Ekla chalo re is no longer a stirring song
Before the 2019 polls, the BJP has to relearn the art of winning friends and influencing people
Aby-election is a bit like a school monthly test: the marks don’t count for anything during the final exam. Which is why, while the Opposition’s celebrations after besting the BJP in another round of by-elections may be premature, India’s principal party can’t any longer afford to take victory in 2019 for granted.
This isn’t just about a more united Opposition challenge: truth is, from Kairana in western Uttar Pradesh to Bhandara-Gondia in Maharashtra, the BJP’s vote share is showing signs of decline, a first indication of creeping anti-incumbency. That the election setbacks have come in the north and west is also significant: it was, after all, a ‘north-west’ India tidal wave that propelled the BJP to a famous win in 2014. Nor can the BJP claim that Narendra Modi did not campaign in the by-elections: a day before the polling in Kairana, the prime minister was in the neighbouring Baghpat district, flagging off a new expressway and promising ‘achche din’ to the region. And the BJP’s UP Hindutva mascot, chief minister Yogi Adityanath, was even more omnipresent, even raking up the communally-charged issue of removing a Jinnah portrait in the Aligarh Muslim University.
As it turned out, May 2018 was not quite May 2014: then, against a backdrop of the Muzaffarnagar riots, the BJP succeeded in achieving an unprecedented communal polarisation and swept western UP. This time, the more prosaic issue of ganna — as exemplified by farmers demanding their sugarcane dues — defeated the divisive politics of Jinnah. So, is there a revival of a fresh political narrative ahead of 2019 where local concerns trump the ‘national’ issues that play out in TV studios? Well, yes and no.
Local issues do matter at election time, especially when they play out through the prism of strategic alliances on the ground. This is exactly what happened in Kairana where the entire anti-BJP Opposition backed the Rashtriya Lok Dal candidate, giving them a strong arithmetical advantage. But amplifying the ‘act local’ messaging over 543 constituencies spread across 29 states in a general election is a huge challenge: the competitive instincts of political parties mean that while they might be ready to cede space in a by-election, they are unlikely to be as generous in the ultimate parliamentary test.
Moreover, the BJP will determinedly make the 2019 elections a made for TV presidential contest, posing the issue before the voter as ‘Modi versus who?’ Besides, in a by-election, voter turnout tends to be low, but in a general election the sheer size and resources of the BJP-RSS election machine could give the momentum to the saffron brotherhood.
And yet, as Karnataka and now Kairana have shown, the notion of political invincibility is also part of a myth-making factory. Modi and his lieutenant Amit Shah have built a larger than life image for themselves by convincing the Opposition that they are indestructible. But to draw a cricketing analogy, as India’s stunning 1983 World Cup win over the mighty West Indies and the magical turnaround in Kolkata against Australia in 2001 showed, even seemingly unbeatable rivals can be outplayed provided there is sufficient self-belief.
From an Opposition that has been outwitted at almost every stage for the last four years, we now at least have the emerging contours of a potential challenge. At the heart of it, is the ultimate political weapon: the neta’s survival instinct. Nothing else explains why the Congress has virtually surrendered to a HD Kumaraswamy while forming a government in Karnataka, or the fact that a Mayawati is ready to forget past animosities.
Not that the dominant party is simply going to lie down and let the Opposition walk all over them. Within days of the by-poll setbacks, there are signs of the Modi-Shah duo getting into course correction mode. The massive aid package to the sugar industry is perhaps a belated recognition that post-Kairana the ganna farmer needs a break. That Shah is now busily courting allies is another pointer to the future: in the run-up to 2019, the BJP will need to relearn the art of winning friends and influencing people. Ekla chalo re is a stirring song but it doesn’t necessarily make for good politics.
Post-script: A day after the Kairana results, a WhatsApp forward from a BJP supporters group was sent to me by a friend. It read: ‘See what happened in Kairana: 35 per cent Muslims voted as a bloc while we Hindus are divided and fighting over petrol prices!’ In the months ahead, as the stakes get higher, expect the communal pitch to intensify further.