The entire burden of the 2017 assembly elections has been placed on the PM’s Atlas-like shoulders. Is that fair? Should he be expected to stake his prestige on state elections, which are fought on local issues? The PM is not averse to leading from the front. We get that.
But history tells us that voting patterns for Parliament and assembly are dramatically different. In 2014, the BJP swept all seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi. Six months later, it won just 3 of the 70 assembly seats. In terms of percentages, that’s a hit rate of 100 per cent versus 4 per cent.
The 2017 assembly elections have suddenly become interesting. Touted as a referendum on demonetisation, the state polls in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand (in Punjab and Manipur, the BJP is a marginal player) are expected to reflect the mood of the cashless nation.
The Opposition is convinced that it has the BJP on the ropes at long last. The PM, they maintain, has miscalculated by a mile and drawn the ire of critical vote influencers, notably the housewife, the trader and the farmer. Demonetisation has robbed daily-wagers of a living, compelled small enterprises to shut shop and forced farmers to dump their produce for lack of a market. Consumption is down, the economy has contracted and tens of millions are on the slippery slope to destitution with no safety net in sight. Dark and dire predictions of economic melt-down and democracy deep-frozen are reiterated. “We told you so,” say the liberals, “Safed dari is a despot in designer kurta-pyjama”.
The BJP is equally convinced that the “moral authority” of Prime Minister Narendra Modi will enable him to pull it off. By the time the elections roll around, the discomfort of cashlessness will have faded from memory and what will be remembered is his sheer decisiveness and out-of-the-box thinking, in a wasteland of namby-pamby, do-nothing politicians. The electorate will buy into the war-against-black money narrative and cast a vote for a tri-colour wrapped Modi, with Jana-Gana-Mana playing fortissimo in the background. His joyless, nit-picking critics will be left gnashing their teeth and whining that behind all the pro-poor rhetoric is a rich scam.
The entire burden of the 2017 assembly elections has thus been placed on the PM’s Atlas-like shoulders. Is that fair? Should he be expected to stake his prestige on state elections, which are fought on local issues? The PM is not averse to leading from the front. We get that. But history tells us that voting patterns for Parliament and assembly are dramatically different. In 2014, the BJP swept all seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi. Six months later, it won just 3 of the 70 assembly seats. In terms of percentages, that’s a hit rate of 100 per cent versus 4 per cent.
The BJP’s strategy in Assam was well thought out. It seized on the dominant local issue – illegal migrants – and pretty much kept central leaders out of the campaign. Over three months, the PM addressed three rallies and that was it. The BJP won 60 of the 89 seats it contested. Contrast that with the Delhi elections, which involved virtually the entire Union Cabinet and at least six public meetings by the PM. It ended with the party’s face in the mud.
The UP polls are hardly a cakewalk for the BJP, which will find itself in tough terrain after the events of the last week. Chief minister Akhilesh Yadav is on the uptick. His main concern – the anti-incumbency factor – has been successfully circumvented by the split in the Samajwadi Party. The old guard has been reduced to a rump, with Akhilesh’s faction solidly in control of the assembly and the Parliamentary party. If the split is indeed vertical and goes all the way down to the level of party workers, he can present a new face to the electorate. This will hold true even if the split proves to be short-lived and Mulayam Singh Yadav acquiesces to his son’s wishes.
If Akhilesh concludes an alliance with the Congress, he may well manage to retain a chunk of the minority vote, which was showing alarming signs of drifting away from the SP to the BSP. The Yadav vote could split between the old and new factions, but Akhilesh can count on the support of the younger demographic. More importantly, he can present the SP as being inclusive, rather than merely a caste-based party. Akhilesh has also attempted to address the voters’ main concern, namely his administration’s pathetic record of law and order, by opposing tickets to candidates with criminal records. For instance, Amanmani Tripathi, who was given a ticket by Shivpal Yadav over Akhilesh’s protests.
The BJP will doubtlessly count on a three-way split of votes, between SP, BSP and BJP, which worked so well in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. Also working for the BJP is its aggressive wooing of the lower OBCs and upper dalits. Its main thrust, judging from the PM’s rally at Lucknow, is development. But the sub-text is nationalism, that is, an emotional appeal to voters. Yes, demonetisation may well influence the outcome, but if the history of assembly polls is anything to go by, it will be just one of several issues. To pitch it as a referendum on a national issue is an over-statement.
The writer is a senior journalist with 35 years of experience in working with major newspapers and magazines.
She is now an independent writer and author
