The saffron surge
On January 22 last year, I travelled with some friends to a workers’ colony in Mohan Estate, Delhi, to attend to a grieving family. Manu (name changed), a former contract employee at the Raj Kumari Amrit Kaur College of Nursing, had been penalised for unionising. He had lost his job in 2018. In January 2024, he lost his father.
January 22, 2024, was a landmark day for the nation and the streets of the national capital were awash with saffron. Vehicles with flags and loudspeakers celebrating the inauguration of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya occupied every second lane in Mohan Estate. I witnessed similar scenes in Kalkaji, Lajpat Nagar and Govindpuri areas, on my way home.
This saffron surge was unprecedented, at least in recent memory.
I soon learnt about several “low-key” disturbances – threats to Muslim shop owners in Malviya Nagar, stray attacks in Mithapur and Jaitpur, aggressive displays of Hindutva triumphalism in the apartment blocks of Vasant Kunj. As a resident of Delhi, and as someone invested in the state of affairs in our city-state, and obviously invested in the lives of my fellow citizens, I sat with some friends and wondered how we should respond to this.
The saffron surge did not immediately mean that Delhi was headed towards a double-engine government. Notwithstanding repeated mobilisations against the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government on a range of state-level issues such as factory fires, deaths of sewer workers, insufficient governmental action against natural disasters including heatwave and pollution, and the lack of civic amenities, the people of Delhi seemed reluctant to ditch the AAP.
Also read: AAP and Why the Delhi Assembly Polls Were a Natural Fallout
The Lok Sabha election witnessed a notable resentment against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), facilitated in part by the incarceration of our chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal. But the Kejriwal-Sisodia imprisonment wasn’t the sole reason behind the anti-BJP sentiment.
While campaigning for the INDIA candidates during the election, many of us felt that the people living in Delhi’s social margins – men and women from the working classes, Dalit Bahujan communities, Muslims and others – were acutely aware of Modi government’s failures.
The common people of Delhi were concerned about unemployment, price rise, demolitions, communal polarisation and the suppression of dissent. But the discontented sections had not come together as a social coalition and lacked a coherent political voice. As a result, the BJP ended up winning all 7 seats, although with significantly lesser margins compared to 2019.
Recent history shows that nowhere in the world are political parties being able to fight back the rising tide of authoritarianism, racism and xenophobia by themselves, or even when in alliance with other parties, unless buttressed by social coalitions – examples include Chile, Brazil, France and the United States of America.
There were several campaigns in support of the INDIA candidates during the Lok Sabha election. Organisations working at the grassroots with marginalised social groups – trade unions, left organisations, Ambedkarite groups, civil society organisations – all pitched in, without really coming together on a shared platform. The INDIA partners, on their part, showed little initiative to ally with these organisations, mistakenly believing that they were insignificant.
The cumulative influence and mobilising potential of these grassroots organisations could have been a decisive factor in some Lok Sabha seats.
Many of us involved with the INDIA campaign felt that these organisations needed a shared platform, and the gap between them and the INDIA parties needed to be bridged, sooner rather than later. Unless this happened, the door would be left open to the BJP to expand their influence in Delhi by means fair or foul.
That is exactly what the BJP did between Lok Sabha ’24 and Vidhan Sabha ’25.
For instance, though squarely responsible for the bulldozing of homes, the BJP managed to rope in the displaced people of Bela Estate, and got them to campaign for them in Jangpura during the Vidhan Sabha election. Their votes, amounting to thousands, ultimately cost Manish Sisodia his seat – by 675 votes.
Also read: Could the Supreme Court Have Been a Factor in the Delhi Election Results?
It is worth remembering that the people of Bela Estate had been sitting under the Geeta Colony Pul for over two years prior to the 2025 election and had reached out to all parties and organisations for solidarity. Only the BJP listened.
False promises, propaganda, financial incentives all played a role in the BJP’s appropriation of the voice of Bela Estate, but did we do enough to counter the BJP by launching a united campaign of displaced peoples against the Bulldozer Raj?
Alternate manifestos
Between the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections in Delhi, the gaps between social movements, civil society organisations and grassroots campaigns on the one hand, and INDIA partners on the other, only increased. A close look at the plethora of manifestos issued by citizens’ groups on the eve of the Vidhan Sabha election reveals how qualitative the gap was.
While the AAP, Congress and BJP competed with each other in promising a range of subsidies and financial benefits to poor and the lower middle classes, these alternate manifestos struck a notably different chord. They called for systemic reforms, advocated for constitutional rights, social justice, environmental justice and emphasised on proactive efforts to strengthen Delhi’s secular fabric.
The Peoples’ Manifesto by Dilli Ki Awaaz listed three major problems that afflicted the city-state – environmental crisis, livelihood and housing crisis, and the denial of workers’ rights. Both, the AAP and the Congress had acknowledged these but stopped short of concrete promises.
The manifesto identified clear solutions such as the implementation of existing acts that gave legal protection to workers – the Street Vendors’ Act, the Building and Other Construction Workers (BOCW) Act – and the enactment of enabling legislations for domestic workers and app workers. The manifesto advocated for tenurial rights for residents of informal settlements, heatwave and flood protection for the poor and the vulnerable, implementation of the solid waste management rules for cleaning up the city, and so on.
A joint manifesto of Left organisations echoed many of the concerns voiced in the Peoples’ Manifesto. The Left’s manifesto also emphasised on promoting secularism and diversity, strict punishment for people and organisations fomenting communal hatred and provision of adequate healthcare, education and civic amenities for minorities. In addition to subsidies for women, this manifesto called for an increase in employment opportunities for women and equal pay for equal work.
Campaigns by the Bhim Army and the Azad Samaj Party in various pockets of the capital called for a caste census, for reservation in all institutions and job reservations for Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST) and Other Backward Castes (OBC) in the private sector, abolition of manual scavenging and sewer cleaning, and proper utilisation of funds allocated for the welfare of SCs and STs. These concerns were powerfully articulated in the Left manifesto as well.
A Health Manifesto issued by the Jan Swasthya Abhiyan (JSA), based on the People’s Manifesto on Right to Health and Healthcare (2024), appreciated the AAP government’s health subsidies and mohalla clinics but pointed out that in order to cater to at least a third of Delhi’s population, the state needed around 4,000 mohalla clinics or urban sub-centres – ten times more than those currently functioning. These also had to be integrated into the government health system more effectively, particularly for referral, preventive services, diagnostics, supply of medicines and regularised doctors and other health personnel, the manifesto stated.
The Health Manifesto called for the filling of vacancies of various cadres of health personnel and ensuring better working conditions in the health sector. It also advocated an increase in public health expenditure through general taxation, the enactment of a Delhi Health Act, and for making the right to healthcare a justiciable right.
Also read: Delhi Is Testament to How BJP Scripted Its Power Grab Strategy After Lok Sabha Jolt
A lawyers’ manifesto issued by the All-India Lawyers’ Association for Justice (AILAJ) talked about the need for reforms in the judicial infrastructure, easier access to justice for the poor, protection for advocates, and diversification of the bar and the judiciary.
The authors of these manifestos appreciated the welfare programs carried out by the AAP government, but their sense of welfare encompassed a lot more than income support for sections of the poor and the marginalised. It included constitutional rights, social justice and secularism: an ideological package capable of challenging the BJP’s Hindutva, pro-corporate and authoritarian politics. A public narrative structured on this expanded notion of welfare and development could have reset the unfortunate freebies versus hard work framework that dominates public conversations these days.
Why urban social coalitions are necessary
The introduction to the Peoples’ Manifesto indicates the social sections from which the alternate manifestos originated: “This vision reflects the aspirations of Delhi’s residents, especially those often left out of the policy-making processes – working class communities, informal workers, youth, women, children, LGBTQIA++ individuals, and climate activists.”
The points of emphasis in these alternate manifestos were hardly novel – many of these (workers’ rights, civic amenities, reduction in urban inequality, fostering communal harmony) were part of the AAP manifesto in 2015. The AAP, at that point, voiced the aspirations of the marginalised – for their right to the city in which they lived, loved and worked. The party was able to draw upon the support of trade unions, civil society organisations, minority organisations, women’s movements, and Dalit Bahujan organisations.
But the last few years have witnessed a slow but steady abandonment of the old promises. Contractualisation of work has increased, including in government employment, which has a sizable Dalit workforce. Denial of minimum wages, insecure employment, oppressive working conditions and poor living conditions by and large continue to plague the lives of the working classes, the lower middle classes, Dalits and Muslims in Delhi.
It has been suggested that AAP lost mainly due to loss of support among the upper strata of society. However, data shows that the loss of support among sections it once represented played an equally important role.
Compared to its 2020 performance, the AAP lost 4 SC seats (Bawana, Mangolpuri, Madipur, Trilokpuri), 7 seats with sizable working-class populations (Narela, Adarsh Nagar, Wazirpur, Model Town, Rajendra Nagar, Sangam Vihar, Moti Nagar), and one seat with a huge Muslim population (Mustafabad).
Statistically speaking, these 12 seats would have been enough to secure the AAP a majority with 36 seats – it won 22.
The AAP’s pandering to Hindu majoritarian sentiments is well known. Its silence on the Delhi Pogrom and connivance with the increasing Hindutva presence in the nooks and crannies of the city made it difficult for secular voters to trust the AAP. This helped split votes in key constituencies, and put off a range of secular formations with limited electoral strength but significant mobilising capacity from throwing their weight behind the AAP.
All this is not because the AAP is bereft of ideology, but because its ideology at the moment clearly lacks the depth to take on the BJP. Its Hindutva leaning welfare-ism, consisting of subsidies but excluding constitutional rights, social justice and secularism, could neither challenge the BJP on its own, nor attract allies.
The AAP’s partial abandonment of the people it once represented has been rightly criticized. But this also indicates weaknesses of the social coalition that had propelled the AAP to power. Social coalitions that create a sustainable base for political transformations are powerful enough to hold political parties accountable. They cannot be used as stepping stones and later abandoned.
The INDIA bloc, formed before the 2024 Lok Sabha election, was cemented by a powerful peoples’ resistance to the BJP government. This resistance emanated from clearly identifiable social groups: farmers, workers, Dalits, Muslims, Adivasis, backward castes and their allies in civil society. Similar movements are required at regional and local levels. Durable social and political alliances need to be built in states.
The electoral autocracy which began with the BJP’s ascendancy at the centre in 2014 has gradually reshaped the deep state through communal-corporate policies and personnel. In urban centres, on which more than half of India’s population depends for survival (either by residence or through remittances), this transformation has produced stark inequality, segregation and systemic discrimination along all possible axes – caste, class, race, gender, religion.
Hindutva urbanism and pro-rich and pro-corporate urbanisation have given rise to a range of urban social movements; movements which are urban in terms of their location, modus operandi, and vocabulary, but which essentially echo wider sentiments – for equality, justice and dignified life for all.
The challenge of the new deep state requires more than electoral alliances. It requires social coalitions of the marginalised people. Urban coalitions, and their alliance with secular democratic political parties, can play a pivotal role in beating back forces of majoritarianism, authoritarianism, and corporate dominance at regional and national levels.
Akash Bhattacharya is a historian and a political activist.