Welfare is BJP’S ticket to 2019

Extending the Ujjwala scheme to all poor families suggests this

The government’s decision to extend the Ujjwala scheme to all poor families marks yet another step in what will be the defining legacy of the Narendra Modi government. When it was elected, many thought that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would dismantle India’s politics of welfare. Remember how it mocked employment guarantee schemes and critiqued what it called the “sops” and “doles” provided by the United Progressive Alliance government. Many saw in the BJP a right of the centre party which would focus purely on growth, and not on distribution; which would focus on urban and semi urban India, and not on rural India; and which would take forward unfinished reforms and minimise the role of the state.

The BJP government, for both political and ideological purposes, operated differently. It recognised that the bulk of the population lived in rural India; that most citizens were poor and deprived of even basic assets. It was with this in mind that Mr Modi focused on Ujjwala as a flagship scheme that would both change the way rural Indians cooked, and create for the party a loyal constituency of women voters. Aided by technology and direct transfer of financial assistance, the Modi government improved delivery of other welfare schemes, including rural housing and construction of toilets.

But the limits of the approach became clear in the last set of assembly elections. The electorate seems to appreciate the government’s welfare programmes. But it is not enough because this is not accompanied with economic growth of the scale that would have created jobs for the young and enhanced rural incomes — particularly agrarian incomes. The government is now in a fix. Four months is too short a time to realign the economic paradigm. And therefore, as the Ujjwala decision shows, it has decided to ramp up its politics of welfarism, with the hope that direct beneficiaries of its programmes — party estimates suggest there are 220 million of those — will also express their political preference for the BJP. If ‘vikas’ (development) was the party’s trump card in 2014, it will be ‘welfare’ in 2019. It has to be seen if this is enough for an impatient and aspirational India.