Voter trust will be the key
The elections that were held between May 2014 and March 2017 have given a number of warning signals to Opposition parties
On the way back from Bareilly I asked the taxi driver: “Where do you hail from and whom did you vote for this year?” “I am from Meerut and we voted for Narendra Modi,” was his reply. “What do you mean by ‘we’?” I asked. “I mean my family members and neighbours,” said the cabbie. “May I know the name of your community?” “Yes, we are Jatavs.” “You are Jatavs and you haven’t voted for Mayawati?” I asked. “No, Modiji made sure that cooking gas reached our homes. My wife and mother are happy. Now, their eyes don’t water while cooking on a choolha (clay oven),” he said.
To conduct a post-mortem of assembly elections, my colleagues and I asked many such questions to voters. There were two significant reasons for the BJP’s victory: The Ujjwala scheme, in which cooking gas was made available to poor families and the promise of a farm loan waiver, which helped consolidate the farmers’ votes. On top of it came the Diwali and Ramzan rhetoric. That took care of the rest. In 2014 if Modi was an icon of hope, in 2017 he emerged as a symbol of a politician whom the common man trusted.
The question now being raised is: Will the BJP hold on to its 20-year-old rule in Gujarat in the assembly elections at the end of this year? Will it manage to displace the Congress in Himachal Pradesh? Who will come out on top in the five states going to polls next year? Similarly, the biggest challenge looking the Opposition in the eye is making sure it doesn’t become extinct. Will the Congress manage to retain power in Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Mizoram and Meghalaya? Can it wrest the assemblies from the BJP in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh? Will the party require a Bihar-like coalition to do that?
The initial answers to these questions will emerge in the next few weeks. Going by the law, within the next six months both Yogi Adityanath and Keshav Prasad Maurya will have to seek membership of the assembly or the legislative council. That is why there will be bypolls held in the constituencies of Gorakhpur and Phoolpur respectively. Will the Congress, the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party bury their egos and work in harmony on this occasion?
Amit Shah is taking decisions keeping this possibility in mind, it appears. The BJP has won every election it has fought under his stewardship, except on three occasions. The initial defeats inspired Shah not to repeat his mistakes. That is why the BJP reached out to top leaders of rival parties before the elections in Assam, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. He even paid attention to voters’ apathy for caste and religion. He selected his voter and focused on the individual voter, the way office-bearers of multinational corporations identify their target users.
Not just this, even after the elections had been won, the people who were given the important posts were an extension of this formula. Yogi Adityanath is not merely a Rajput leader: being a saffron-clad monk he has the capability of eliciting the respect of every Hindu caste. Plus, his hardliner Hindutva image can help polarise voters. To make sure the opposition doesn’t sway people by calling him a Rajput, a Brahmin and a extremely backward leader have been appointed as deputy chief ministers. The composition of the state cabinet has been done keeping in mind leaders who can accumulate votes from their communities and their constituencies in 2019.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court’s recommendation that both sides resolve the Ayodhya conflict with out-of-court discussions has raised political temperatures. If the building of the Ram temple is announced, it will be the icing on the cake for the BJP. The attempt will be to give Modi the credit for achieving something that Chandrashekhar, PV Narasimha Rao and Atal Bihari Vajpayee failed to achieve when they were prime minister.
What is apparent is that even as the BJP is working on many fronts at the same time; the Congress, the country’s oldest party, is yet to make a similar endeavour. Clearly, the Congress needs agile politicians. The biggest example of this comes from Manipur and Goa where the Congress could not display the agility needed for government formation despite winning the most number of seats. It is pitted against a team that keeps changing its strategy on its feet and doesn’t take time in making tough decisions.
Now, let us have a look at the regional parties. Mamata Banerjee, Naveen Patnaik and Mayawati are growing older but they haven’t chosen their successors. Jayalalithaa made the same mistake and the repercussions are being felt by her party after her demise. The question that arises is whether these leaders can manage to knit together a coalition that wins the trust of the man on the street?
The trend from the 2017 elections is clear: the voter wants stability along with development.
The time has come when the entire Opposition pays attention to these questions. The elections that were held between May 2014 and March 2017 have given many indicators that could prove to be warning signals for them.
WILL THE BJP MANAGE TO HOLD ON TO ITS 20YEAROLD RULE IN GUJARAT IN THE ASSEMBLY ELECTIONS AT THE END OF THIS YEAR? WILL IT MANAGE TO DISPLACE THE CONGRESS IN HIMACHAL PRADESH?