DELHI NEEDS GOVT THAT SUPPORTS CAA: MODI
NUMBER THEORY Statistics suggest that the BJP should be a clear favourite. Yet, it is being seen as an underdog in Delhi polls
NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Tuesday that people of Delhi need a government that doesn’t resort to appeasement politics, and supports the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and the nullification of Article 370, even as he listed the work done by the Centre in Delhi at an election rally. Without naming the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) at the rally in Dwarka, Modi urged people to “vote out” those who had “raised doubts over surgical strikes”, supported anarchism and stalled development.
NEW DELHI: Delhi will vote to elect a new assembly on 8 February, with anecdotal reports suggesting a bipolar contest between the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The BJP won all seven Lok Sabha seats in the national capital in the 2019 elections. Its overall vote share was an overwhelming 57%. The AAP, in fact, finished third in terms of vote share. The BJP also controls all three municipal corporations in Delhi. These polls were held in 2017, when the AAP was already in power. Having spent a full term in office, the AAP should also be facing the headwinds of anti-incumbency.
These statistics should have made the BJP a clear favourite in the elections. Yet, it is being seen as the underdog. Its chances of edging past the AAP will largely depend on whether or not there is a consolidation of what the party thinks is a silent majority against the Shaheen Bagh protest. The sit-in led by women in this southeast Delhi neighbourhood has become the mascot of protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, or CAA. The BJP has been branding all opposition to the CAA as being against national interest per se.
Why is the BJP not being seen as the clear favourite in the Delhi polls? There are two main factors which explain this. First is Delhi’s relative opulence vis-àvis the rest of India. This makes the Narendra Modi government’s flagship welfare schemes a bit ineffective in Delhi. Second is the AAP’s strategy of positioning itself as a purely governing and not an ideological alternative to the BJP’s Hindutva politics. Let us look at them one by one. Delhi, compared to other Hindi belt states, does not have a significant number of people who live in abject poverty. According to the 2015-16 National Family and Health Survey (NFHS), the share of households belonging to the lowest wealth quintile – lowest 20% of the population of India – is much less in Delhi than in other states, just 0.2%.
This also means that the share of people who would have benefitted from the flagship welfare programmes launched by the Modi government is much lower in Delhi. For example, under the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana which provides free cooking gas connections to women in poor households, 77,000 connections were released in Delhi, which is just 2.2% of the number of households in the city-state, as per the 2011 Census. This is the lowest share of beneficiaries among all big states.
(See Chart 1: Share of households in the lowest wealth quintile in major states and share of households benefiting from the PM Ujjwala Scheme)
This constituency of extremely poor voters, who have also gained directly from the BJP’s welfare push in the last five years, has been an important pillar of the BJP’s electoral strategy in the past few years.
Because of Delhi’s unique economic position, there is a natural limit to this constituency.The AAP, on the other hand, is banking on gains from its own popular welfare model. The schemes include zero water bill up to 20,000 litres of monthly consumption, zero electricity bill up to 200 units of monthly consumption; and subsidies for those consuming up to 400 units; improvements in government schools and hospitals and opening of Mohalla clinics, free travel in DTC buses for women, caps on fee hike in private schools, etc. While most of these schemes are more likely to benefit the non-rich, they do not explicitly exclude the rich from availing of these benefits. The other benefit which AAP’s welfare initiatives offer is that they work on self-selection, and therefore, are as easy for migrants as for others. Targeted welfare schemes are less likely to benefit migrants, as they find it difficult to navigate local administration structures which certify eligibility for such benefits.
This multi-class welfare push, along with claims of corruptionfree governance, is the main political pitch of the AAP to the Delhi voter. And, as of now, there is no allegation of corruption against the AAP government, which has caught popular imagination. The biggest proof of this is that no such thing features in the BJP’s campaign narrative. Also, a large part of this push is identified with Arvind Kejriwal himself, as is the case with Narendra Modi at the level of the Centre. This has given AAP an extra bit of advantage. AAP’s support base seems to be made up of an extremely mobile set of voters, who are not hesitant to jump ship to not just the BJP, but also the Congress. AAP’s 2015 victory would not have been possible without a section of both Congress and BJP voters changing loyalties. Similarly, its complete collapse in 2019 is a result of the 2015 base deserting it for both the BJP and the Congress.
(See Chart 2: Vote share in Delhi since 2013 elections)
While the Hindu consolidation behind the BJP is widely acknowledged, it is worth pointing out that the Muslim vote in Delhi consolidated in favour of the Congress rather than the AAP in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. This is best understood by an analysis of six assembly constituencies (ACs), which have seen at least one Muslim candidate from the Congress, BJP or AAP in the 2013 and 2015 assembly elections. These are Matia Mahal, Ballimaran, Okhla, Seelampur, Babarpur and Mustafabad.