BJP's Tripura win: Deodhar, demographics, dull Oppn

In the first-ever direct electoral contest between Left and Right in Independent India, the BJP has registered a spectacular victory over the incumbent CPM government. The electoral verdict in this politically polarised state has rewarded BJP with 43 seats out of 59, while the CPM has got a mere 16, a steep fall from 49 seats in the last election. Congress, which has been the main opposition party since 1993, is down to zero, from 10 seats and 44% votes in 2013.

For the BJP, it was a journey from zero to zenith. In 2013, it had 1.54% votes and no seats. But it was able to reinvent itself and capture the imagination of the voters. While the saffron party has done well in other North East states too, what differentiates the Tripura election is the intense ideological battle in that state. Therefore, any inference declaring BJP's victory in Tripura as an outcome of some brilliant electoral arithmetic would be misleading and a gross misreading of the verdict.

The success of the saffron party in the Red citadel is as much a victory of its dedicated effort in the last three years as of the failures of the Left to reinvent itself and of the complacency of the Congress, which remained a mute spectator as its support base shifted to the BJP en masse.

In the aftermath of the 2014 Lok Sabha victory, the BJP began strategising to bring about a Communist-Mukt Bharat (Communist-free India), starting in Tripura. BJP chief Amit Shah's trusted lieutenant Sunil Deodhar, who had proven his organisational acumen as Narendra Modi's election manager in Varanasi, UP, was entrusted with the responsibility in Tripura and made the state in-charge in November that year.

Deodhar, who had been an RSS Pracharak in Meghalaya for 1991 to 2001, was familiar with the socio-political dynamics of the North East states. Realising the challenge in taking head-on an entrenched and disciplined cadre-based party like the CPM, which has ruled Tripura since 1978 - except for 1988-93 - Deodhar decided to break the precedent of the state in-charge only making occasional visits to it.

Instead, he visited Tripura frequently during 2015, and stationed himself there full-time since January 2016. In this time, he not only established the grassroots organisation of the party but also reinvented existing platforms and established others to make them representative of the demographic profile of the state, particularly bringing in the tribals, who were suffering from an acute sense of cultural and economic alienation.

Infusing the ideological element with a customised political strategy, BJP started approaching the tribals, not only promising them a better economic deal but also cultural prominence.

One way it did so, for instance, was by portraying 'Bharat-mata' dressed in tribal attires, thereby attempting to harmonise tribal culture with RSS outlook. To the Bengali section, the party appealed to their sense of living in a marginal state, both spatially as well as economically, and promised to catapult Tripura into the mainstream of India.

Ageing CPM base

The success of the BJP leadership in reinventing the party machinery, its emergence as the only credible alternative against CPM, and its stitching a successful alliance with the dominant tribal party, the Indigenous People's Front of Tripura (IPFT), while keeping its grip upon the majority Bengali section intact in this ethnically sensitive state speaks volumes about the strategic and ideological investment that has gone into the making of this verdict.

The CPM's crisis in Tripura stems primarily from the overconfidence of its leadership, especially visible in its view of the BJP and its state leadership as alien to the political dynamics of the state. Equally important is that much of the CPM support base consists of an ageing, 60-plus population. Besides, it was found that 74% of first-time voters identified with the BJP-IPFT alliance cutting across the ethnic divide of tribal and Bengali.

Finally, this demographic factor got compounded by the already anti-incumbency-hit CPM's blunder in fielding mostly ageing candidates in a state where, as per Census 2011, almost 30% of the population is in the 15-29 age group. Thus, the fate of the party was sealed the moment it expected the overwhelmingly young population to vote for its ageing candidates while the rival candidates were relatively younger.

Finally, the success of saffron party also is thanks to the pathetic complacency of both the central and state leadership of Congress that literally offered the anti-CPM support base that it commanded until 2013, comprising almost 45% of voters, to the BJP on a platter.

In the wake of three rounds of longitudinal fieldwork between September 2017 and February 2018, I was startled to find that most respondents who now identified themselves as BJP supporters said they had voted for Congress in 2013, when the BJP was seen as being hand-in-glove with the CPM. It was an accusation that the Congress central leadership had faced in the past, of having an understanding with the CPM and leaving Tripura's anti-Left voters at the receiving end perpetually.

That it has returned to haunt party again should be a wake-up call for Congress to go back and connect with its grassroots people in Tripura again. However, at the national level, BJP's victory in Tripura has pushed the Left deeper into its existential crisis. Its last citadel has fallen decisively into the hands of its electoral and ideological foe.

(The writer has a PhD from the Centre for Political Studies, JNU, and is associated with Peoples Pulse, a Hyderabad-based research organization)