Balakot may not be a game-changer The gains for BJP were not uniform across all states after the Kargil war
NEWDELHI: Until February 14, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’S 2019 prospects did not look very good. In December 2018 it lost elections in three key Hindi belt states – Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh – to the Congress. A Hindustan Times analysis showed that the BJP’S losses in these three states cut across regional, caste and occupational divide (see https:// bit.ly/2pkacl3 for details). The BJP swept the 2013 elections in these states. In fact, it was this election cycle which heralded the beginning of the Narendra Modi wave, which catapulted the BJP to a majority in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
However, the political narrative seems to have changed after a suicide terror attack killed 40 CRPF personnel in Jammu and Kashmir on February 14, 2019. Amid widespread anguish in the country, the Indian Air Force carried out what were described as non-military, pre-emptive strikes at a terror camp in Pakistani territory on February 26, 2019. A lot of commentators believe that this military action has given the BJP a decisive edge vis-à-vis its opponents, as voters might prioritise national security over the prevailing economic disenchantment which had hurt the BJP in the previous election cycle.
The political developments after the air strikes in Balakot also suggest that the BJP is looking to create a polarisation on the issue. Questions by the Opposition trying to seek proof of exact damage and casualty in the air strikes have been portrayed as unpatriotic and targeted at questioning the credibility of the armed forces.
The BJP’S larger design of trying to portray the Opposition as anti-national has been commented upon by political scientists earlier as well. For example, Suhas Palshikar wrote in an August 2018 Economic and Political Weekly article, “Of course, from the beginning, Hindutva has claimed to be coterminous with nationalism. But since he appeared on the national scene, [Narendra] Modi has spoken less about Hindutva and more about nationalism. This tactical shift has helped him generate enormous support for not only his personal leadership but also the overarching nationalist narrative — a narrative that encompasses development, national power and Hindutva.”
Academic arguments aside, the question is whether such a polarisation could help the BJP in the forthcoming general elections. This author had argued in an earlier piece that there is mixed evidence on whether military conflicts impact political outcomes in India (https:// bit.ly/2hcnkju). Would 2019 be different from earlier times, as the BJP tries to convert the elections into a polarisation between nationalist and “anti-national” forces?
Looking at what could perhaps be described as India’s two most polarised elections — 1993 assembly election in Uttar Pra- 1991 1993 1998 2002 desh and 2002 assembly election in Gujarat — could offer some insights on what could happen. The 1993 Uttar Pradesh elections happened in the aftermath of demolition of the Babri mosque.
The 2002 Gujarat polls were held months after the communal riots in Gujarat. In both these el ecti ons, t he BJP was t he incumbent party and was seen has having forced a polarisation by the Opposition.
The BJP increased its previous vote share in both these elections. This suggests that polarisation worked in its favour. However, its seat share went down in Uttar Pradesh while it increased in Gujarat.
The former happened because the BJP had to face an alliance of the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party in Uttar Pradesh. In other words, a rise in polarisation behind the BJP might or might not create a counter-polarisation behind the Opposition.
See chart 1: BJP’S seat share
On February 14, a suicide bomber killed 40 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) troopers in Pulwama in the deadliest attack on security forces in Kashmir since 1989. The Pakistan-based terrorist group, Jaish-e-mohammed (JEM), claimed responsibility for the attack. In response, India launched air strikes on a JEM terrorist camp deep inside Pakistan on February 26. While the actual details of the air strikes, and the Pakistan military’s subsequent response, haven’t been disclosed, Prime Minister Narendra Modi received wide praise in India for a decisive response to the terror attack.
This couldn’t have come at a better time for the government — with a national election around the corner and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) getting hammered by the Opposition for its failure to create enough jobs and for alleged wrongdoing in the Rafale fighter jet deal. In the aftermath of the air strikes,political pundits have ranked the BJP as the front runner in the upcoming general elections. But what do we really know about how military action against Pakistan affects voters?
Based on survey evidence, Devesh Kapur has argued that the impact of Indian foreign policy on voter preferences is typically limited to a small group of elite. But Pakistan is different. It ties into a narrative of HinduMuslim enmity and vivid memories of previous wars and Partition. Indeed, Vipin Narang and Paul Staniland have documented how from India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru onwards, leaders have dealt with Pakistan in ways to keep the domestic audience happy — in particular, to avoid being seen as weak on Pakistan to prevent negative electoral consequences.
Who i s most l i kely t o be swayed to vote for the BJP based on military action against Pakistan? One hypothesis is that the electoral impact will be greatest in areas where the BJP is more active, as these are areas that are more ideologically aligned to the BJP and where the party cadre can campaign and mobilize support around anti-pakistan sentiment. A second hypothesis is that the impact is strongest where voters have more national (and less regional) preferences. In particular, the gains for the BJP should be the greatest in direct competit i on with t he ot her major national party, Congress. Where voters are mobilized around regional concerns, i.e., where the BJP must compete against a regional party, the effects of military action against Pakistan should be more muted.
To disentangle the impact of military action against Pakistan on voters, it is useful to look at the 1999 national election. In 1998, the BJP and then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee came to power at the head of a shaky coalition. By July 1999, Indian forces had scored a decisive victory over Pakistan in the Kargil war. Elections came soon after (and because the shaky coalition saw the exit of a large partner, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam) and they returned the BJP to power in a more stable coalition that would last a full five years (ending a period of instability in which India saw three national elections in three years).
In 1999, the BJP formed a broader electoral coalition, contesting 339 seats as opposed to the 388 seats it contested in 1998. The BJP’S average vote share (in seats that it contested) rose from 36% in 1998 to 40% in 1999, suggesting a significant but modest impact of the Kargil war (and also of the BJP’S governance between 1998 and 1999). When we restrict the data to the 331 parliamentary constituencies the BJP contested in both 1998 and 1999, we see a very strong relationship between the BJP’S 1998 vote share and BJP’S 1999 vote share ( see chart 1). This suggests that the Kargil war was not a “game-changer” for the BJP — as vote share remained stable at the constituency level and was largely driven by constituency-level factors.
But where did the BJP gain the most in 1999?
In order to see whether gains were driven by the BJP’S presence, chart 2 looks at the difference in average constituencywise vote share between 1998 and 1999 for the BJP across the seven states in which the BJP contested at least 15 seats — Bihar, Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh. There is no real discernible pattern, with the BJP gaining 7.4 percentage points in Rajasthan while losing 7.3 percentage points in Uttar Pradesh. In fact, the BJP lost vote share in three states — Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Uttar Pradesh — where it was up against strong regional parties.
Indeed, the BJP gained the most vote share in places it competed against the Congress (see chart 3). In head-to-head contests against the Congress (where both the BJP and Congress finished first or second), the BJP saw a significant increase in vote share — from 44% in 1998 to 48% in 1999. By contrast, the BJP actually lost vote share in direct competition against other (regional) parties — from 40% in 1998 to 36% in 1999. This effect was largely driven by its performance in Uttar Pradesh, where the BJP’S seat share dropped from 57 in 1998 to 29 in 1999.
But times are different. The BJP contests far more seats nationally than it did in those days (it contested 428 seats in 2014), so there may be more impact nationally of a strike against the JEM in Pakistan. Or perhaps voters have f ewer regional preferences than they did in the 1990s. On the other
BJP performance
hand, the Kargil war was a more decisive victory and the BJP was not facing the same concerns over the economy that it is today.
Nonetheless, this data is instructive. As this writer has argued in the past, the BJP will need a commanding performance in states in which it battles headto-head against the Congress, and the post-pulwama response may provide the fillip the BJP needs. But the Congress is a far weaker party than it was in the late 1990s, and the BJP will likely have to perform well against regional parties as well — where the electoral effect of military action against Pakistan may be less pronounced. For all the tall claims made by political pundits, the data suggest that military action in Pakistan won’t be a gamechanger in this election.
(Neelanjan Sircar is an Assistant Professor, Ashoka University, and Visiting Senior Fellow, Centre for Policy Research)