The welfare-plus-development combination has struck a chord with voters, who now support ‘change-makers’.
The welfare-plus-development combination has struck a chord with voters, who now support ‘change-makers’.
There is always a message in the mandate and it depends on how the recipients read it. This is true with the recent assembly elections round. In India, electoral decisions have always underscored the fact that continuity and change always go hand in hand, and this round of elections is no exception. Voters have continued with the change-makers and demanded change- those who want the status quo to continue.
the voters speak
There are four clear aspects to a clear and loud message from the electorate. First, the results from Uttar Pradesh in particular have shown that voters have voted in favor of a welfare-plus-development combination that transcends caste and community considerations. Since the era of VP Singh, political discourse has been dominated by smart social alliances or political engineering influenced through social engineering. Now, democratic politics has been taken to a different level and effective management of aspirations has replaced social engineering. People prefer a party working on the ground than parties seeking votes in the name of caste and community. It is also noteworthy that the decline of the Bahujan Samaj Party in the state is indicative of the fact that the Scheduled Castes have refused to associate with a single community-based party.
The Hindu-CSDS-Lokniti Post-Poll Survey 2022 | Kalyan, regional factors gave ballast to BJP in Uttar Pradesh
no thumbs up for dynasties
The second important message is that the days of the dynastic gods are over. Voters rejected one dynasty after another, from the Badals to the Yadavs to the Banerjees and above all the Gandhi family. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had warned voters about this during the campaign. familialist parties, and they have heeded his appeal. In an aspirational democracy, people have realized that supporting leaders of dynastic parties is tantamount to supporting birth-based discrimination, which our Constitution makers rejected lock, stock and barrel. Parties in which leadership is reserved for families no longer have a glorious future, and the sooner dynastics hear this message, the better it is for their survival. Let us hope that parties like Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), Shiv Sena, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) take this message seriously. Make no mistake, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is not a dynastic party in itself, though it is being run almost single-handedly along the same lines. However, the victory in Punjab is also a clear rejection of a traditional alternative that has been a dynastic party.
focus on performance
The third message is about the politics of performance. Parties that ensure that their government works in governance convert the anti-incumbency wave into pro-incumbency. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has proved it many times in Gujarat in 2019, in Maharashtra in 2020, in Bihar in 2020, in Assam in 2021 and now in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Manipur and Goa. The victory of the BJP in all these rounds of elections was not only due to a weak opposition. Actually, the opposition in UP, Goa, Uttarakhand or earlier in Gujarat or Maharashtra cannot be called weak at all. And yet, if people have clearly shown their preference for the BJP in these elections, it is a clear sign of being pro-incumbency. Curiously, the anti-incumbency wave had become a sort of rule of the status quo; Now, this rule has apparently changed. The fact that the BJP has increased its vote share in most states also underscores what the Prime Minister has described as ‘BJP’s pro-poor, pro-active governance’.
leader matters
Lastly, the 2022 decisions also underscore that national leadership always matters, no matter how small or big a state is. Political pundits have said many times in the past that decisions in national elections reflect the consolidation of state politics. Today, the decisions of 2022 remind us that the decisions of the state also reflect the national aspirations. These elections took place in the shadow of COVID-19. Moreover, when the voting phase had actually begun, the shadow of the Ukraine crisis was looming large as thousands of Indian students were stranded there. Be it the Novel Coronavirus pandemic or Ukraine, the way the government has dealt with these challenges has gone down well with people across the country. It is also indicative of the fact that people across India believe that the country needs Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership for many more years. State decisions reflect this sentiment.
These election results are also important for democracy. As noted in the Pew Research Center’s latest survey report on satisfaction with democracy, ‘the global pandemic has, if anything, intensified perceived political and social divisions. Of the 17 advanced economies we surveyed in 2021, the middle 61% say their country is more divided than it was before the outbreak. And in India, in the first major elections held after three waves of COVID-19, people from different regions and far-flung states seem to speak in unison. Clearly, the Prime Minister has emerged as an excellent integrator across states, castes and communities. Having mastered the art of implementation, he has established that liberal democracy can go hand in hand with the efficient state craft that democracy can deliver. All said and done, the 2022 decisions are about the credit going to the Prime Minister as they are about the BJP’s periodically galvanized organization and its ideology-driven cadres.
Vinay Sahasrabuddhe is a member of the Rajya Sabha and a former National Vice President of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). E-mail: vinays57@gmail.com