also consolidated its presence in states like Bihar and Orissa and, with or without allies, its penetration has increased in the relatively less familiar terrain of West Bengal, Assam and even states like Goa and Tamil Nadu.

3. The Congress tally of seats has nosedived to the lowest ever (113) even though the party still commands the single largest share of the national vote (27%). Karnataka and Punjab are the two major success stories of the Congress in the 13th Lok Sabha elections. The party has also managed to reopen its account in Uttar Pradesh, raising the prospect of an eventual revival of the party in India's most populous province. However, the party's poor showing in Andhra Pradesh and especially in Orissa, and the split in the Maharashtra Congress base put paid to the Congress dream of emerging as the single largest party or at least finishing a close second to the BJP. While the BJP's tirade against Sonia Gandhi's foreign origin could not evidently cut much ice with the electorate, it nevertheless succeeded in giving a blow to the Congress prospect by provoking the estrangement of Sharad Pawar and his NCP from the Congress camp.

4. Contrary to the bourgeois hype about Indian polity going bipolar amidst concerted attempts to impose a two-party model and personality-based projection on the lines of the US-type presidential system, the 1999 elections vindicated the multipolar multi-party reality of India. Uttar Pradesh provided the classic example of this political diversity with the SP and BSP, parties not aligned with either BJP or Congress, notching up as many as 40 seats between themselves. The BSP has however failed to win any seats outside of UP -- its expansion in Punjab, Delhi and Madhya Pradesh seems to have been stalled for the time being even though the party has emerged as the third most powerful factor in states like MP and Rajasthan.

The results have also effectively exposed the bankruptcy of the opportunist Left's line of a Congress-led secular front. Incidentally, 35 of the 37 seats won by the CPI(M) and CPI have still come from the three states of West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura, where the Left parties contested on their own without any alliance or adjustment with the Congress.

5. The Sangh Parivar had gone to the polls seeking a national mandate for pursuing its saffron agenda combining unbridled economic neo-liberalism with jingoistic communalism under Atal Bihari Vajpayee's leadership. Election results clearly do not indicate any national wave or 'consensus' around such an agenda. Mr. Vajpayee can at best be said to have evoked a certain sympathy from certain sections of the electorate for having been toppled rather prematurely by the Congress, more so because of the Congress(I)'s failure to provide an alternative government. This element of sympathy perhaps coincided with and was reinforced by the corporate craving for governmental stability.

But in most cases, the electoral outcome has been influenced primarily by immediate political circumstances and social surroundings. Media analysts generally invoke their pet thesis of anti-incumbency to describe this situation. On the face of it, the electorate in most states may be said to have voted against the respective governments in the states rather than for the NDA or for Mr. Vajpayee at the centre. This trend is designated as the so-called anti-incumbency factor and is claimed to have taken its toll in states like Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Karnataka. But this facile explanation clearly does not hold good for a state like Andhra Pradesh where the TDP has again secured a comfortable majority or West Bengal where despite serious electoral warnings the rather dented Left Front still holds on to its majority after eight Lok Sabha elections in a row. Faced with this anomalous situation, some anti-incumbency theorists have even sought to explain the Andhra results as a pro-incumbency mandate.

6. The case of Andhra has indeed attracted a lot of media attention in this election. Chandrababu Naidu has succeeded in holding on to power with the blessings of the World Bank and support of the BJP. The loss of Left support, the implicit call given by PWG against TDP and in favour of the Congress and what looked like a sure desertion of the Muslim electorate in view of TDP's new-found proximity to the BJP, were all factors that militated against the TDP. There were also serious reports of infighting within TDP and lack of effective coordination between the TDP and the BJP. Yet TDP has managed to retain a comfortable majority even though many seats have been decided in the state by narrow margins. This "miraculous performance" of the TDP is now being attributed by the media to Chandrababu's reforms and populist schemes aided by World Bank coupled with his businesslike no-nonsense approach to politics.

The truth is that Chandrababu perhaps best reflects the political dynamics of the new economic policies. He is a darling of the World Bank and MNCs and NRIs and Indian big business. Not for nothing has he been crowned with titles like India's best businessman and the Chief Executive Officer of Andhra Pradesh. And unlike the Manmohan Singhs and Chidambarams, he has sought to combine his version of neo-liberalism with a new kind of "targeted" populism with generous loans and backing from the World Bank. This way he has succeeded in appealing to the rural poor's aspirations for economic development and in the absence of a powerful alternative movement, large sections of the poor have been trapped into the web of illusions and network of patronage woven around his schemes. Once the real face of the schemes comes to the fore and the mounting debt burden of the state begins to take its toll, the miracle wrought by Chandrababu's developmental politics will not take much time to melt into thin air.

In a way the Andhra poor's current illusion with Chandrababu and the Bihar poor's disillusionment with the once unassailable Laloo Yadav are two sides of the same coin. Laloo had also seemingly created history with his much-acclaimed "magical" hold over the oppressed rural poor of Bihar, but now when the underlying reality of Laloo's surrender to feudal forces, consolidation of kulak power among Yadavs, overwhelming betrayal to the cause of the poor and utter neglect of the general requirements of the state and society has forced itself to the foreground, the fabled grip of Laloo Prasad appears to be fast slipping away.

7. Many people see in the results a vindication of their thesis of a fragmented polity driven by dominant caste equations. It is perhaps also tempting for federalists to get a little carried away by the good show put up by regional forces in state after state. But we cannot lose sight of the fact that most of these regional forces have joined the BJP bandwagon thereby reinforcing the BJP's emergence as the biggest national party and also legitimising and strengthening the ongoing rightward shift in the economy and the polity and a certain saffronisation of the national discourse.

It is also equally clear that there is nothing static about the so-called dominant caste equations. These caste equations are getting relentlessly rewritten and refashioned split as they are between the dominant ideology of the establishment and the popular aspiration for democracy, dignity and development, between the conservative current of rightward shift and the popular quest for change and progress. And we can surely see class and ideology playing an ever greater role within the changing contours of caste equations.

8. The NDA has begun its second term on a slightly stronger and more confident note. But the multiple pulls and pressures operating within the coalition are not difficult to detect. Vajpayee's jumbo cabinet cannot put a lid on his conflicting coalition cauldron. But this time round, the coalition may manage a longer stay in power and there can be no mistaking the Sangh Parivar's resolve to make the most of it. There can certainly be no room for harbouring any kind of liberal illusions about the intent of the Sangh Parivar or about its being tamed and modified through coalition culture and the compulsions of power. Signals of a vigorous and concerted resumption of the saffron agenda are already there in every field. NDA has announced its return to power with a steep hike in diesel prices and for the average consumer and the poor the market is already ablaze.