M D Nalapat
The BJP appears to believe that the path to victory in 2019 flows through securing control of as many state governments as possible. Hence the fiasco in Karnataka.
That a clear
winner of the Assembly polls in Karnataka (i.e. a party securing a
majority on its own) would have secured pole position in the 2019 Lok
Sabha polls is obvious. Had the Congress Party secured a majority, it
would have proved its ability to successfully challenge the BJP in
future contests. However, the Congress fared poorly in seats when
compared to its tally in 2013, while even the seat score of the Janata
Dal (Secular) fell. In contrast, the BJP secured more than double the
seats it had won the last time around, which made it the only party of
the trio with the right to claim a “moral” victory in the polls. This
would have been possible were the party to have decided at the start to
allow the JD(S) and the Congress Party to form the government in the
state, given that their poll losses made both “losers” rather than
“winners”. Only by acting as a strong opposition can the BJP put on the
defensive the incoming Congress-JD(S) government in Karnataka, but this
will not be easy under the leadership of B.S. Yeddyurappa. For
Kumaraswamy is a wily politician with the same level of skills as his
father H.D. Deve Gowda.
Not forming the government will crimp the
financial health of the BJP in Karnataka. The financial fortunes of the
JD(S) will rise substantially, while the Congress retains most of the
liquidity the party enjoyed during five years of incumbency, were the
Congress-JD(S) to assume power. However, while financial resources are
important in an election, this is not enough. High spending power can
succeed only as an add-on to the good performance of the party in power
or as a boost to the seat trajectory of the opposition, but only in a
state where the ruling party is encountering substantial headwinds as a
consequence of bad performance. The Uttar Pradesh Assembly result had
little to do with demonetisation and much to do with the way in which
the BSP sought to wean away Muslim voters from the SP, in the process
alienating other possible pools of support, while ultimately showing
itself unable to persuade significant numbers of Muslim voters to cast
their ballots for Mayawati, rather than for the Akhilesh-Rahul combo.
Pandering to the minority fringe carries electoral risks. From the
1990s, a reaction has gathered traction within the Hindu community
against the implicit premise in “secularism” as practised in India,
which is that the majority community should be treated the way
minorities are in several countries (i.e. be discriminated against by
government). Such a mood is still the BJP’s best bet in 2019.
This is so despite Prime Minister
Narendra Modi apparently deciding that it will only be in a second term
that he removes discriminatory edicts and regulations that handicap the
majority community, including those dating back to the British period.
This has disappointed some of his 2014 voters, but most believe that
while there is a reasonable chance of such dreams such as a Ram Mandir
coming up during Modi’s tenure, it is unlikely that the leaders of the
major opposition parties would take the risk of annoying the 2% of the
Muslim community who are Wahhabi by going ahead with the construction of
the temple. The fact is that 98% of Muslims would have no problem with a
Ram Temple coming up in Ayodhya. Sadly, the modern, moderate Muslim
has—especially after 1947—been ignored by both the media as well as the
governance mechanism within our country. While even a leader with the
mass appeal of Jawaharlal Nehru did not risk introducing reforms in the
Muslim community in the 1950s the way he went ahead with the Hindus,
Prime Minister Modi has gone ahead with reformist measures braving
Wahhabi ire, such as the ordinance banning the practice of Triple Talaq.
While this legislation suffers from infirmities, as for example making
arrest and incarceration in such cases mandatory, rather than leaving
these to the discretion of the aggrieved spouse, overall it represents a
move away from the longstanding governmental practice of conflating the
prejudices of the Wahhabis within the Muslims as representing that of
the entire community. Out of fear of “Muslim” (i.e. Wahhabi) blowback,
successive Prime Ministers have ignored the need to equalise laws and
practices across all faiths. Instead, they indulged the Wahhabi fringe
through policies crafted to appeal to this segment. That the BJP under
Modi seems the only national party to sense and respond to the awakening
of Hindu majority consciousness across the country has been a primary
factor behind its poll victories. Interestingly, the unwillingness of
the Vajpayee government to move beyond past practices where communal
dynamics were concerned led to enough supporters staying away from
voting during the 2004 polls to ensure a UPA victory. However, the
majority-bashing policies of Manmohan Singh led to Modi securing a
majority in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
Judging by its post-2014 electoral
strategy, the BJP appears to believe that the path to victory in 2019
flows through securing control of as many state governments as possible.
Hence the fiasco in Karnataka. The fact is that few state governments
would be able to satisfy the expectations of voters, with the result
that an anti-incumbency mood may grow that would affect the Lok Sabha
polls. Such a factor may make many of the states under the BJP an
electoral liability, which is clearly the case in some states. In India,
the only victory that counts is that won for control of the Lok Sabha.
Even if a party or combination controls very few states but secures a
majority in the Lok Sabha, such a party would be much better positioned
nationally than a party which controls several states, but has lost the
Lok Sabha to its rival. The BJP’s tactics since the results of the 2018
Assembly polls in Karnataka got declared have made opposition unity a
certainty in several states (including Karnataka), a factor which could
cause the BJP major headaches in the coming parliamentary polls.
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