PM Modi saves the day

The BJP has won a landslide victory in Himachal Pradesh, displacing the Congress from power. But this triumph is not without irony: Prem Kumar Dhumal, the BJP’s chief ministerial candidate, has lost the election in a constituency that was considered ‘safe’.

In Gujarat, the BJP’s victory, though creditable, is not quite what party president Amit Shah had projected it to be. The BJP’s final score is short of its 2012 tally and way off a two-thirds majority. But what matters in an election is who wins the race, not by how many yards. Analysis is not for the masses.

Yet this result, too, is not without its irony. With nearly 50 per cent of the popular vote, up from its 2012 vote-share, the BJP should have swept the polls in Gujarat but was found struggling to touch and cross the 100-seat mark. Huge margins in the constituencies where the party has won have been neutralised by the narrow victories and narrower defeats in others. Such are the vagaries of the first-past-the-post system.

This is not to suggest that the BJP’s win in Gujarat is to be brushed aside as no more than a “pyrrhic victory” as has been done by the Congress’s Kapil Sibal. That may fetch succour to disappointed Congress leaders and its dejected supporters, but it would be wholly misleading. It would also indicate that the main challenger to the BJP is incapable of ruthless introspection.

The BJP entered the race in Gujarat with multiple handicaps, some of them of its own making, others inevitable. More than two decades of incumbency (as Amit Shah pointed out, the BJP has not lost an election in Gujarat since 1995) cannot but breed a desire for change, especially among young voters who have come of age since the Congress was last in power.

Prolonged incumbency also breeds a certain complacence and arrogance; a deadly cocktail of these two traits, that inevitably surface when conceit and confidence blind politicians to reality, no doubt gives a great high but fells the mightiest. The rejection of ministers and incumbent legislators in this election exemplifies this point.

Much was made about ‘anger’ among traders over GST, dubbed “Gabbar Singh Tax” by Congress president Rahul Gandhi, but the BJP’s performance in urban constituencies proves that this was an exaggerated angst. The party has won handsomely in Surat, as also in Baroda, Ahmedabad and Rajkot, where pundits had predicted that the BJP would face a rout.

So we can discount GST and demonetisation as decisive issues in this election. It is also evident that the Patidar agitation for reservation, led by the feisty Hardik Patel, dented but did not damage the BJP which was able to hold on to a sizeable chunk of its traditional Patel vote.

Having said that, it needs to be acknowledged that the BJP performed miserably in rural constituencies. Clearly the disquiet among farmers, who are angry over low returns and unwilling to buy into claims of benefits provided to them, was huge and under-estimated. There was more than loud chatter against the BJP; if the party failed to listen to that chatter, it has only itself to blame.

In any case, last-minute repairs by way of promises and platitudes cannot prevent popular anger from spilling over into polling booths. That is precisely what happened in rural Gujarat. What also did not happen is a counter-consolidation of caste votes in response to the Congress’s attempt to forge a rainbow coalition of Patidars, Thakores and Dalits – at least not to the extent of offsetting losses.

What swung the election in Gujarat for the BJP was Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s energetic campaign, rescuing the BJP from a possible defeat at the hands of the Congress. He enthused listless BJP supporters, turned the election into a vote for or against him, and demonstrated that his popularity remains largely undiminished.

It also needs to be said that the Congress almost got its act together, with Rahul Gandhi reinventing himself as a leader of some substance and his party gaining traction among the disaffected and the disenchanted. He stuck to the script, focussing on three major popular concerns – jobs, or the lack of them; farm distress; and, the deficit between promise and delivery.

With just about a year and a half to go before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP needs to ponder over whether it has failed in expectation management. It also needs to visit the problem of leadership deficit at the state level. For instance, who will step in to fill the vacancy created by Dhumal’s defeat?

So, what are the key takeaways from this round of elections? For the BJP, there are four takeaways. It is fast reaching a point where Modi’s intervention by way of taking the lead role in a campaign may not help in securing a decisive victory. Modi’s personal popularity should not be conflated with the perceived popularity of the BJP.

There are obvious communication gaps between what the government proposes and what the masses perceive, most noticeably on economic issues. Third, the BJP’s dismal performance in rural areas should be a wake-up call for Modi Sarkar: In its enthusiasm to push an urban-centric economic agenda, it has begun expending a disproportionate amount of political capital. Fourth, the BJP should look very closely at the reasons why it was able to swing the tribal votes away from the Congress. There are lessons to be learned in success too.

As for the Congress, it should use its performance in Gujarat, where it came close to snatching power from the BJP, as a springboard to launch its campaign for 2019. If the party is able to shake up the establishment in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, maybe win in Rajasthan and hold on to Karnataka, then the future would not look as bleak as it did after the Uttar Pradesh election.

In the meanwhile, what would be worth watching out for is whether the index of opposition unity begins to inch up in the coming months.

The author is a political commentator