K. G Suresh
With the announcement of the elections to the Haryana and Maharashtra Assemblies, the media, particularly the television channels and the professional seminarists, are projecting them as another ‘test’ for Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In fact, it is only a continuation of the ‘tests’ that Modi has been facing ever since he won the Lok Sabha election with a thumping majority. And subsequently began the celebrations following each and every reverse the saffron party suffered at the hustings, from the panchayat elections to Assembly by-polls. Ridiculously enough, every poll in the country is now being seen as a referendum on Modi, a test of his popularity, an appraisal of his performance. It is, therefore, not surprising if this testing continues for the next five years till the actual test of the Lok Sabha takes place.
Experiences over the last several decades prove that the electorate in the world’s largest democracy has become mature enough to distinguish between the different elections. To cite some recent instances, the BJP itself was buoyed by the outcome of the Assembly poll in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh towards 2003-end, and advanced by six months the Lok Sabha election of 2004 – which proved to be its waterloo. Again, even as Sheila Dikshit won the Delhi Assembly poll for three consecutive terms, the people of Delhi voted for the BJP to the metro’s civic body.
During travels in Uttar Pradesh ahead of the 2014 election, one remembers meeting hardcore supporters of the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Samajwadi Party who categorically stated that they were fed up with the lack of a decisive leadership at the Centre and wanted a strong Prime Minister. Yet they added in no uncertain terms that they would vote for their respective regional/caste leaders when it comes to the Assembly election.
Thus, it would be naïve on the part of any political party to think that the massive Lok Sabha mandate in Uttar Pradesh in favour of the BJP was in any manner a verdict on the SP or the BSP. It was clearly and categorically a decisive verdict against the UPA and a vote for Modi. Hence, the result in the recent by-poll in Uttar Pradesh is least surprising. As in the past, in local elections, it is the issues, the local leadership, the personalities involved, the caste and religious permutations and combinations and the dynamics, which influence the outcome. It can neither be dismissed as a mandate on the Prime Minister or on the candidates.
The BSP was missing from the scene, as a result of which the minority votes shifted en bloc to the SP. Also, the BJP was hoping that Mayawati’s Dalit votes would shift en masse to it as it did in the general election. That did not happen. The BJP experimented in western Uttar Pradesh with a leader recognised in eastern Uttar Pradesh. The focus of the party’s campaign too remained confined to religious issues, whereas it should have raised with vigour problems pertaining to power, roads, unemployment, law and order etc. With the unexpected victory in the Lok Sabha poll, both the local-level party leaders and booth-level cadres had become complacent. Last but not the least, the Sangh Parivar cadres who had fanned out to every nook and corner during the last poll were conspicuous by their absence. The State and the Central leaderships kept away from campaigning.
Similarly, the outcome of the Uttarakhand by-poll wherein the Congress won the three seats at stake, barely within months of the State sending BJP candidates from all five seats to the Lok Sabha, could hardly be termed as a reflection of Modi’s ‘waning’ popularity. If at all it showed something, it was an affirmation of faith in the leadership of Chief Minister Harish Rawat as against a faction-ridden BJP. The verdict in Bihar too reflected the success of the synergy between Lalu Prasad’s RJD and Nitish Kumar’s JD(U), a coming together of ‘secular’ votes, an euphemism for Muslim votes. It also exposed a divided house within the BJP State unit.
If the BJP could regain the Vadodara seat, vacated by Modi, by a massive margin of over one lakh votes, even as it lost three Assembly seats, how can the overall results be treated as a verdict against Modi? Apparently, Chief Minister Anandiben Patel and her Rajasthan counterpart Vasundhara Raje have to work harder. If the outcome of most of the by-polls after the Lok Sabha election was a test of Modi’s popularity, as is sought to be projected by his critics, by the same logic the results of the upcoming elections in Haryana and Maharashtra, where the ruling Congress faces huge anti-incumbency and a probable defeat, too should be seen as a resurrection of the Modi Magic.
