What elections in Gujarat mean

The ground realities in 2022 are very different from five years ago in this three-player contest

By some distance, Gujarat is the safest state in India for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The home state of Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah has not picked any other party for 24 years and it is on the promise of replicating the Gujarat development model that the BJP swept to power in the 2014 national elections. Yet, in assembly elections five years ago, the Congress gave the BJP a run for its money, posting its best results in a generation. Anti-incumbency, disaffection about the state of the administration by successive chief ministers (CMs) who lacked Mr Modi’s charisma and connect, and simmering discontent among both cultivators (over stagnant crop prices) and small traders (about teething problems in the Goods and Services Tax regime) hobbled the BJP, which needed appeals from the PM to cross the majority mark, and then, only barely. The Congress stitched together a grassroots coalition, inducted leaders from key backward and dominant caste groups and lent strategic backing to Dalit leaders. Anger from the Patidars – who helped the BJP break the Congress’s stranglehold in the 90s – over denial of quotas in jobs and education lent the tailwind to the Congress, though in the end, it was a bridge too far for a state where the BJP has deep roots.

2022 is very different. The Patidar agitation has been extinguished and its key leaders (think Hardik Patel) are in the BJP. So are many backward leaders and legislators who won on the Congress tickets in 2017. Problems with GST have been sorted out, and crop price guarantees and a direct income transfer scheme have assuaged farm anger. There is anti-incumbency, but the BJP may well have staved off popular anger by changing its Cabinet, including the CM, last year. The Congress is divided, its campaign has barely begun, and some star leaders are busy in the

(Unite India March), which doesn’t pass through Gujarat. 2022 is also made different by the entry of a third player: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has mounted a high-decibel campaign, banking on its record of delivering civic amenities in Delhi.

Gujarat is important for the BJP because it’s a prestige fight that will also serve as a barometer of its strategy to blunt anti-incumbency by changing CMs. It is important to the Congress because it cannot afford to come third (which looks like a real possibility). And it is important to the AAP’s efforts to become a national party and challenge the Congress as the core of the national Opposition. December 8 will determine their fortunes.