The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has just re-written the entire formulae of caste mobilisation in Uttar Pradesh that has implications for the 2024 national elections. The state that gives the BJP its core seats has voted handsomely for the ruling party even though the Samajwadi Party (SP)-led front has dramatically improved its vote share. But the opposition has not been able to breach the walls necessary to defeat the ruling party. The BJP has made both faith and the delivery of food, through free rations, work for it. The electorate has endorsed both the national leadership of the BJP and its state leadership.
There are three big conclusions we must draw from the election results in Uttar Pradesh.
First, the distribution of rations across the state was a lifeline both for some citizens and the ruling party in a year of a terrible economic downturn and palpable distress in rural areas. In an impoverished state, the ruling party has indeed created a constituency of labharthi (beneficiaries) among the very poor sections of society. In the face of very visible and energetic campaigns by powerful peasant communities such as Jats and Yadavs for the SP-led front, this is also the story of quiet decision-making by the so-called silent voter who does not reveal their preference for fear of repercussions by either side.
Second, linked to this must be an examination of whether the dominant Jatav Dalit voter of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) shifted to the BJP as they saw the party led by Mayawati as having little chance at government formation. Dalits make up 21 per cent of the state voters, and 54 per cent of them are Jatavs. If this has indeed happened, this would be a tectonic shift in national politics and mark the beginning of the end of the subaltern movement led by the late Kanshi Ram and Mayawati that certainly empowered the most discriminated section of society historically in Uttar Pradesh.
A more detailed examination of the vote shares is required, but the trends suggest that this could have happened. For, the core BSP voters would also be the core labharthi voter. The BJP had already over the last few decades won over the upper caste voters and large sections of the OBCs; it had breached non-Jatav Dalit voters as seen in the 2014 and 2019 national elections and the 2017 state poll, but now the national party could have made inroads into the most influential bloc among Dalits. This would be big for the BJP, but again we need to do a detailed post-poll analysis.
Third, the core Hindutva ideology of the BJP has also worked, albeit silently, since there was no communal disruption in the course of the long campaign and seven-phase voting. But in seats with large Muslim populations, the BJP has managed to prevail, which suggests there was a counter mobilisation. Again, this could be a marker of the fact that the core Hindutva constituency of the BJP has also gone up in actual numbers. As we head to 2024, the BJP will not just complete the construction of the Ram Mandir at Ayodhya, but well-placed sources say they are also likely to invest in agitation over Krishnajanmabhoomi in Mathura in West Uttar Pradesh, actually just a two-hour drive from the national capital, Delhi.
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The BJP state leadership, therefore, possibly knew what it was doing when it stated that the election was between 80 per cent and 20 per cent. Although this was not overtly a Hindu-Muslim election, one must conclude that a certain sentiment is now acceptable and entrenched among voters in Uttar Pradesh.
Beyond the nation's most populous state, the extraordinary show by the BJP in Manipur and a respectable win in Uttarakhand also auger well for the national party. For in the end, after a year of economic downturn and joblessness, the party has done phenomenally well in this round of elections. It also shows that the leadership of the BJP also still enjoys great credibility among the voting masses, even as the other national party, the Congress, seems to have opened another chapter of their collapse.
We must also, in the future, understand the economic model that has apparently worked for the BJP. Investment in big infrastructure projects and lots of ration outreach seems to have been enough to overcome the challenge presented by the overall dismal economic indicators in what was, anyway, one of the nation's poorest states.
(Saba Naqvi is a journalist and author)
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