Is BJP losing the youth?

Modi Wave Ebbing: The youth are showing their disappointment at the govt's failure on economic front

In the prelude to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi and his army, ensconced in a “war room” created at his official residence in Gandhinagar, pioneered the use of social media in Indian politics to unprecedented effect. The BJP’s rivals were stunned by the ease and elan with which Modi and his “social media warriors” ambushed them with brassy one-liners that encapsulated the anger and cynicism against the Manmohan Singh government, and conjured up visions of the “good times” Modi would usher in. Promises of creating millions of jobs, a boost for entrepreneurs, fresh infusions for anaemic small and medium enterprises and moves to stem migration from the villages and de-stress overloaded urban centres all underpinned the “ache din” slogan.

Run by a youthful team under the tutelage of high-tech pros from the US and Mumbai, Modi’s social media campaign heralded the arrival of the “young” vote as a monolithic political entity. The “young” vote was supposed to have bucked the conventional notions of a polity cleaved by caste, class and regionalism. It emerged as an independent source of sustenance for Modi’s BJP, on a par with traditional caste or faith-based vote banks.

Three years down the line, how has the Modi government done vis-a-vis the youth? There’s data to prove that it has fallen way short of creating the promised 10 million new jobs a year. In 2014-15, only 500,000 new jobs were created. In 2015-16, even that fell to a paltry 91,000. Labour-intensive industries including automobiles, looms and jewellery-making reported job losses. The scaled-down projections for economic growth by reputed ratings agencies have added to the overall sense of despondency amongst the “aspirational” classes who were feted by Modi as India’s “demographic dividend”.

To give Modi the benefit of doubt, his flagship schemes such as Make-in-India, skill development programmes and incentives for start-ups may need time to show results and generate jobs given the inevitable gaps between policy, implementation and actual outcomes. But young people who reposed faith in Modi’s promises are not prepared to wait. The mass of street protests in BJP-ruled Gujarat and Haryana for job quotas has less to do with caste imperatives than economic angst. If Modi is seeking another term, he would do well to remember that by 2019, another 125 million young Indians will be ready to cast their first votes and seek their first jobs as well.

The RSS-aligned Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarti Parishad’s losses in a recent spate of university elections in Delhi, Hyderabad, Rajasthan could be symptomatic of the emerging trust deficit in the Modi government. So also a recent Delhi by-election at Bawana was won by the Aam Aadmi Party despite the BJP mobilising its young leaders like MP Parvesh Varma and the state party president Manoj Tiwari. The ace in the hole – the BJP’s social media prowess -- is fraying at the edges because the BJP’s opponents are proving to be masterly learners in the use of twitter, Facebook and the other networks.

Gujarat, which goes to polls at the end of this year, could be the laboratory to test if the “young” vote continues to hold as a block in favour of the BJP or gets disintegrated under the sway of a more aggressive social media campaign unleashed against Modi, punching holes in his claims.

A punchline on twitter has become a watch-out sign for the BJP. The “vikasgandotheyoche” (development has gone berserk) hashtag, conceptualised and shaped by someone as smart as a Modi social media warrior, has painted the BJP’s campaigners into a corner, because for the first time, the hallowed “vikas” theme, played out in every Gujarat election since 2002, is being hollowed out. In the past, the Congress contested Modi’s development theme with rhetoric and facts, but Modi managed to trump its spokespersons more eloquently, betraying no trace of defensiveness.

Not now. As the “development-gone-berserk” point gathered momentum in Gujarat, spawning jokes on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project, and more gag lines inspired by Bollywood hits like “Mr India” and “Don” started doing the rounds, BJP chief Amit Shah was worried enough to warn his cadre at a meeting in Ahmedabad not to be taken in by comments on twitter and Facebook. Defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman, lined up as a strategist for the elections, said that she would counter her opponents’ campaign. The bullet train, another symbol of Modi’s “Gujarat Shining” narrative, has become a butt of ridicule in a state that is usually receptive to grand projects.

The trouble is, unlike in the past, when the opponent was an uninspiring Congress, that never regained its credibility after being voted out in 1995, this time it is a core BJP constituency that’s up in arms in Gujarat. The Congress belatedly associated itself with the new offensive. Hardik Patel, who has caused a churn among the powerful Patels, again a solid BJP vote bank, was suspected to have instigated the “vikasgando…” theme. But those who know the feisty leader say he’s a street fighter, not a sloganeer. “Such a catchy concept could only have emanated from a Modi ‘bhakt’. No wonder Shah had to answer back,” a Gujarat BJP source admitted.

The churn has found a focus in three politically unaligned young men -- Hardik Patel, Jignesh Mevani, a Dalit, and Alpesh Thakore, a backward caste leader. The BJP’s hope is that the three come from mutually antagonistic social groups so their joining hands is “near impossible”. However, the BJP nursed the “young voter” as a caste-neutral block. The three young men could well join hands and ride on that and address Gujarat’s youth as their new champions, instead of appealing only to their castes and restricting their acceptability.

Defensive the BJP might be in Modi-Shah’s backyard, but resigned? Far from it. There’s no way the duo can afford to lose Gujarat, let alone squeak through with a pyrrhic victory. That would adversely impact BJP’s chances in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Modi and Shah have to keep Gujarat, and with a decisive verdict.