The Congress Party is entitled to its view that the Delhi vote is by no means an endorsement of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership but a rejection of Arvind Kejriwal’s experiment in politics of deceit and deception. A grain of truth, perhaps.
The BJP, of course, has earned crowing rights. The established rites of sycophancy have kicked in. The sarkari columnists are working overtime to tell us – and, reassure themselves – that the Modi charisma is intact, that Amit Shah retains the coveted title of the most dubious Chankaya, and that the BJP is all set to keep dominating the political space. Several grains of truth, perhaps.
At least in three areas the AAP can claim credit for making the BJP sing a different tune.
First. The BJP found itself constrained to shelve its Hindu-Muslim theme song. When the Delhi campaign began, the BJP ticket aspirants were mouthing the “ek hai to safe hai” — that loaded slogan which RSS/Hindutva hardliners had coined and used first, during the Maharashtra elections. And, though the very, very controversial Kapil Mishra was given a seat, the BJP rhetoric and arguments zeroed in on the AAP government’s alleged misdeeds and misdemeanours. There was no Anurag Thakur shouting, “Goli maro saalo ko.” Both Modi and Shah also curbed their cultivated itch for polarising politics.
Of course, it was a tactical retreat but the credit must go to Kejriwal for forcing the BJP’s hand. If the BJP wanted to wean the middle classes away from AAP, it was imperative for the saffron party to reassure Delhi’s vast middle class that it has not lost total control over the Hindutva hotheads in the capital city. Unlike in Uttar Pradesh where Adityanath, that sure-footed leader of the hard-wired Hindutva crowd, is running circles around the central leadership, the Modi clique could still exercise some restraint. The middle classes may have come to find very little to choose between the Modi-Shah politics of money and muscle, and Kejriwal’s politics of excessive self-centrism but the Delhi electorate has no appetite for runaway communalism, which begets only violence and disruption. Middle class supports comes at a price.
Second, Kejriwal and his feisty colleagues can claim credit for making the BJP commit itself to continue the AAP regime of freebies, once denounced by Prime Minister Modi himself as a ‘revdi’ culture. The BJP leadership found itself having to make the promise that pro-people schemes and concessions put in play by the AAP government would be discontinued. Not only that, the BJP added its own revdis.
This is the impressive list of promises made by the BJP:
- Rs 2,500 rupees per month for women;
- LPG cylinders at Rs 500 and “free on Holi and Diwali;”
- free education from KG to PG;
- Rs 10 lakh life insurance for auto, taxi, e-rickshaw drivers, gig and domestic workers;
- nutritious meals at Atal Canteens for Rs 5; and many others.
Populism rampant.
Now many sarkari economists and other usual suspects will tell us that the BJP’s freebies are not ‘revdis’ but welfare measures. Let them have it their way; but the fact remains that the BJP stands committed to implement these promises – and, that is a Modi guarantee. A reluctant but massive re-distribution of resources has now been scripted. A very vigilant AAP leadership and its cadres can be expected to see to it that these promises are kept.
Third, the battle for Delhi has also forced the BJP to tweak its economic priorities. Wanting to capitalise on the widely shared perception that cracks had appeared in the AAP’s poor-middle class coalition because of an excessive focus on the poor, the Union government’s latest budget went out of its way to cultivate the middle classes with hefty income-tax concessions. It is believed that about 67% of Delhi’s population can be classified as “middle class” and we can expect to hear from professional data-crunchers how Nirmala Sitaraman’s last budget proved a game-changer. Just for gaining control of a half-state, the Modi regime has foregone of over Rs one lakh crore in taxes. Whether the newly-enriched middle classes will kick-start a cycle of consumption is for the future; but, for the present, the Modi regime can have the satisfaction of having stymied, for now, a dangerous political persona, called Arvind Kejriwal.
It will be prudent for the BJP crowd and its ideological mentors to keep in mind that if the middle classes abandoned the AAP it is because they felt that Kejriwal was no longer the mascot of a new politics; but, in weaning themselves away from AAP, the middle classes have not abandoned their yearning for values and the promise of good governance. And, that yearning will prove to be Modi’s Achilles’ Heel.
So far, the middle-class constituency has allowed itself to be distracted by the elaborate Modi personality cult and the BJP’s cultural nationalism. Both are overdone and giving diminishing returns. What is the use of a Hindu nationalist regime if it is unwilling to tell us how many devotees got killed in the Kumbh stampede on Mauni Amavasaya? The middle classes do not take kindly to calculated insensitivity and administrative arrogance. Our leadership may preen itself as the Vishwaguru but the middle-classes can draw their own conclusions from the humiliating scenes of Indian nationals being sent back from America in leg-irons and hand-cuffs.
In his hour of defeat, Arvind Kejriwal has not just restored the middle classes’ collective sense of a centrality in our national polity, he and his AAP have trapped the Modi regime in revdi-fied welfarism. Moreover, the Delhi battle has brought home to the BJP leadership the limits of the politics of communal confrontation. The Delhi vote will have repercussions beyond Delhi and all political formations will find themselves having to reconsider their priorities and politics
Harish Khare was editor of The Tribune.