Modi's Campaign Showcases His Reputation and Capacity for Vituperative Rhetoric

Perhaps the oddest thing about the ongoing Lok Sabha election is that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) appears to be losing steam when the game still seems quite fresh. Only two rounds of polling have been completed and the party has high stakes, especially in the third phase on May 7 and to some degree in the fourth phase as well.

After that, however, the BJP’s rank and file may only have a flagging interest left.

Of course in the country’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh, the election exercise carries on till the end. The state – which elects 80 MPs, the highest in the country – has been a BJP stronghold in recent times. But here’s the thing. Keen observers say that in the first two phases, a listlessness and an unwonted dispiritedness marked the camp of the saffron brotherhood which is known to take the load of the BJP’s electioneering. 

This is being speculated because of the visibly lower voter mobilisation and turnout this time as compared to the 2019 general elections. The Election Commission data released after the polling showed voter participation in the first two phases was down 4-6% over 2019 in the key Hindi states where the BJP had won nearly 100% of the seats last time.

A spectacular win in the Hindi belt in 2019 had led the BJP to win 90% of the nearly 200 seats countrywide in which it clashed one-on-one with the Congress, which, by then, was depleted organisationally, principally on account of leadership shortcomings.

However, this time in the Hindi belt, a different ‘feel’ is being reported in states like Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh where the Congress and the BJP are pitted against one another, while in UP, Bihar, and Delhi, the opposition INDIA alliance parties are seen as meeting the BJP’s challenge squarely.             

Are the BJP’s fortunes likely to receive a setback in the electorally vast Hindi zone?

Naturally, one should not read too much into the reported drop in the voting figures, which works out to tens of lakhs of voters not showing up.

It’s prudent to wait for the results and not go by preliminary data, even if dressed up as “approximate” by the poll body 10 days after the first voting. But the political disenchantment with the ruling dispensation is hard to miss in areas where the saffron party had reaped its ripest harvest in 2019.       

Local issues in various states around unemployment and high living costs – such as the cancellation of examinations for government jobs, the grossly shortened Army tenures for raw recruits, and dropping farm incomes as costs rise – are key issues that are driving the conversation.

Across the Hindi heartland, there is fear among the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes, and the Extremely Backward Caste (EBC) groups about reservation benefits. They fear that the BJP would significantly alter the constitution, which is the source of their rights and reservation benefits in education and employment. 

In Bihar, for instance, where chief minister Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) is partnering with the BJP, the “social justice” party seems less than enthusiastic to bend its energies to support the BJP campaign on account of the increasing anxiety among people that it will scrap reservation if it had a two-thirds majority in parliament. 

In light of the message regarding the constitution, it is no surprise that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union home minister Amit Shah, defence minister Rajnath Singh, BJP president J.P. Nadda, and RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, are now speaking in concert to retrieve what they can. Much is at stake. 

In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, the BJP had secured 47% of the Dalit vote, a big jump compared even to 2009. Since the 1992 Ayodhya campaign, a sizeable section of the OBCs and EBCs have voted for the BJP for a variety of state-level considerations. If this trend is even partially reversed, the electoral gradient is likely to become steeper for the ruling party. No wonder, the BJP is going all out to assuage anxieties. 

And yet, the buzz won’t go away that the BJP is likely to drop a chunk of its seats from its most crucial election zone and cannot make up for the loss outside the Hindi belt. A noted psephologist-politician has gone to the extent of going on record about the ruling party taking a noteworthy hit in UP.

While we must await overall data to reach a firm conclusion, it will be unwise to imagine that the rising summer temperatures have deterred BJP’s voters, as some are saying in the political circles. The Hindu has published figures that put paid to the facile assumption. 

Against this backdrop, anything beyond a marginal (or correctional) bumping up of the official polling figures from what was initially given out is apt to raise eyebrows, not least when the figures for the total electors in a constituency are being suspiciously held back. Voter preference manipulation begins to look likely in such unusual circumstances. 

Unease, therefore, continues to persist among the public and in political circles about the late publication of the polling data for the first two phases.

This unease stems from the fact that the Election Commission is nominated by the government after the change in law last November regarding the constitution of the panel to determine the EC's composition. 

If the EC itself derives from a questionable provenance, how will its actions not be in the arc of suspicion, unless demonstrably shown to be otherwise? Regrettably, on a range of issues, such as letting the prime minister’s communal remarks in election speeches go unchecked, the EC has failed to live up to its glory in the days of T.N. Seshan and James Michael Lyngdoh.

Far from being 'normal', as noted in certain quarters, the election underway is shot through with another striking oddity. Never before in 75 years have we seen a prime minister acting so slippery, seeking to change the narrative in the long election season every few days, quite literally. 

There seems to be no principal narrative, no subordinate narrative, but a succession of dodge-and-weave manoeuvres, going to the extent of falsifying elements of the published manifesto of the Congress party with casual nonchalance, without the EC batting an eyelid. This is accompanied with a sustained communal barrage of petty points and laughable personal attacks on the Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and his family, going back generations.

Modi is perhaps only living up to his reputation and potential for vituperation, which is perhaps recognised better inside his own party than outside. His equanimity has evidently been disturbed by the fairly effective coming together of the INDIA bloc in spite of early hiccups. This was not the case in the previous two elections. 

After two consecutive terms in office, and in spite of the propaganda unleashed in the past 10 years through an ultra-favourable press, the country is face-to face with a leader who chooses petty politics as his core campaign material, ignoring his governmental record. This is an oddity difficult to reconcile with the dictates of democratic governance and the tradition in democracies.

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