Finally, the torrid political summer in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Puducherry, Assam and West Bengal is over. The heat and dust of the campaign trail and results have now settled down and leaders with fresh mandates have taken charge.
Just like every other elections, these will also have a political impact. Two years ago the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power at the Centre. It promised then to rid India of a 'Congress Mukt Bharat' and to become the principal political party in the entire country.
While the Delhi and Bihar defeats suggested that the BJP juggernaut had hit a roadblock, the latest results throw up one big headline. The BJP is now India's single most important political party.
A few months ago, commentators worried that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was facing growing public disillusionment. But the 2016 elections results should reduce that speculation.
The significance of the BJP 's big victory of these elections, the triumph in Assam, is that it marks the party's rise in the East. For years, the Jan Sangh, and its successor the BJP, were mocked as urban, cow belt parties. But that characterisation is no longer accurate.
The results also mark a change of style for the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah team. This time around, it's less about Modi's personal appeal and more about strategy.
Assam
In Assam, the party won through patient alliance building and by attracting defectors from the Congress. The victory was as much about tactics as it was about charisma.
"I think after the defeat of Delhi and Bihar, BJP really went into a lot of rethinking. They had set up a war-room in Guwahati for months which was headed by Ram Madhav. They put together a coalition, a social coalition, where they had tribals like the Bodos, the Rabhas and the Teevas. They had the AGP which ruled Assam for 10 years earlier. The BJP which had a lot of new faces, had a lot of people who have come over from Congress with Himanta Biswa Sarma who was Tarun Gogoi's best man and that worked really well for the BJP-led alliance. They made sure that they didn't concentrate or focus on only one region of Assam but they had their presence and footprint in all parts of Assam and that's how they got such huge numbers," Kishalay Bhattacharjee, a senior journalist.
The Assam strategy is generally attributed to BJP president Amit Shah. Though Shah has been under attack after the Delhi and Bihar Assembly election defeats and the Uttarakhand fiasco, the Assam victory should silence his critics.
He already had Modi's confidence. Now, he is clearly India's second most powerful men.
Kerala
With one seat in the new Assembly and a astonishing voteshare of 14.4%, the BJP has finally broken through in Kerala, one state where it had always failed to make much headway.
"One thing is very sure whether you like it or not, Narendra Modi as a PM, as an icon has had an effect on the youth of Kerala. That's the truth. And it's a very tangible change that we can see among the young of this generation. There is a kind of paradigm shift towards another sort of politics, another sort of playing games on their own turf. I think the number of votes garnered by BJP in the other states, I mean the other constituencies, is an indicator of things that are going to come, that are going to become more palpable in the Lok Sabha elections which will be there," says Anoop Menon, an actor.
"There was this benefit of doubt that everybody gave to both the major fronts -- LDF and UDF -- that they might at the end of the day topple BJP's aspirations. But somehow, because from the time in memorial, I can say because from the time I remember, never ever has national politics had any bearing on Kerala politics and that is one of the reasons that BJP never had stronghold in Kerala. The people of Kerala much like people of Tamil Nadu are more into this regional kind of thing, they are more into the immediate surrounding rather than the national agenda and national proliferations, says Menon.
The Congress is in deep, deep trouble. The only major state it rules is Karnataka and is shrinking fast. At present 35.5% of the population of India lives in states controlled by the BJP. In contrast, only 7% of the population lives in Congress-ruled states.
Politics is about ups and downs. But the crisis of the Congress is not that it is down. The worry is that it doesn't seem to be able to find the way up. After 10 years of Congress rule at the Centre and in so much of India, a few people imagined that the Congress would decline so fast. It has only 45 MPs in the Lok Sabha and has lost nine successive state elections.
The BJP can now afford to scoff at what was once a formidable opponent.
"From our own strength we have majority in the Lok Sabha. Along with our allies we have our government in 15 states of the country. Geographically our state government covers about 45% of India's population and contradistinctive with the lowest ever point for the Congress. It lost state after state and is reduced 45 seats in Parliament. I am told that the population its state governments cover now is about 7-8% of India. So having taken a very obstructionist view in the last two years, having taken several fringe position in the last two years, the Congress now finds itself in state after state pushed to the margins. But the big question is is the Congress the new third front," says Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.
"The argument is that together out of the 794 assembly segments that were there in the four states, the two national parties won 214 in 2014 and one only 164 on May 19. So there's a decline of national parties. And more specifically from a BJP's perspective, it was very very important for the party to have expanded its footprint to in the larger states of West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Actually if you look at these state, the BJP won 24 Assembly segments in West Bengal in the 2014 elections but they won three; in Kerala they four in 2014 but won only one in 2016. In Tamil Nadu, BJP won seven in 2014 but they won nothing on May 19. So in a context of expanding footprint in the larger states that has not really played out. Hence, purely in the context of 2019 elections, it is not clear to me that this a good news for both the national parties -- BJP and Congress. Perhaps, it's worse for BJP than the Congress," says Praveen Chakravathi, fellow in political economy.
Tamil Nadu
First of all, freebies are here to stay. Despite the criticism of J Jayalalithaa's freebie package for voters, it was the freebies that helped her buck the trends of recent history and win a second successive term.
"I would rather call freebies a welfare scheme and this is something that all Tamil Nadu governments have had for a long time. While it does not make financial sense because now the Tamil Nadu government has a massive debt but is does make sense on the ground. Because when unemployment is there, income is not being created, then welfare schemes do actually help rural families make ends meet. So it does have value for all parties and Jayalalithaa knows this very well," says Rohini Mohan, a journalist associated with The Wire.
Corruption No Issue
Secondly, corruption only a big issue for the media. But there is little evidence that it matters that much to the majority of voters.
Mamata Banerjee won with the biggest landslide. Throughout her term, her party has been haunted by the spectre of corruption, from the Saradha scam to the recent Narada sting operation which showed her ministers accepting money on camera.
"Well, I think the corruption scandals were, you know, found more room in the media in Delhi and in Calcutta or in the urban class. In rural Bengal, I don't think the scams or those corruption charges or even the flyover coming down had any impact. The rural Bengal was happy with the kind of doles that she was giving out for example, bicycles to girl students. She had cash transferred after the Saradha scam to the victims and several other social sector schemes which she implemented. The roads were better in Bengal, several other deliverables that Mamata promised were given," says Kishalay.
On the other hand Jayalalithaa was actually convicted by the High Court, had to resign as chief minister and spent several days in jail. Technically, she is still a convict only out on bail.
"Therefore, when she was in jail, it was madness here with people attempting suicide and saying why would you keep such a leader in jail. It was actually a sign of her strength on the ground, her charisma and everything. But after she came back, there has not been very much performance on the ground and there has been talk of corruption but the disenchantment in the electorate, if there is any, comes from lack of performance. The corruption that Jayalalithaa represents is something of a stand-off with the corruption that the DMK represents. I have often heard a lot of people say that she is corrupt but then who is not? They are looking at when corruption is given, what they can get best out of a corrupt government," Rohini Mohan adds.
None of this mattered at the elections. Jayalalithaa is back as Chief Minister and her followers are still falling at her feet.
Thirdly, some of the old calculations about reaching out to the minorities will now have to be rethought. Consider the case of Assam where Muslims constitute up to 35% of the electorate. The Congress had always pooh-poohed the BJP's prospects in the state arguing that Muslims would never vote for it. Perhaps this was true.
"Assam has 34% of Muslim populations and the BJP won many seats in Muslim-dominated areas. The party may have got even Muslim votes, one doesn't know that, but one of its candidates is a Muslim candidate and you know, the Muslim vote as a monolith in Assam - that myth has been busted because there are many Muslims in Assam. It doesn't work like what AIUDF and Badruddin Ajmal in Assam tried to do. In fact, Ajmal himself lost his seat," says Kishalay.
But the BJP-AGP-BPF alliance in Assam shows that if a party is able to consolidate the non-Muslim vote then it does not need to reach out the minorities. The consequences of this are profound.
Many people have advised the BJP to build bridges with Muslims and to silence the more strident Hindu voice. Now, the Hindutva wing of the BJP will argue that there is nothing to be gained from softening the religious rhetoric. The BJP can win anyway on the basis of Hindu votes alone.
"I have done some data work and looked at around districts where there are significant Muslim population and BJP's performance and more specifically in the case of Bihar elections in 2015, it is very evident that in districts where the Muslim population is 30% and above, the BJP actually does better than in other districts where the Muslim percentage is lower. So there is some evidence to say that BJP's performance in some heavily Muslim populated districts is better and one can argue that perhaps because there is some sort of consolidation in the anti-Muslim vote towards BJP," adds Chakravathi.
Fourthly, there will be a shift in morale among the parties. The BJP is now riding high and Congress is demoralised. Though these elections will not significantly alter the balance in the Rajya Sabha, they give the BJP the moral and psychological advantage when it comes to pushing through legislation.
The BJP has won only a single state but it has gained much more in terms of political advantage at the Centre.
But why should you care?
Well you should care because, no matter which side you are on, these results do not suggest that we are turning into a democracy where issues matter. What the elections suggest instead is that corruption, governance and inclusiveness are not poll issues.
What matter are freebies, populism and the cult of personality. So yes, there's lots to cheer about for the individual winners and their parties. But there's also enough to worry about for the rest of us.
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