Does the BJP have to learn any lessons from the by-poll results?

So what are the lessons, if any, that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) needs to draw from a series of by-poll results since it assumed office in May 2014? Is there a lesson that even Prime Minister Narendra Modi needs to learn?

I have argued many times in the past that the essential difference between the BJP and Congress (or parties broadly in agreement with the Congress' way of doing politics) is the level at which they seek votes (here & here). The Congress' way of seeking votes is at the default divided level - people divided in their religious and sub-caste identities. That is why most of Congress' social intervention policies are designed to sharpen these divisions rather than subsume them. Regional parties like the Samajwadi Party (SP) or the RJD practice this Congress method even more brazenly, unshackled as they are from the responsibility of not having to host sophisticated, whiskey-fueled, Idea of India parties in late night clubs of Delhi.

The BJP method on the other hand is to ask people to vote one level above their default divided level. This is not easy because the divided default level is a social condition built over centuries. Therefore, for the BJP way to succeed, it needs two things in place - an idea which can unite people above their default level and a credible messenger of that idea. In the 90s, that idea was cultural nationalism; in the 2014 general elections it was good governance. Then the messenger was Vajpayee, in 2014 the messenger was Modi.

Most elections start off as default elections. The only way BJP can win is by converting the elections into a non-default, pan-state level or pan-India election for an idea. This is the consistent message from each election since 1998. In a default election, on an aggregate, the BJP would fare poorly even while taking other factors like local incumbency, candidate selection, organisational strength etc into account.

By-elections are by definition default elections. There is no state or national level idea to be sold. Exceptional circumstances apart, by-elections mostly see substantially lower turnout than general or state level elections. The reason is obvious. The by-elections are not fought on an idea, but on a combined mish-mash of local candidate appeal, organisational strength and default caste and religious mobilisation. It is no surprise then that on an aggregate, the BJP would not do as well in a by-election as it would do in a pan state or national election, even within a reasonably similar political time frame.

So is there no occasion for the BJP to learn lessons from these results? 

The success of BJP and in particular Modi, in the 2014 general elections, was that they could for the first time create a national vote after three decades. That vote was created on the back of a truly world class election messaging campaign. It is this campaign that broke a decade of entrenched identity politics and built a new constituency of aspirational Indians who were willing to cast their vote for the future rather than the grievances of the past. This constituency was created in the face of a united opposition and a broadly hostile national media. The electoral verdict of 2014 has not altered these realities. The opposition is entitled to try every trick to recover lost ground, as it did in Bihar when sworn adversaries like Nitish Kumar and Lalu Yadav joined hands. The national media, most of who started and got nourishment in Congress years, have remained broadly hostile. That is why such transformative initiatives as the Jan Dhan Yojana or the fact that WPI inflation is at its lowest in 5 years hardly attract any news headlines and analysis in the outrage-a-day media milieu.

However, this is not to suggest that nothing has changed post the May 2014 electoral verdict. It is the BJP's communication messaging that has distinctly changed. Compared to the election campaign, the messaging is now completely underwhelming. Just as creating a constituency of voters, who could rise above their default level, was a national project that required monumental effort of world class machinery, sustaining that constituency is an equally monumental project. Before the elections, this constituency was exposed to the competing ideas, on a daily basis - through all forms of communication, mainstream and social media - of Modi and his development agenda and the Idea of India proponents and their project of accentuating identity schisms. It is this that has changed post elections with the BJP communication distinctly below the new normal it had established before the elections. The competing vision of Modi, of uniting people above their divisions, and for the very reason that it seeks to unite people above their default divided levels, needs sustained messaging machinery, perhaps even on a bigger scale than what was required before the elections. This is the only lesson, if any, for the BJP from these by-polls. 

Akhilesh Mishra is an experienced marketing professional, having worked in many multinational companies. He was also a volunteer for the BJP's 2014 election campaign. He tweets at @amishra77. All views are personal.