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2+2 is not 4: How Tsunamo 2019 may reshape national politics

It was December 2007 and elections in Gujarat had just concluded. The man accused as a fascist, divider and communalist by a cosy coterie comprising academics, activists and select journalists in the nation’s capital has just been returned with a majority similar to the one he got in 2002. Narendrabhai Damodardas Modi was the Gujarat chief minister for the second consecutive term, much to the chagrin, disgust and horror of Delhi’s intellectual elite. A prominent television anchor and media owner began his traditional 9:00 pm flagship show by expressing surprise at Modi’s victory and wondering whether the Gujarat leader was here to stay in national politics! A funny point to make at that time given that Modi had been CM of Gujarat for five years and before that a prominent BJP leader in Delhi!.

But the elite intellectual warriors of the nation’s capital then thought that Modi’s 2002 victory was a fluke. Much like what they thought of the 2014 Lok Sabha results but we will come to that in a bit. Back then, a few years after Modi’s 2002 victory it was fashionable to dismiss him as a one-off affair. A rare event that will only happen once in a lifetime and which was also due to strong communal polarisation caused by the tragic deaths of people in riots of 2002. This perception was strengthened in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections when the BJP could win only about 15 or so seats in Gujarat and the Congress won in double-digits. I remember a famous television personality (not the one quoted above) saying that the 2004 LS performance in Gujarat shows Modi’s 2002 victory was a fluke.

Cut to 2019 and the thinking of the intellectual elite remained the same. The 2014 BJP victory was a fluke, a Black Swan event and one which will not be repeated. The party has maxed out in many states and anti-incumbency and MGB’s caste arithmetic will ensure that the 2014 bumper win will not be repeated. Data analysts and economists who joined the Congress or supported it from outside pushed this line of thinking which was eagerly lapped up by a section of media and intelligentsia. A narrative was set but like all false narratives based on hope, hysteria and hate, it had to collapse. And collapse it did on May 23.

It has been three full days since Narendra Modi’s epoch-making victory and all aspects of the triumph have been analysed threadbare. Experts have pointed out to Modi’s soaring popularity, the trust in his ability to deliver, the success of welfare economics, the decline of caste politics etc etc. The BJP’s electoral machine, which hit high gear in 2014 Lok Sabha and the 2017 UP elections has continued to deliver. This time, it has also conquered new territories. The party’s high-decibel and thoroughly effective social media campaign not only neutralised media criticism but also ensured that the BJP’s main message and the message of the PM reached every nook and corner of the country. No doubt, this election will be remembered for new records and also for setting new, difficult-to-beat benchmarks for campaigning.

But while the reasons for Modi’s victory are clear enough, what are the implications of Thursday’s result for politics in the country? What, if any, is the political message that the electorate has sought to convey to politicians and pundits? Very little attention has been devoted to this but while analysing this we should ensure that we eschew the tokenistic, superficial narrative that has seen the commentariat focus glibly about the end of caste and dynastic politics in the country while ignoring the larger message.

2+2 is not 4: End of Gathbandhan politics

This is the biggest takeaway from Thursday’s result. The collapse of the SP-BSP combine in Uttar Pradesh, the MGB in Jharkhand and the Cong-JD (S) experiment in Karnataka means that political parties can no longer take the easy route to electoral supremacy. The belief that you can shake hands with your greatest and most bitter enemy in order to bring down another party or individual leader died last week. It must be replaced yes, but not by another giant, convenient and favourable coalition but by good, old fashioned politics. Leaders and parties need to spend more time building a grassroot organisation, support system to enthuse, invigorate and rally cadres and the faithful and a simple, effective message delivered with laser-like accuracy. Opposition leaders and parties must realise that there is no easy way to win at the ballot box. You can’t win without cadres who get out and mobilise voters, leaders who inspire and attract talent and a message that resonates with voters. `Modi Hatao’ is simply not a message and as we saw last week, is simply not good enough.

The 2019 LS polls was the fourth major election where BJP’s opponents have tried out a MGB combination to deliver victory. It worked in the first instance in Bihar in 2015 when the RJD-JD (U)-Cong combination ran away with an emphatic win. The next time it was tried was in West Bengal when the Congress and the Left wanted to oust Mamata but only ended up making feisty TMC chieftain stronger. MGB in UP was a super flop and that trend has now continued in 2019 with the SP-BSP collapsing well before the finish line. The Congress and the SP-BSP combine made some crucial strategic mistakes in thinking that a simple caste combination will be enough to beat the BJP. What they fail to understand was that MGB works in cases where anger against a leader or a party is at an all-time high. But victory is not guaranteed because votes are split. In such cases, the opposition coming together makes sense as we saw in the 1989 Lok Sabha election. The Congress and Rajiv Gandhi were hugely unpopular in the Hindi heartland but the opposition was fragmented and divided. The only way they could win was by coming together. Whatever you may say or think about Modi, 2019 is not 1989. Conversely, MGB does not work when a leader is popular. People think that this is rank opportunism and are able to see through the charade.

The other big reason for the MGB’s failure this time around is the BJP’s seemingly endless reservoir of resources. A party flush with funds and talent is simply not going to roll over and let MGB win. It is going to fight for every seat and use every trick in the book. In 2019, as in 2017 in UP, the BJP lured discontents from the MGB, took away a chunk of its voters through appeals to nationalism, Hindutva and Modi. The BJP also counter mobilised. It got a big chunk of non-Yadav and non-Jatav SC voters which added to its already strong upper caste vote bank. The same movie was played out in 2017 in UP and we all knew how it ended. Hopefully, verdict 2019 will end this fascination with MGB-like combinations. 2+2 is often not 4. It is probably not even 2.

End of caste politics?
It is tempting to think that one of the big messages from LS 2019 is that people have finally moved beyond caste to voting on national issues. On the surface, this certainly appears to be the case if you look at the severe beating that MGB has received in many states. This is an easy observation to make. But we could also be deluding ourselves by reading too much into one election result dominated by the popularity of the incumbent prime minister and by national issues. After all, caste has mattered in most major elections since 2014. Bihar, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu 2016, so why did it not matter now? There could be two reasons for this. PM Modi’s personal popularity and appeal and his brand of welfare economics. Many voters had a simple choice to make in this election. Whether to return Narendra Modi as prime minister or not. Given his personal popularity and the belief that he should be given more time to perform, it was a relatively simple choice to make.

Secondly, welfare economics, the delivery of LPG cylinders, the building of toilets, houses and the provision of electricity mattered and mattered quite a bit. A Dalit in the poorer badlands of UP didn’t get seduced by the BSP’s pitch because he got a roof over his head; a tribal in Jharkhand got electricity for the first time while an OBC woman in Maharashtra got toilets at home for the first time. These people voted for Modi and the BJP and not for their respective castes. It happened because Modi was on top of the ticket. Will it happen again without Modi in an assembly election or in a post-Modi era? We don’t know yet, so it is better to wait and find out if Indian elections have indeed moved beyond caste.

Thirdly, the BJP also played caste politics. It played it very shrewdly, very smartly something that was not very visible. It ran a multi-layered campaign with appeals to different sets of voters in different regions. There was something in it for everyone, Hindutva, nationalism, strong leadership pitch, welfare economics, the appeal of a stable government, the fear of a chaotic, coalition government etc etc. But while caste based political parties played up their rhetoric, the BJP benefitted from and took advantage of inter-caste rivalry, the fear of domination by certain castes in many places especially in UP. It counter mobilised, drawing support from major non-Yadav and non-Jatav communities, using old caste equations to create new ones. This, I am afraid, does not look like the end of caste politics.

Congress will not die! At least not yet
Yogendra Yadav’s comments about the Congress has raised quite a bit of a storm but the Congress does not have to fear anything. At least not yet. Its political fortunes have dipped alarmingly and it is a bystander in this Modi victory march that is LS 2019. But the fact is also that it still remains the only party with the ability to take on the BJP in the Hindi heartland. Most regional parties cannot fight outside their states as their appeal is largely regional or limited to a particular caste or community grouping in a particular state. Congress is the only party that can challenge the BJP and this is where the party can get a second chance if it can grab it. The forthcoming assembly elections in many states will provide Congress with an opportunity to regroup. If it does well, it can build a decent momentum which will enable it to improve performance in 2024 LS. But if it fails to grab the opportunity it will become an irrelevant, weak force incapable of electoral dominance.

Regional parties will die!
Regional parties were supposed to be Modi/BJP’s main challengers in this election. The only bulwark supposedly against the Modi juggernaut. The fact that they have fallen like ninepins only appears to underscore all the negative commentary about this in the past. Especially the ones relating to weak leadership and lack of focus.

The raison d’etre for regional parties has always been that they were considered better vehicles to channelise regional aspirations. In a large and diverse country such as India, this was indeed necessary and important. Regional parties, it was thought, would also play an important role in regional development as they understood their particular states better. The second reason for their growth and existence was that they were much sought-after political partners in an era of politics dominated by coalition parties. With both Congress and the BJP weak in the 1990s and early 2000s, regional parties could ride on their coat tails to power in Delhi giving the national parties an electoral boost as well. .

Well, the 2019 elections has put an end to that era of politics. YS Jagan Reddy, soon-to-be chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, hinted as much on Sunday when he said that if BJP had 250 MPs he would have supported them after securing a promise of special status for his state. With BJP at 300 plus, he obviously does not have that kind of leverage.

Many regional parties, especially in the last one year were hopeful of regaining their former clout in national politics as pundits were unanimously predicting that the BJP would fall short of required numbers. They thought like Mr Jagan Reddy that either the BJP or the Congress would need them and they can enjoy power even without securing big numbers. The result however has not only dashed all such hopes but also begun the countdown to their irrelevance. Leadership issues, talent issues and size issues now plague many regional parties and are likely to come to the fore in the coming weeks and months. Some like the JD (S) have simply not grown in scale or size and they are sitting ducks to a resurgent BJP or even a revitalized Congress.

New India, new analysis?
PM Modi complained quite a few times in his speeches and interactions with media about those analysing his government’s performance and prospects in the general elections. His point was that many analysts stuck in past paradigms and templates were simply unable to understand his government’s performance and electoral prospects. There is some merit in the PM’s complaint. Though some well-known critics were among the first to point out to PM’s popularity, the picture is different if you look at fake narratives being spread how jobs crisis and rural distress will affect BJP’s support base or the whisper campaign launched to show how Nitin Gadkari may be more palatable than Mr Modi if BJP were to fall short.

Many analysts appear to evaluate the BJP with lens developed for analysing 20th century, coalition-era, caste politics. They simply couldn’t understand that under Modi/Shah the BJP has changed the rules of campaigning and growth and that the BJP is now hungry, all-conquering machine built for total dominance of the electoral landscape. The old rules of caste politics, voter apathy/anxiety wont work well in this era. This attitude was quite visible during the campaign itself when pundits were focused on total transfer of votes between SP and BSP and paid little attention to the leakage and the BJP’s own counter-mobilisation efforts. It was also evident in the dismissive attitude towards the BJP’s prospects in Bengal and the sense in Maharashtra that the rural distress will somehow overwhelm the NDA despite evidence to the contrary.

One example is illustrative of this modus operandi. A well-known psephologist observed on national business television recently that one particular aspect of one of his surveys was picked up and played up on national media a few months back. This was relating to jobs crisis with many respondents saying that it is a real issue and that they are concerned about it. The media played it up as a real issue bothering voters and that was true. But he observed that the second question of the survey about who is better placed to deal with the crisis was not so well covered. Needless to say, the answer to the second question was PM Modi. This election was all about voters trust and faith in PM Modi and this is proved not just by the verdict but also by numerous interactions with voters and their responses. It may do well for some pundits and intellectuals in future elections to listen more to voices from the ground than imaginary voices in their own mind!

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