There are dangers in extrapolating today’s events to what might happen 14 months from now. But anti-BJP parties will believe it is beatable.
The Modi-Shah BJP started in this Parliament with a strength of 282. With the two defeats in Uttar Pradesh and one in Bihar today, four years later, it is down to 275, which includes the speaker. This is just a couple above the magical 272, not achieved by any other political force since 1984.
This makes no material difference to the solidity or the power of the Modi government at the Centre. Its overwhelming power was on show today as Parliament set an obscene precedent, passing the Finance Bill without any debate or discussion. As for constitutional propriety, it is an unconventional government, so it breaks old rules, makes new ones.
It does, however, make a big difference to politics. The BJP’s, its allies’ and its rivals’.
Narendra Modi is an unconventional Prime Minister. But there is one convention he has never broken: that the prime minister does not campaign in by-elections. Note that the BJP has lost six of the by-elections since 2014, the reason it is today seven less in the Lok Sabha than its opening score. The last four of these by-elections were in heartland states that it had swept. Each one of these had been won by it by humongous, mostly 3-lakh plus margins. Each one has now been lost. What does it tell us?
A few things.
First, the BJP without Modi leading the campaign is a very beatable entity compared to when he is in front. Second, that the BJP does not have any other vote-catcher. Yogi Adityanath was being widely painted as its new, young mass leader. That myth lies shattered, to be interred with the garbage you must wade through walking the streets of his rotting, disease-laden pocket-borough, Gorakhpur.
Vasundhara Raje, once a mass leader, has been shown up in Rajasthan. Shivraj Singh Chouhan just lost assembly by-elections despite throwing in resources unseen in the past, and having almost the entire cabinet camp there. Even if these were Congress strongholds, the defeats tell us he can’t win elections by himself any more.
If you can name another BJP vote-catcher, please do tell me. The truth is, there isn’t one. To that extent, the Indira-isation of the BJP is complete. The party is totally dependent on one man. It makes him enormously powerful, but it also underlines the fact that as a political party, the BJP is now a personality-cult run empire like almost every other political party in the country. Check out the 22 states the BJP rules across the country (barring the small northeastern states acquired through mergers and acquisition), and name one chief minister who can be counted upon to win his state back. There is none today.
Next, these by-elections, especially in UP, show you the limits of ideology. These also shatter the other myth, that the BJP/RSS were so fundamentally changing the nature of Indian (ok, Hindu) society, that the majority vote will come to it by default. That is why Yogi was chosen over several others as its chief minister in Uttar Pradesh. With his youth, he was also seen by many as a likely future successor to Modi, if only to bring more ideological purity and enhance the Hindutva project. The misconception is now buried.
Third, this has exposed the limitations of social engineering. For two reasons. One, when it comes to fundamental issues of quality of life, whether I am better off now than in 2014 or not, polarisation doesn’t work. Second, vote-oriented social engineering isn’t a patented, exclusive skill. Others can play this game too. All it takes is for two parties to bring their vote banks together.
There are dangers in extrapolating today’s events to what might happen 14 months from now. But this brings the Modi-Shah think tank back to the most vital question for the BJP since 1989 when it sensed its first sniff at power: can you use religion (Hindutva) to stitch back together what caste divided?
It worked 1992-onwards with the temple, in 2014 with “vikas” and “achche din”. If it didn’t work in Uttar Pradesh now, in the constituencies of the chief minister and his deputy, within a year of their sweeping these segments for the BJP in assembly elections, there is no guarantee it will work in 2019.
Of course “Modi magic” will be there and it will still take some doing to defeat it. But, now on, all anti-BJP parties (and its chafing allies) would believe the party is beatable.