By all accounts, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s campaign effort in Bihar is unprecedented. True, he is an untiring campaigner, and is the party’s trump card. But more than twenty five rallies works out to almost one for every ten assembly constituencies, and this can be seen variously. It is either a sign of his desperation or an effort to make sure that nothing is left to chance. It is more likely to be a case of the latter considering that the BJP along with the affiliates of the Sangh parivar has developed the skill to mount a total election campaign reaching down to every voter.
One of the more effective and yet less documented components of this strategy is the distribution of cash to every voter. Maharashtra’s own BJP leader Nitin Gadkari had advised people during the state assembly elections that they should not refuse such offers but exercise their franchise wisely. Eventually the BJP formed its government in Maharashtra and Gadkari’s advice did go home, but then it also underscored the role of money power in the elections. The reality is that for all its efforts to control the use of money power and the other intoxicating element — liquor — the Election Commission can hardly do much to eliminate the role of these factors in influencing the outcome of elections.
Modi has been very aggressive in his campaign and he has also been bold enough to announce an unprecedented package of Rs.1.25 lakh crores for the state of Bihar. To make sure that this development boost is backed by the right combination of caste support he has also worked out a coalition — Ram Vilas Paswan (Dalit), Upendra Kushwaha (OBCs) and Jitan Ram Manjhi (Mahadalit) — to go along with the upper caste base of the BJP. The two-caste combination and the development package should make for a formidable combination when backed up by the organisational muscle of the RSS.
However, if the mood in the BJP ahead of the polling that begins on Monday for the first phase is anything but upbeat and if the opinion polls are not predicting an encore of the May 2014 Lok Sabha elections, when the BJP and its allies swept 31 out of the 40 Lok Sabha seats, the reason for this lies in the fact that all politics in Bihar is cooked in the crucible of caste. In the first past the post system, the BJP profited from the division of votes in the two opposing camps –the Janata Dal( U) and the Rashtriya Janata Dal along with its ally Congress. Now the three parties are together and the impact these can make after coming together was visible in the by-elections to the state assembly when the BJP lost seven of the ten seats held by it. Everyone knows that it is not electoral arithmetic but caste chemistry that works in the final analysis.
In Bihar, the Yadavs and the Muslims are solidly behind the RJD and depending on the constituencies they can together sway, they can influence the outcome decisively. The coming together of Lalu Yadav with his one-time political foe Nitish Kumar has been described by him as ‘an act of drinking poison’ to keep the BJP away. But it speaks volumes for the political pragmatism of these two leaders that they have seen electoral validity of this combination. They have realised that this is the only way that they can fight the Modi juggernaut. On his part, Modi too has acknowledged this reality and is not banking merely on the promise of his hefty Bihar package and the caste combination sewn by him. He has gone all out in his attacks on both of them.
After the Lok Sabha polls and the thumping majority that was notched by the BJP, some political analysts had come to the conclusion that the results were an indicator that caste based politics was on the way out and the people were voting on issues related to development. The mandate for Modi was seen in this perspective. This was also seen as an encouraging sign for the development and maturity of the democratic system. But then at least in Bihar the BJP does not seem to be betting only on development. In an effort to strike at the RJD’s Yadav base, the party has fielded 22 Yadav candidates. The impact of this strategy would be assessed by the performance of these candidates, but the decision itself shows that caste decides the electoral moves of even that party which claims to fight the election on the development plank.
An election like the one being witnessed in Bihar tends to get overrated in terms of its impact beyond the state, especially given the 24×7 media glare on each and every small development. But the fact remains that this is only to decide the party that shall rule the state for the next five years. The BJP’s unassailable majority in the Lok Sabha would be untouched by the outcome of these polls. Yes, there would be some impact on the composition of the 16 members in the Rajya Sabha from the state, but there would be nothing dramatic in terms of altering the number game.
If anything, the impact would be purely psychological in terms of the prime minister having invested so much of his time and personal prestige in a state election. He already has the image and popularity of a national campaigner and as of today does not have a rival in that respect. As one political analyst put it brilliantly — the people vote on the basis of local issues, but the analysts present these results in a global perspective. During the next few weeks, when millions of Bihar voters exercise their franchise, they would be guided by a plethora of local factors, but when wise analysts sit down on November 11th to analyse the outcome, they would be influenced by this jargon of psephology. The Bihari’s vote of confidence in the local man of his caste would be hijacked and interpreted to have some national implication.
