On the eve of counting, those of us who are diehard Congress followers — and currently participants in the gatbandhan (alliance) in Uttar Pradesh — convinced ourselves that the pollsters on TV had got it wrong, as they did on the eve of the Bihar results last year. To tell the truth I had expected a hung Assembly with the BJP possibly a little ahead but unable to form the government because Mayawati wouldn’t extend her support. The BSP ticket distribution was a clear indication that she was beginning to worry about the need to fortify her votebank of dalit support with a steadfast allegiance of Muslims. Needless to say, the actual results have come as a shock! BJP spokespersons attribute the result in UP to the sustained popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, though they sheepishly explain away Punjab as the helplessness of a junior partner. Although in financial real terms and an inevitable impact on our emerging economy, demonetisation is a disaster waiting to happen, it apparently had no adverse impact in rural UP or amongst the urban communities that were the worst affected. As in the past, and perhaps even more so this time, caste combinations dealt the trump card although the size of the winning vote (43 per cent) might camouflage it somewhat.
It seems the BJP — with its concentration on the non-Yadav OBC grouping — had the arithmetic right. In the circumstances one would have expected the BJP to forfeit its traditional upper caste support base that has steadily grown at the cost of the Congress Party. But herein lies the rub. Who was in a position to pick up this vote? The Congress, on its own, was ideally suited to claw back what was once a part of its brahmin-Muslim-dalit combine but the instant “cash and carry” alliance with the Yadav/OBC-dominated SP brought its own confusion, with not enough time to iron out the creases. One has heard of the dangers of backseat driving imposing severe constraints on the person at the wheel responding to emergencies and unexpected events. Equally the BSP, in the past having consciously worked on mass-scale brahmin support, almost certainly confused the leading upper caste even further with its public chest-thumping on giving an unprecedented number of seats to Muslim candidates.
This must have been music to the likes of Yogi Adityanath and Sakshi Maharaj, with Mr Modi openly joining in the tandav with his unbecoming-of-PM “kabristan versus shamshan” remarks. This, as indeed the idiom and style of the final days Mr Modi spent in Varanasi, gave the BJP an extra edge. Curiously long before any polarisation happened, the whisper campaign of polarisation, with some help from the obliging electronic media, queered the pitch for the partnership of two young leaders. Appealing to the right-wing Hindu fundamentalists, sometimes in the teeth of the recent Supreme Court judgment and at the same time dexterously combining the non-Yadav OBCs and upper castes, the BJP sealed its victory. Even so, after Muzaffarnagar, one expected the BSP to do better, just as one expected Ajit Singh’s Rashtriya Lok Dal to forge ahead in Harit Pradesh (western UP). But even here the bottom seems to have collapsed under both parties. The much-proclaimed silent voter decided to take the silence to the voting machine. For a one-state party like the BSP, once described by the then Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao as “the miracle of Indian democracy”, and having lost the last election this round, it was crucial for the BSP to preserve its image and stature.
But it seems that pushing the BSP down and dragging away some of its dalit votes was a necessity for the BJP, particularly once the BSP began decrying any suggestion that, in the end, they would either give or take support from the BJP. No wonder then that the BSP had to talk of EVM manipulation, half-heartedly echoed by other parties as well. A factor little talked about by commentators is the enormous damage done by the internal SP battle. Despite attempts to cover up the deep cracks that appeared even as the election schedule was announced by the Election Commission, the feel-good factor did not return, not to mention sporadic press reports and interviews by protagonists on both sides of the Mulayam Singh Yadav family, undoubtedly egged on by the proverbial “outsiders”! Close analysis will tell the whole story but clearly the young chief minister was caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.
The fact that he chose to take the plunge into troubled waters should not be counted as a mistake. He is young and hopefully will continue to keep his party together; he will certainly live through the political storm to fight another day. But, of course, both for him, as indeed for the Congress vice-president, it might be important to preserve the investment in the not-so-successful alliance; indeed, refurbish and strengthen it to make up the loss in 2019. Any alternative might lead to writing off much courage, endeavour and locked potential. But of course the bruised warriors of the Congress and SP will need fortitude, forbearance, futuristic vision and, most important, need to shun myopia if they go beyond the shock of the battering in the 2017 polls. On the other hand, the BJP victory might well be the beginning of the party’s problems for 2019. Their leaders’ talent at polarisation on grounds of religion and identity might have to face genuine ideological polarisation; their talk of development might well be swept aside by demands for implementing the many absurd promises they made. They may well have won the battle of 2017 and lost the war of 2019.
