Days after the Haryana poll setback, top Congress leadership including President Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi held a meeting with leaders from Maharashtra. Sunil Kanugolu, the party’s in-house poll strategist who had got flak for the Haryana fiasco, suggested that the party’s poll promises should include a substantial increase in the freebies and doles that are currently given or promised to almost every section of Maharashtra by the Eknath Shinde-led Mahayuti government.
A leader who was present in the meeting later told me how his party was losing the plot. “You want to double the freebies this time. Then what? Triple in the next election?” he said. He argued that since every party was doing it now, the freebies could no longer be a game-changing strategy, especially for Opposition parties. He was of the view that when it came to competitive populism, ruling parties had the advantage. I couldn’t agree more. The Congress promised Rs 6,000 a month under its NYAY scheme in the 2019 poll manifesto, 12 times more than what the people got under the PM-Kisan Samman Nidhi. It didn’t work. There were, of course, other factors at play in the 2019 polls.
The conversation about freebies becoming election slogans also includes the ruling party.
Freebies, dynasts, elections
By mid-2022, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was talking about the dangers of ‘revdi culture’. The success of the Congress’ doles in Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka assembly elections might have a role in it. By November 2023, the BJP far outmatched the Congress in revdi distribution and promises in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh even as the PM looked the other way. He, however, resisted temptations to declare revdis ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Many BJP leaders would privately attribute this factor to the BJP’s slide to 240 seats. Now, the PM has stopped speaking about revdis as the BJP has gone full throttle to steal the Opposition’s march with a slew of revdis in assembly elections. Just check out the 146 decisions taken by the Maharashtra Cabinet in the month ahead of the model code of conduct.
They included many infrastructure projects also but listen to Mahayuti leaders. The focus of their speeches is on the revdis being offered. They have come to define the BJP’s model of ‘vikas’ or development. PM Modi keeps inaugurating developmental projects but his party leaders apparently find revdis more appealing electorally.
Let’s look at another big issue that the BJP used to attack the Opposition from 2013-2014 onwards—dynastic politics. It didn’t matter that the ruling party kept inducting dynasts from other parties. As long as a chaiwallah PM was the face, these dynasts were seen as aberrations or mere means to achieve the higher goals set by him. The BJP is taking it to a new level. So, in the recently constituted council of ministers in Haryana, two prominent dynasts found a place— Shruti Choudhry, former CM Bansi Lal’s granddaughter and BJP MP Kiran Choudhary’s daughter, and Arti Singh Rao, granddaughter of former CM Rao Birender Singh and daughter of Union Minister Rao Inderjit Singh.
In Jharkhand, the BJP has fielded Purnima Das, the daughter-in-law of former CM and incumbent Odisha governor Raghubar Das. Come to think of it. Das had presided over the BJP’s defeat in the 2019 assembly election and lost his own seat. He recently made headlines after his son, Lalit Kumar, thrashed a Raj Bhavan official. With a BJP government in Odisha, the case had to get a burial, anyway. Check out the lists of BJP candidates in Maharashtra and Jharkhand. They give a fair idea of the BJP’s growing love for and reliance on dynasts—both home-grown and imported.
Also read: Modi government’s U-turns expose a well-known secret—BJP is facing a crisis of conviction
Modi, the idea
The third big issue for the BJP was its crusade against corruption. The ‘washing machine’ tag has, however, washed it away. Then, there was the aspirational politics over India’s place in the world, with PM Modi sitting at the high table of global diplomacy and who’s who of the world vying for his attention. One didn’t hear much about it from the BJP in the last Lok Sabha elections and it obviously doesn’t find much merit in talking about it in assembly elections. The BJP’s complete focus is on social engineering, offering olive branches to different caste groups and building batenge-toh-katenge narratives.
Basically, politics has come full circle since 2014. It’s back to the politics of the old days when it was all about caste, religion, freebies and so on. Not that these factors were not at play earlier but they used to be all subsumed in the larger image of Narendra Modi, the deliverer. He represented the big idea, the big dreams of an aspirational nation. Even when people saw the bringing down of governments through defections, Opposition-centric corruption investigations, and communal agendas, Modi remained an idea that they voted for. He was beyond follies or reproach. He remained the BJP’s central proposition, the differentiator. Intermittent electoral setbacks in states aside, Modi, the idea, remained vibrant.
However, after the last Lok Sabha elections, the BJP looks underconfident about the potency of this idea. Or so it seems from the way it’s undermining everything that the idea stood for—from revdis to dynasts and all-inclusive politics and governance. Critics might quibble about the difference between projections and realities but it didn’t matter when Modi personified the BJP.
Going back to old politics may look pragmatic and realpolitik today. Haryana results may be cited as the latest vindication.
For all we know, the BJP may even end up winning Maharashtra and/or Jharkhand. But going back to pre-2014 politics poses the risk of losing the differentiator. It will hurt the BJP in the long run and Brand Modi in the immediate context. One may argue that the BJP has to prepare for the post-Modi era and come to terms with what may look like his diminishing appeal in assembly elections. But isn’t the party coming to this conclusion way too soon?
BJP politics coming full circle
From privy purse abolition to bank nationalisation, garibi hatao motto, and Bangladesh liberation to the Emergency and her elephant ride to Belchi, Indira Gandhi used to represent an idea, howsoever contradictory in the eyes of her admirers and critics. Once she was gone, the politics changed. And it was not because of the BJP then. Once the differentiator is dead, multiple factors and forces come into play. Who expected Rajiv Gandhi, a man who brought computers and telecom revolution to lose his way in Muslim-Hindu appeasement politics during his very first term after getting a historic mandate?
Therefore, the way to prepare for the post-Modi era is not to undermine Brand Modi but to build on it and come up with another big idea. But for this, the BJP needs political imagination. The party may still have an edge right now, even with its politics coming full circle. It’s helped by the lack of imagination in the Opposition camp. That’s also because they haven’t been able to counter the idea of Modi. If the BJP itself loses faith in the idea and takes politics to the pre-2014 era, it will be right up the Opposition’s alley. As it is, Brand Modi or the idea remains vibrant even today. It still has a lot to give to the BJP, but it has to have faith in its abiding powers.
DK Singh is Political Editor at ThePrint. He tweets @dksingh73. Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)
Modi was always pre-2014, in fact Jawaharlal Nehru the man BJP loves to hate. With his proclivity for foreign policy, his belief in big government that should do everything including businesses and banks, the same lack of trust in the common Indian, the lack of interest in agriculture, and the same personality cult, Modi is Jawaharlal Nehru reborn. Thankfully he leaves behind no progeny.
The communist party has done immense damage to China. Remember the Cultural Revolution which was rolled back even by the CCP officials who succeeded Mao.
The BJP actively promotes Islamophobia in the guise of nationalism. It has also been proven to be no better than others at governance.
See also where ideology of Sinhala First led Sri Lanka. We need to take lessons from such misadventures.
India must continue with its diversity of idea. Boxing the nation into an ideology is narrowminded and will be detrimental to it. Its always proven to be a very bad idea.
Excellent analysis by editor by from my point of view BJP needs to prepare for 2029, not only on depending modi and become paralysis after modi is gone. BJP need to become ideology like communist party in China for better vision of india.