As political parties start preparing for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has created strong tailwinds for itself by winning the three Hindi heartland states in the assembly polls. The BJP knows that the only way to stop the INDIA alliance from making any headway in 2024 is to keep the Congress’s seats confined to a double-digit figure, overall. The Congress knows it has to cross the 100-seat mark, up from 52 last time, to create a small chance for the INDIA alliance to make a bid for power in 2024.
Needless to say, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh are crucial to this Opposition project because the BJP and Congress have a straight fight here. The INDIA alliance had hoped that the Congress would improve in these states from an abysmally low base. In MP, with 29 seats, the Congress got just one in 2019 and the BJP swept 28. In Rajasthan, Congress got zero and the BJP bagged 24 out of 25 seats. In Chhattisgarh, the Congress could get just two seats out of 11 and the BJP got the remaining nine.
So BJP’s strike rate in these three states was close to 100% in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. There was some rational expectation that the Congress could do better from such a low base. Additionally, it was always assumed that 10 years of anti-incumbency against Prime Minister Narendra Modi would cause the BJP to cede at least 30-40% of seats in the three states. It is not an unreasonable hypothesis that the BJP still retains 60% of the seats on the back of Modi’s popularity.
But the assembly election results should provoke a rethink in the Congress camp. BJP’s decisive win has created a groundswell of positive sentiment for Modi just six months ahead of general elections. The BJP could still retain 100% of the seats if the Congress doesn’t gear up to fight the battle of its lifetime in the Hindi heartland.
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The only silver lining is that the Congress seems to have retained its vote share (improved by 0.5% in Rajasthan) in these states compared to the 2018 assembly elections, when it won a majority in all three. Even if the Congress is able to retain this vote share in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, it may have a good chance of winning over 20 seats from the three states. But this may not be easy, as the Modi factor will be stronger in the Lok Sabha polls. The vote share gap between the BJP and Congress in the 2019 Lok Sabha election was huge. In Rajasthan and MP, the BJP got 58-60% of votes whereas the Congress was stuck at 34%. In Chhattisgarh, BJP got 50% of the votes and Congress 40%. The BJP has a huge lead over the Congress, especially among the OBCs. The yawning vote share gap between the Congress and BJP is largely explained by the OBC vote, over which Modi has particular sway. Also, the Congress, with its new focus on caste census politics, seems to have given up on the upper caste vote.
Will caste census politics, on which Rahul Gandhi is banking, help the Congress in the Hindi heartland states apart from Bihar? Though the Congress has a fairly impressive share of the SC/ST votes in state elections, one doesn’t know how much of this might shift to Modi in the Lok Sabha polls. However, the OBC consolidation behind Modi is the elephant in the room. A key question here again is how much the caste census will work in the cow belt states outside Bihar.
With the Lok Sabha poll around the corner, how will the INDIA alliance create proper messaging of its vision of how Mandal 2.0 would play out, based on a new national caste census? This is a very important question that will determine the Congress’s performance in the Hindi heartland states, where it is in a one-to-one fight with the BJP. Recently, BJP’s Sushil Modi, former deputy chief minister of Bihar, argued that Modi is already doing enough for the OBC community and need not depend on a caste census to prove his credentials. There may be some truth in this, at least outside of Bihar.
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In MP, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, caste census politics did not resonate much in the assembly polls. Paradoxically, the Congress seems to be expanding its OBC vote bank in Karnataka and Telangana without depending much on the caste census pitch. Its win in Telangana is backed by a good chunk of the OBC vote shifting from the Bharat Rashtra Samithi. Traditionally, the Congress was dominated by the upper caste Reddy community but now is also backed by OBCs, SCs, STs and Muslims. This was the old caste coalition which the Congress enjoyed under Indira Gandhi.
The South by and large may not even need an aggressive caste census pitch as a realpolitik tool because the politics of social empowerment in many of these states has deep roots. In contrast, backward caste empowerment politics in the North is of more recent origin, post the implementation of the Mandal Commission report. The BJP’s counter to Mandal, the Hindutva consolidation, has weaned away large sections of OBCs in the broader Hindi-speaking belt. Remember, the Sangh had consciously involved the OBC community in the aggressive campaign for Ram Mandir to counter the Mandal mobilisation. Large sections of the OBC community in the North seem to have a transactional nexus with political Hindutva.
The INDIA alliance’s challenge is to penetrate the OBC vote in this region. Will caste census politics enable this? If not, what alternative vision will INDIA present? This has to be decided quickly.
