New Delhi: After back-to-back drubbing over the last ten years at the hands of kamandal politics, a renewed Mandal politics and its social justice agenda have bounced back, reasserting their presence as still the most potent antidote to faith-based polarisation.
Uttar Pradesh and Bihar gave the BJP a kickstart in 2014 to consolidate itself across India; now the outcome of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections appears to be scripting the beginning of its decline.
Although the BJP gained predictably in Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and Telangana, it was its strongest fortress – which comprises the Hindi-speaking states – that have humbled Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his projection as a larger-than-life demagogue.
For a long time, these states were seen as lending popular support to many of the BJP’s authoritarian – and sometimes criminal – actions like demonetisation, arresting dissenters, police brutality, indiscriminate raids against opposition leaders, and even alleged fake encounters that were mocked by many BJP leaders as cosmic accidents.
Yet, none of those issues could overpower the people’s brewing concerns around their immediate worries like a lack of jobs, the back-breaking price rise of essential commodities, absentee Lok Sabha representatives and brazen indifference towards their constitutional rights.
The opposition forces not only picked up these issues readily but also understood the necessity of living up to its social justice plank.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
Both the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), with a big helping hand from a Congress that decidedly walked the path of Mandal politics, drummed up the demand for a caste census for an equitable delivery of welfare, but also made their intentions credible by accommodating and fairly representing a great number of OBC and Dalit leaders.
More importantly, they nominated leaders from non-Yadav OBC communities, signalling clearly that their campaigns around inclusiveness and justice were not merely empty slogans.
The Akhilesh Yadav-led SP had built its campaign around ‘PDA’ (Pichhda (OBC), Dalits and Alpsankhyak (minorities)) in an attempt to grow out of its perception as an ‘MY’ (Muslim-Yadav) party. In the final leg of its campaign, both the SP and the Congress fielded OBCs in nearly 45% of the 80 seats in UP and, more importantly, chose 28 non-Yadav OBCs and five Yadavs in these constituencies.
Moreover, the INDIA bloc made a huge statement when it chose two Dalit candidates to represent the alliance in two unreserved seats, Faizabad and Meerut, where both are leading at the moment.
This was a first by any SP-led alliance.
Similarly, while powering the INDIA campaign around unemployment, price rise, cronyism, authoritarianism and constitutional rights, the Tejashwi Yadav-led RJD stitched together a social coalition by allying with the Left and the Vikasheel Insaan Party (VIP).
Tejashwi entirely rejected the RJD’s perception as an ‘MY’ party and labelled it instead as a ‘MY-BAAP’ – where the latter stands for Bahujan (Backwards and Dalits), Agdaa (forwards), Aadhi Abaadi (women) and poor – party.
Making an effort similar to Akhilesh, he too nominated multiple candidates who were not Yadavs or Muslims, while also trying to draw support from its allies’ strongholds.
The decline of the BJP in the Hindi heartland largely is an outcome of the efforts made by INDIA parties to stitch together a more representative social coalition of communities. Their failure to expand beyond their traditional base was ably exploited by the BJP, which made an unprecedented push in the last decade to bring unrepresented and under-represented OBC and Dalit communities under the Hindutva tent.
Resentment against the incumbent Modi government on the people’s material issues only made their case stronger.
That social alliances still remain the single most important factor in Indian elections can be better understood if we compare Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
In UP, the INDIA bloc appears to be securing 44 of the state’s 80 seats, as opposed to the NDA’s 35. It happened because INDIA could capture a much bigger share of votes from the PDA communities, a much more formidable social coalition than that of the BJP, which repeated many of its incumbents.
In Bihar, the MY-BAAP coalition on the ground brought the INDIA bloc much more votes than what it could get in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. This also led to much narrower margins of victories or losses, but it still could not get an upper hand over the NDA.
The NDA simply had a more representative alliance – a significant section of OBC, EBC and Mahadalits represented by Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) and, to an extent, Upendra Kushwaha’s Rashtriya Lok Samata Party, Dalits led by Chirag Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) and Jitan Ram Manjhi’s Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular), and the BJP’s upper caste base.
One may recall how the BJP faced a humiliating loss in the 2015 Bihar assembly polls when the RJD and the Janata Dal (United) came together. This came only a year after the BJP-led alliance swept the Lok Sabha elections in 2014.
Nitish Kumar’s exit cost the INDIA bloc greatly, as the RJD, Congress, Left, and VIP just could not match up to the NDA caste-based social coalition. Yet, its spirited fight led by Tejashwi Yadav has brought the NDA’s 2019 figure down by nine seats. The NDA had won 39 in 2019 but appears to be winning 30 in 2024, while the opposition alliance appears to be sailing through in ten.
The INDIA bloc has also performed unexpectedly well in Rajasthan, where the Congress cobbled up a coalition with Hanuman Beniwal’s Rashtriya Loktantrik Party, the Bharat Adivasi Party and the Left. In Haryana, too, where the opposition appears to be getting half of the state’s ten seats, was a combined effort by the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party.
The BJP had swept all seats in these states in 2019.
Mandal politics has reinvented itself after a series of losses. The INDIA parties have understood the significance of not only fair representation but also crucially issues of economic justice. Such an awareness has not only helped them correct their political course and learn from each other, but also question their inherent social prejudices and predispositions.
