[Analytics] The formula that won BJP Maharashtra and Haryana in India

The formula that won BJP Maharashtra and Haryana (AP Photo). Sketched by the Pan Pacific Agency.

The BJP is looking at its comfortable victory in Maharashtra and photo-finish in Haryana with satisfaction. And not just the BJP, but also the RSS. They think they have found a workable model to overcome the twin monsters of caste and community in the era of Mandal-Kamandal politics of the past three decades, the India Today reported.

However, it is an assessment that is only partially true. Despite claiming that it would win 70 (of the 88) seats in Haryana, the BJP and the Congress were neck in neck. It failed to counter the dominance of the Jats, whose caste-based voting ultimately proved costly for the saffron party. In Maharashtra, too, the numbers suggest that the BJP-Shiv Sena would have been struggling had it not been for Devendra Fadnavis’s deft management of the Maratha reservation issue.

The BJP-RSS, however, are not letting this come in the way of their belief that smart politics and advocating a model of good governance can defeat, even if partially, years of caste hegemony and selective caste politics. An elated B.L. Santhosh, the newly-appointed general secretary (organisation) said: The results show that honesty, efficiency and performance do pay and can change a political narrative based on caste, adjustments and patronage. It is good for Indian politics.

The party perceives Fadnavis’s win as the arrival of a new era of merit-based politics. For five years ago, no one could have imagined that a Brahmin, or member of any caste that has been the target of attack of Maratha leaders of the NCP and Congress, could complete not just a full term but also get re-elected in the second biggest state of India. This has happened in Maharashtra after 47 years. His deft handling of the agrarian crisis, the Bhima-Koregaon violence and the Maratha agitation, his clean image and his government’s schemes such as for water rejuvenation worked in his favour. At the same time, the abrogation of Article 370 was seen as a demonstration of the decisiveness of a BJP-led government at the Centre.

CMs Now Perfectly Complement Modi-Shah

Another thing that the BJP is happy about is the fact that Fadnavis and, to some extent Khattar, have been able to translate Modi-Shah’s national vision, what the BJP terms the double engine of governance, at the state level. BJP general secretary Bhupendra Yadav, who played a key role in overseeing Maharashtra polls says: Fadnavisji and Khattarji perfectly complemented Modiji and Amit Shahji, working in complete unison and with authority.

Good governance, transparency and probity in public life were planks that both CMs used in their campaigns, contrasting it with the corruption and nepotism of past opposition governments. Both of them largely centred their campaigns on the local performance of their governments. Khattar, in fact, played up the transparency he has brought in government postings and appointments, as well as in change of land use permission that saw huge corruption earlier.

Also, for the first time, Modi and Shah clearly and firmly delegated the task of campaign planning to lower-rung leaders, limiting themselves to addressing public rallies. Fadnavis and Khattar, therefore, charted out their respective campaigns in consultation with BJP working president J.P. Nadda. Modi-Shah allowed the two leaders a lot of independence even in slogan-coining and the posters, contrary to the impression that the campaign material is always centred on the duo. There were many posters of Fadnavis where his image was much larger than Modi’s or Shah’s. This is a new thing, says a party insider. This shows that Modi and Shah were waiting for the right leaders to depend upon before they could publicly express their confidence in them. This is good for the health of the party in the long run.

Developing a second rung of leadership will also help defect the charge that Modi and Shah run the show in the BJP. Fadnavis has certainly emerged as a new-generation leader who the BJP believes will sustain the party for many more years to come. It also believes that a performance-based model will be longer lasting than the personality-based model Indian politics has been seeing for years now. So those who were good, efficient and transparent, but dormant in the party ranks because they didn’t see any hope in the patronage-based model, are now becoming active as they see hope in the new, transparent model.

To break the stranglehold of caste on Indian politics, Modi and Shah fielded leaders from minor castes in dominant caste-ruled states: Brahmin Fadnavis in Maratha-dominated Maharashtra, Punjabi Khattar in Jat-dominated Haryana and OBC Raghubar Das in tribal-dominated Jharkhand. Despite the Jats having somewhat punctured the model in Haryana this time, the experiment can be said to have been largely successful if the BJP does well in the coming Jharkhand election too.

The Pitfalls

However, not everyone is happy with the BJP strategy of importing leaders from opposition parties to expand its caste and political base, particularly in Maharashtra. This is being seen as going against the BJP’s assertion of being a party with a difference. To supplement Brahmin Fadnavis, the party has imported established Maratha leaders from the NCP and the Congress, including former leader of the opposition, Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil. Similar defections, though on a smaller scale, took place in Haryana as well. In Jharkhand, the party has admitted independent MLA Bhanu Pratap Shahi, who was a health minister in the Madhu Koda government and is now an accused in a Rs 130 crore scam in the state.

It is this practice of horse trading that the party holds responsible for the low voting and less than expected seats in Haryana and Maharashtra. Simultaneously, this is impacting the party’s inner health as loyalist party workers feel the BJP is going too far in accommodating outsiders, many of them with a corrupt image. They might ultimately prove to be the undoing of the party.

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