In Search of the Southern Wave
BJP seeks to break its southern jinx by stitching grand alliances in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. But Karnataka still remains the best hope.
We will win at least 25 seats in Tamil Nadu,” asserted Rajnath Singh, president of the BJP, on March 20 at a Chennai hotel, flanked by chiefs of an an unlikely bunch of regional allies ranging from actor Vijayakanth’s DMDK and Tamil nationalist Vaiko’s MDMK, to S. Ramadoss’ PMK driving a backward caste vote bank. Brave words, but in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, BJP did not get a single seat in the state. Its vote share has plummeted steadily, from 7.1 per cent in 1999 to 5.1 in 2004 and 2.3 per cent in 2009.
BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi's nine rallies in the south have attracted huge crowds. Congress is in terminal decline in two states. BJP’s grand alliances in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh look impressive on paper but the party is a long way from breaking its southern jinx. In the 2009 elections, it won just 19 of the 129 seats in four southern states—all from Karnataka. But this time, strategists led by Citizens for Accountable Governance’s Prashant Kishor, spiritual leader Sri Sri Ravi
NARENDRAMODI WITH DALITAND OBC LEADERS ATAPUBLIC MEETING IN KOCHI
Shankar, yoga guru Baba Ramdev and RSS cadres, are working overtime to spread the Modi word. Modi has also been using Deobandi businessman from Ahmedabad, Zafar Sareshwala, and Surat Sufi leader Mehboob Ali Baba Saheb to convince Muslims of Modi’s candidature.
But will it work?
Caste transcends the Modi brand
While the state BJP leadership has been busy papering over its cracks, hundreds of RSS cadres have been on the campaign trail for months now, quietly fanning out across several consti-
tuencies. It’s a measure of RSS’s growing strength in Karnataka, where it has gone from 2,597 shakhas in 13 districts in 2011 to over 3,000 now. Among their aims is to enfranchise as many as possible. This election will see 5.8 million more first-time voters in Karnataka and BJP hopes Modi will appeal to them. Besides the regular cadre, the state RSS also has 33 different member organisations in the campaign. It also has about 130 weekly shakhas exclusively for Bangalore’s IT professionals.
S. Keshavprasad, Karnataka BJP’s co-treasurer, says the party is “looking at a minimum of 22 out of the 28 seats this election”. Its local mascot, B.S. Yeddyurappa, managed a record 19 seats in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, but it has been a steady slide for the party since. It lost to the Congress in the urban bodies’ elections and a Lok Sabha bypoll, after scams of its only government in the south trashed the state BJP’s image and clout. With Yeddyurappa and B. Sriramulu, whose renegade organisation had the Bellary Brothers as its patrons, back in the fold, the party is all set to play the caste card, as it did in 2009.
A BJP leader is candid in admitting that caste compulsions forced open BJP doors for Yeddyurappa’s return. His tearaway Karnataka Janatha Paksha had turned a chunk of the powerful Lingayat votes away from BJP and cornered about 10 per cent of the state vote share in the 2013 Assembly polls. The Lingayat power play is not just about their over 16 per cent vote share, the state’s largest single and supposedly monolithic vote bank. They run various educational institutions and have shaped local opinion wherever they are in strength. As a former BJP minister puts it, “Modi may be the fuel, but this election will ride on castes as usual.”
Seat-sharing is the key
Buoyed by the Congress’s near certain destruction in Seemandhra and its possible rout in Telangana, BJP is all set to have popular actor Pawan Kalyan as its poster boy, with his fledgling Jana Sena as part of its grand alliance.
With a huge following and a share of his family’s tinsel legacy, the party hopes Kalyan’s “Congress hatao, desh bachao” call will have some resonance, besides his potential to poach some votes from his own Kapu community. Mostly into farming, Kapus are about 27 per cent of Seemandhra’s populace.
With a Modi wave very much in evidence, BJP is locked in a hard bargain with the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) to share the 17 Lok Sabha and 119 Legislative Assembly seats in Telangana and the 25 Lok Sabha and 175 legislative Assembly seats in truncated Andhra Pradesh. Jayaprakash Narayan’s Lok Satta Party is also in the alliance.
This time, the party is relatively better placed in Telangana than in Seemandhra, so its Telangana leaders want a larger share of seats, which TDP is not keen to allow. A section of BJP leaders even believes that a tie-up with TDP may actually dent the party’s prospects in Telangana, as TDP has a ‘negative’ image in the state. They have also taken exception to TDP chief N. Chandrababu
Naidu naming a backward caste candidate for the chief minister’s job in Telangana, and want BJP to have that privilege as the bigger alliance partner.
In Telangana, BJP’s key focus is on Hyderabad and south Telangana districts, besides some urban constituencies like Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada. Its senior leader M. Venkaiah Naidu is the chief strategist for both regions, ex-home minister Ch. Vidyasagar Rao and G. Kishen Reddy are key players for the party in Telangana. D. Purandeswari, daughter of TDP founder N.T. Rama Rao, and Kambhampati Haribabu, look after Seemandhra.
“BJP is strong enough to do well on its own in Telangana and does not have to piggyback on TDP,” says Kishen Reddy. BJP believes it can provide significant traction to its bigger ally TDP for a close fight with YSR Congress in Seemandhra, and possibly help TDP capture power in the state. In Telangana, BJP may wrest a couple of the 17 Lok Sabha seats that would otherwise go to a possible Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS)-Congress alliance and win about 15 of the 119 Assembly seats.
On coalition crutches
Not far from where Rajnath Singh was announcing the party’s grand alliance in Chennai, dozens of students from the Government Law College in Chengalpattu waited at the state BJP office to “work for Narendra Modi”. All of them were in their early twenties, and firsttime voters. “My family was always with either AIADMK or DMK. But I want to see Narendra Modi as the next PM,” says one of them, K.S. Engottuvelan.
There are more visitors at the usually deserted BJP state headquarters in Chennai’s posh T. Nagar. Its alliance with DMDK, PMK and MDMK, and two smaller caste organisations, the India Jananayaka Katchi (IJK) and Kongunadu Munnetra Kazhagam (KNMK), is clinched. BJP will contest on eight seats, DMDK on 14, PMK in eight and MDMK on seven, leaving one each for IJK and KNMK to contest on BJP’s lotus symbol.
BJP had been gearing up for this poll for the past two years, picking up many larger emotive issues in the interim. Last December, the party organised its ‘sea lotus’ event with Sushma Swaraj as the speaker, vowing to protect Tamil fishermen from frequent assaults by the Sri Lankan navy. Its women’s wing held an equally big show called ‘ Thaali Kaakkum Thamarai’ at Perundurai, Erode this February on an emotive issue in the state, total prohibition.
The party is also trying to reach out to the villages with a push that it named ‘ Veedu thorum Modi, ullanthorum thamarai (Modi in every home, lotus in every heart)’. “We are surprised how people relate to Modi in our villages, including women,” says K.T. Ragavan, a veteran BJP worker and lawyer.
Long road ahead
On February 9, as Modi opened his speech with Malayalam at the Sivagiri Mutt in Varkala, near Thiruvananthapuram, the crowd went into a frenzy, underlining the impact of Brand Modi in the traditionally left-of-centre state.
The event at the Mutt run by Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam (SNDP), the powerful OBC outfit of the largest caste, the Ezhavas, marked a curious moment in the century-old history of the Mutt and SNDP. Both are avowedly anti-Hindutva, which they dub as an “upper-caste conspiracy”.
Modi followed this in September with another coup at the birthday celebrations of Kerala’s biggest spiritual crowd-puller, Mata Amritanandamayi, a lower caste Araya. No less significant was Modi’s thrust into Kerala’s 35 per cent OBC and backward castes. Addressing the conference of Kerala Pulaya Maha Sabha (KPMS), the state’s largest Dalit organisation, Modi drew parallels with his own low caste background and the “political untouchability” BJP suffered in Kerala. The audience loved it.
The Modi effect in Kerala was more palpable when senior Christian bishops visited him, one of them proclaiming he saw no problems with Modi as the PM.
“Modi’s meetings gave the biggest boost to the state BJP in its history,” says O. Rajagopal, 84-year-old veteran BJP leader and fourth-time candidate from Thiruvananthapuram, who gave BJP its best ever showing in the state in 2004 when he got 29.86 per cent votes.
BJP has traditionally won 5-10 per cent votes in almost every election in Kerala and RSS has the largest number of shakhas— more than 4,000—in this state. Its challenge lies in courting the two minority communities, which form 45 per cent of the state’s population.
Having won just 19 seats in 2009 in the four southern states, the only way for BJP, come Elections 2014, is up.