What makes electoral politics in Kerala unique?
Kerala is not the only state where political power changes hands regularly. Tamil Nadu had this tradition for 32 uninterrupted years, until J Jayalalithaa led the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) to a consecutive victory in the 2016 elections.
If the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) manages to secure a majority in the Kerala elections scheduled for April 6, it will create history. Kerala’s voters have rotated power between the LDF and the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) since 1982.
To be sure, Kerala is not the only state where political power changes hands regularly. Tamil Nadu had this tradition for 32 uninterrupted years, until J Jayalalithaa led the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) to a consecutive victory in the 2016 elections. Rajasthan too has been electing a Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in turn since 1993.
In Karnataka, the Congress and BJP have won alternate assembly elections since 2004. To be sure, the BJP was the single largest party but failed to secure a majority of its own in the in 2018 elections.
What makes Kerala’s polity unique is the fact that neither the CPI(M) nor the Congress, the leading parties of the two major political formations, enjoy the kind of political dominance which their counterparts (or units) in Tamil Nadu or Rajasthan do.
An HT analysis shows that the reasons for this are to be found in the state’s uniquely multicultural society and entrenched pockets of support for various political actors in different parts of Kerala. Here are four charts which explain this in detail.
