The Indian National Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) swept the 2009 elections in India. Dreams and ambitions of some people who expected to be power-players and kingmakers were ruthlessly crushed in this Congress wave, while others received votes for their good developmental records. The pattern evident from the election results is that people want good governance, and I am not making this cliched statement for no reason. Here are examples to support my argument:

1) Gujarat
Narendra Modi of the BJP is wildly popular in Gujarat due to various developmental projects he has initiated. In the past eight years, he has brought a lot of jobs and investment into Gujarat, at the same time, providing the state with a reasonably high degree of shield from terrorist attacks. BJP won 15 of the 26 seats, one more than what it had won last time. Modi had also swept the assembly elections a couple of years ago, and remains poised to do so the next time around, one reason also being absence of any strong opposition leader in Gujarat.

2) Madhya Pradesh
Chief Minister Shivraj Chauhan of the BJP has also initiated several developmental projects in the state. Although devoid of industrial investments and economic prosperity, the CM has popular schemes targeted towards women and the girl child. The state also has initiatives geared towards water and electric supply, procuring farmers produces and health of the population. Although not as flamboyant as Narendra Modi, he is well respected and is popular in a state largely consisting of rural areas. And as he rightly realises, the next elections are going to be about "development"

3) Andhra Pradesh
YSR Reddy of the Congress, the CM of Andhra Pradesh has reached out to the rural areas. While his predecessor Chandrababu Naidu of the TDP put Hyderabad on the world stage as a popular BPO destination, Reddy has paid more attention to the non-urban areas, from where most of the vote comes. As a result, the Congress not only won a comfortable number of Parliamentary seats from the state, but also swept the assembly elections held concurrent to the national elections.

4) Uttar Pradesh
Mayawati of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) ruled Uttar Pradesh as a queen, and she desperately hoped and truly believed to be the kingmaker, even being the Queen of India herself. But her politics of caste and corruption, alongwith the rise of the Gandhi scion, put a huge dent in her Prime Ministerial ambitions. After the elections, in which she won just 21 seats while hoping for more than 40, she fired hundreds of people appointed by her in state-run agencies and transferred several IPS and IAS officers. Just today, she warned the remaining and the newly appointed officials that if they dont work on her developmental schemes, they'd have to face action. She also said:

"I will verify from the state intelligence department about this and if any irregularity is found, action will be taken against the officers first and accountability of ministers concerned will also be fixed"

It was heartening to see the state which has been a hotbed of communalism, casteism and corruption vote for developmental issues for a change. The wake-up call from Uttar Pradesh for the politicians has been the most impactful call in a long time. Hope this trend stays on.

5) Bihar
Lalu Prasad Yadav of the RJD ruled Bihar from 1990 to 2004 in a tenure marked with scandals, rise of powerful mafia politicians and extremely dirty politics. In 2004, The Economist said:

"Bihar [had] become a byword for the worst of India, of widespread and inescapable poverty, of corrupt politicians indistinguishable from mafia-dons they patronise, caste-ridden social order that has retained the worst feudal cruelties"

The World Bank believed that

"The issues faced by the state was "enormous" because of "persistent poverty, complex social stratification, unsatisfactory infrastructure and weak governance"

Nitish Kumar of the Janata Dal, accompanied by the BJP, came to power in 2005, and since then the political landscape has drastically changed. The CM launched a big crackdown on corruption and paid an emphasis on education and development. His initiatives were rewarded by the voters who came out in mass numbers to vote for the NDA, which secured 32 of the 40 seats from Bihar. Again, this example suggests that people are now becoming more confident in rejecting the criminal parties of yesterday

6) Orissa
One of the most downtrodden, poverty-stricken states of the country, largely tribal in nature. Severly neglected by the previous administration of the past 50 years for their own greed and self-interest. Naveen Patnaik, the CM of Orissa won 14 of the 21 seats this time around in national elections and 103 of the 147 assembly seats, finally retaining power in the state. He, like the CMs mentioned above, has also paid good attention to developmental projects in the state.

7) Chattisgarh
Raman Singh, the BJP CM from Chattisgarh, is also hailed as a development icon. He has had a mixed success in dealing with the Naxalite movement, which affects his state the most in the Red Belt. His most popular scheme was rice at Rs. 3/kg for downtrodden people, and he largely was successful in implementing it. However, still a lot needs to be done in this central state to develop it further.

All of these examples suggest quite convincingly that given a chance and the proof that their vote would not go in vain, Indian voters would vote for the better candidate and the better party. The Indian voter in this election has made full use of this very rare chance. Dr. Manmohan Singh's government, on the other hand, has also reciprocated by appointing trusted, respected and reliable ministers in the cabinet. All of these ministers have been asked to provide a report at the end of 100 days of the administration and a quarterly review. Rahul Gandhi also has been talking a lot more about good governance lately.

I'd want to hope that this state lasts and India gets a long period of good governance, governance that can raise the quality of living of almost one-sixth of the world's population staying within the Indian borders. But I am also quite sure that 2013 is going to be a very different battlefield. If someone thought that Indian politics is moving towards being bipolar, they are being short-sighted. Evolution is pretty fast in politics, one must know.

More thoughts about that coming soon....