Widen Your Reach but Narrow Your Ideology: Two Takeaways of the Maharashtra and Jharkhand Results

New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party-led Mahayuti’s landslide win in Maharashtra and INDIA bloc’s comprehensive victory in Jharkhand have yet again shown that the elections in India are won by those who get their alliances – both electoral and social – right. 

While multiple observers may look at the success of Ladki Bahin in Maharashtra or Maiya Samman Yojana in Jharkhand as primary propellers of the outcome, successive elections have shown that these populist measures receive the required fillip only when an electoral camp manages to stitch together a more representative social alliance. The ability of a bloc to go beyond its core support and widen its reach, even if temporarily, has become the cornerstone of Indian elections in an increasingly bipolar political landscape.

The second-most important takeaway that both the outcomes prove is that the voters drift more towards a bloc that carries out a campaign with an unambiguous political messaging, especially when the other side fails to counter it with an unapologetic ideological alternative. 

Although both the states have delivered different results, they are bound by these two political strands. 

Let’s take a look at Maharashtra where the BJP completely reversed its humiliating show in the Lok Sabha polls. It contested 148 seats, out of which it may win 130 eventually – a strike rate of nearly 90%. This unprecedented performance by the saffron party has catapulted the Mahayuti to one of the biggest majority governments in the state, while decimating the opposition alliance. 

The Mahayuti ran a two-layered campaign – one along the lines of Hindutva, the other (and the more underrated) towards consolidating the non-Maratha Other Backward Class caste groups. While its rabid anti-Muslim rhetoric consolidated its core support base following the Lok Sabha defeat, the welfare schemes and other damage control moves initiated by chief minister Eknath Shinde as corrective measures became a way for the National Democratic Alliance to reach out to caste groups that had voted against it four months ago. 

In fact, ever since the BJP faced reverses in the Lok Sabha polls, it realised that it was important for it to revive its old Ma-Dha-Va formula – an acronym for Mali (gardener), Dhangar (shepherd), and Vanjari (a semi-nomadic caste group from Marathwada). Back in the 1980s, the BJP organised its party by consolidating these three numerically-influential groups to counter the Congress that formed its governments with the support of Marathas, Kunbis, Dalits, Adivasis, and Muslims. Resultantly, the first crop of BJP leaders in the state were N.S. Farande (who belonged to the Mali community), Anna Dange (who belonged to the Dhangar group), and Gopinath Munde (who was Vanjari). At the same time, while it chose to benefit from a Hindu-Muslim polarisation, it took care not to entirely alienate the Marathas on whom its prospects in Marathwada region – with its 46 seats – rested. The Mahayuti is on its way to sweep the whole Marathwada region that was considered its weakest spot, while consolidating Konkan, north Maharashtra and to a great extent a large part of Vidarbha.

The Maha Vikas Aghadi-led by the Congress depended too heavily on Maratha anger – a factor that had been one of the biggest reasons for the INDIA bloc’s victory in the Lok Sabha polls. It became complacent, and also spent too much time in giving an electoral shape to its alliance for the assembly polls. The over-valuation of the Maratha factor, and assumption that its social consolidation of Dalits, Muslims, and Kunbis will stay intact in other regions even amidst the fragmented polity of the state have now proven disastrous for it. The INDIA bloc is now struggling to cross even the 50-seat-mark in the 288-member assembly, while the NDA is on its way to touch 230.

The INDIA bloc constituents were adamant about contesting more seats than they could. For example, the Uddhav Thackeray faction of the Shiv Sena insisted on contesting 89 seats despite its limited presence outside the Mumbai and Konkan regions. Sharad Pawar, too, got the Nationalist Congress Party to contest in 87 seats instead of consolidating his divided house in its stronghold of Western Maharashtra. As a result, the Congress, which had a strong organisational presence in over 200 seats could field its candidates only in 103 seats.

The Mahayuti, on the other hand, appeared to be much more evenly distributed, and fought based on the strength of its constituents rather than on the basis of mere electoral arrangement. The BJP, strongest of the lot, contested in 148 seats, while Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar took 80 and 53 seats respectively. 

The Eknath Shinde-Devendra Fadnavis-Ajit Pawar trio became the face of the Mahayuti, even when each of them asserted their independence. The MVA, in contrast, depended solely on Uddhav Thackeray’s face. Although Sharad Pawar was seen as the backroom anchor of the alliance, the 84-year-old could not have played a more active role than what he currently did.

For common voters, the assembly polls appeared to be a contest between two camps – one representing the Marathas and devoid of a cohesive political ideology, and the other more socially representative with a clear ideological inclination, however unappealing it may have been. 

The NDA fit the conventional power-sharing model of Maharashtra politics better than the INDIA bloc. 

The failure of the MVA to shape an electoral narrative that could have touched a wide section of people across the state – for instance, widespread agrarian distress – may have swayed people more towards the Mahayuti as well.

INDIA’s NDA move in Jharkhand

In Jharkhand, the INDIA bloc achieved a similar outcome by deploying the strategy the NDA used in Maharashtra. Although Adivasi anger against the Raghubar Das-led BJP government brought Hemant Soren to power in 2019, he used his term to solidify his Adivasi support by playing the role of a mediator between competing Adivasi groups. He also launched several universal welfare schemes that warmed the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha to non-Adivasi groups. 

He created leaderships within his party, too. Champai Soren was elevated from being a regional powerhouse to the position of the chief minister in his absence. At the same time, the party projected his wife Kalpana Soren, who in the last six months, has transformed into the most-popular leader of Jharkhand and is now someone whose appeal is not restricted to Adivasi pockets but across different regions. 

Soren also ensured that he built a wider social coalition by forging an respectful alliance with the Rashtriya Janata Dal and Communist Party of India (ML-Liberation). As a result, the JMM has retained the maximum number of seats in its traditional strongholds, while expanding the INDIA bloc’s tally in regions that have conventionally preferred the saffron party.

The INDIA bloc’s seat-sharing arrangement in Jharkhand looked much more appropriate than the same in Maharashtra. The influential JMM contested in 43 seats, while Congress that performed poorly in comparison in 2019 fielded its candidates in 29. The CPI(ML) contested in three seats as INDIA partner, while RJD got six. As expected, JMM’s strike rate is over 75%. The smaller allies, too, posted comprehensive victories with the help of the alliance, while the Congress, which has little organisational presence outside certain pockets, could save its face too. 

During the campaign, the Soren couple were seen not merely as Adivasi leaders, but as leaders of the poor – a messaging that both of them delivered in clear terms. The couple also effectively presented a long-term ideological narrative about reviving the rural economy and employment situation in the state to counter the largely ineffective polarising “Bangladeshi infiltration” campaign.  

In contrast, although the BJP attempted to unite its divided house by bringing on board its former partner, the All Jharkhand Students Union-led by Sudesh Mahato and Babulal Marandi’s Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (Prajatantrik), its gains were offset by the new claimant of OBC politics in the state – Jairam Mahato. Marandi faded in front of the Soren couple as the BJP’s Adivasi face. 

All the elections since 2014 have become a game of mathematical precision. The first-past-the-post system has allowed the BJP to use India’s demographic make-ups, social contradictions, and religious polarisation to register victories. Mere anti-incumbency sentiment against a government has been insufficient for the opposition to win. 

The Congress, even after multiple losses, have not stepped up to realise the significance of the twin factors of widening its social coalitions and presenting an unequivocal ideological narrative that could be counted as a credible alternative to the BJP. Unless it understands and masters the complementarity of these two factors in a political landscape that is feeding more and more cynicism among voters, all its victories will be considered incidental.