The results of the by-elections hold several lessons. To begin with, it is a warning to the Modi Government. Unless it does something tangible, something remarkable for the ~aam aadmi,~ the outcome in 2019 could surprise the ruling party. Granted, myriad everyday socio-economic problems of the people cannot be resolved in a single five-year term. But people are always impatient. They want to see real solutions to their existentialist challenges which no government is in a position to provide in a short span of five years.
But when you over-market yourself at election time, and discover on coming to power that delivery on winning promises and slogans is impossible, you are bound to be met with a lot of angry and disenchanted people. Voters are easily taken in by promises, but then they as easily turn their backs on you when you fail to keep them — even if you are unable to keep them despite your best efforts. Even if on effort, there is no lag, but on the ground, the change is yet to be felt. Fixing the plumbing of the system is a long and painstaking task and the Modi Government has engaged itself most diligently from day one.
However, the gigantic challenge of creating new jobs, providing infrastructure, mending and augmenting the broken education and health systems, boosting economic growth, etc requires a confluence of conducive economic and political factors. Since his huge win in the 2014 poll, and the subsequent sweep in the State elections, the motley Opposition has been nursing its wounds, plotting desperate ways to wrest power by hook or crook. The recent Karnataka election was proof how a desperate Congress, which emerged number two behind the BJP, rushed with supersonic speed to offer chief ministership to the regional party, which had won but less than one-half of the seats it did.
And that is what was on display in the Kairana parliamentary poll. The Opposition ganged up, fielding a joint candidate against the BJP which had won the seat in the last parliamentary poll with a huge margin. In the western UP constituency, where once the late Charan Singh had established his grip on the electorate by crafting an alliance of the Jats and Muslims, his son Ajit Singh’s Rashtriya Lok Dal embraced a Muslim candidate of another party and managed to wrest the seat from the BJP. The RLD’s Muslim candidate polled her community’s nearly three lakh votes and sailed through with an equally large chunk of the Jat votes. The Jats had a bone to pick with the Modi Sarkar. They had not been paid the sugarcane arrears nor had they been given reservations in jobs and education seats for which they had been agitating for years.
Kairana signposts the shape of things to come in 2019. The Mayawati-Akhilesh Yadav combine would like to do the BJP on the BJP in 2019, roping in small parties in order to prevent the split of the anti-BJP vote. The Yogi Adityanath Government will have to tone up the administration to redo the magic which had propelled it to power. No less significant is the purported break in the ruling alliance in Maharashtra. Should a dejected and humiliated Shiv Sena, after its loss in Palghar, carry out the threat of leaving the alliance, Uddhav Thackeray can still not be certain of the fall of the Fadnavis Government. That fear alone might be preventing the Sena from actually quitting the alliance.
The fact that the NCP wrested the Bhandara-Gondia Lok Sabha seat from the BJP would also upset the Sena because a re-energised Sharad Pawar can now be relied upon to prop up the BJP Government should the sulking Thackeray quit the alliance. By-elections do reflect the prevailing voter mood. Thursday’s results would indicate that a desperate opposition might sink its differences of ideology and egos to confront the BJP. But the losses can also firm up the resolve of the Modi-Shah duo to double up their effort to win 2019. We only hope the Modi Government does not revert to the path of fiscal profligacy and soft communalism to achieve that end. Neither populism nor divisive politics can be justified for achieving electoral success.
