As the BJP surpasses its 2014 tally by a huge margin, indicating a wave the extent of which wasn’t visible on the ground, one needs to revisit old assumptions to understand the 2019 election.
First, contrary to expectations, elections no longer seem to be the outcome of a complex interplay of socio-economic and cultural factors. It appears that the electoral realm has acquired a great deal of autonomy. This has methodological implications, wherein caste- and community-centric analyses to predict the outcome are proving to be inadequate. Else, what explains the drubbing of the ‘mahagathbandhan’, which had a core support base in U.P. and Bihar that was roughly 40% of the total population?
Similarly, the electoral articulations of a majority of voters seem to be moving away from the thick linkages that public policies used to have with political behaviour in the past. While it was possible in 1971 for a truncated Congress to come back with a thumping majority on account of socialist and professedly pro-poor policies, 2019 offers a complete decoupling of the two. Not only has the BJP made an emphatic comeback in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh — States where it lost power last December — it has also made impressive gains in West Bengal while retaining its lead in Assam, a State where the party faced intense backlash on account of the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016.
Three factors
Against this backdrop, it is pertinent to ask what accounts for the BJP’s stupendous victory as the kind of wave witnessed in 2014 wasn’t visible this time on the ground. Three factors gathered from my field studies may help in understanding new features that informed the nature of this election.
One, the election was more about perception without any tangible basis for the same. A majority of respondents in U.P., Bihar and parts of Rajasthan, where I did my fieldwork during the elections, vouching for the Modi factor were nearly clueless when asked to substantiate their inclination towards Mr. Modi with a public policy that had benefited them. Rather, it was the abstract perception that India’s reputation had catapulted it to a much higher pedestal in the international arena under Prime Minister Modi. Upon further probing, the respondents would cite the money getting credited in farmers’ accounts and the Balakot strike in the same breath. Similarly, in U.P., while the majority of farmers were unanimous in expressing their anguish over the mayhem created by stray cattle in the last two years since the BJP government in the State banned cattle trade, the translation of the same into the electoral arena was mediated through the prism of caste and community. While for Yadav, Jatav and Muslim peasants, stray cattle seemed to be a prime issue, for the rest it wasn’t a hurdle in their appreciation of Mr. Modi, highlighting the inadequacy of employing a ‘rational choice’ theory in the Indian context. Rather it denotes a shift in the electoral narrative wherein the choices of the people towards a particular dispensation are a priori, while arbitrarily offering a set of issues without any subjective tangibility is a post-facto attempt at rationalisation. This was visible in the wake of demonetisation and GST, and now over joblessness and stray cattle in U.P.
Limitation of regional parties
Two, the kind of mandate the BJP got in States like U.P., Bihar and Maharashtra where there was a formidable Opposition alliance points to the intense limitation of regional parties to dent the thick, rich social base that the BJP has acquired since 2014. One must take into account that these regional parties — namely, the SP, the BSP and the RLD in U.P.; the RJD in Bihar; and the NCP in Maharashtra — are looking at public policies primarily from the vantage point of assertive and dominant intermediary castes like Yadavs, Jats, Marathas and the politically vocal Jatavs.
The limitation of this kind of alliance between regional parties and with the Congress led to a sort of counter-consolidation of the weaker castes who resent the dominance of intermediary castes when these regional parties acquire power. In this sense, the BJP emerged as the default beneficiary of a counter-consolidation among the weaker OBCs and a section of Dalits when dominant intermediary castes became vocal against the BJP in the public arena. Elections today cannot be won when dominant caste-centric regional parties, which prevailed over two decades in their respective States without accommodating weaker subalterns, emerge as the prime anchor of change, as their articulation is seen as an attempt to bring back the old single caste-centric template. Unfortunately, the Opposition didn’t do enough to quell that fear among fellow subalterns by giving them more representation. What explains the fact that one-fourth of the RJD-led UPA candidates in Bihar were Yadavs, when the NDA was fielding candidates from a diversified subaltern base?
Complacency of Congress
Finally, besides the Modi factor and the well-oiled organisational machinery, one factor that contributed to the decimation of the Congress was its complacency after registering victories in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh in the Assembly polls last December, leaving the ground vacant for the BJP.
Sajjan Kumar is a political analyst associated with Peoples Pulse
