Indranil Banerjie | After Modi’s blitzkrieg, can the BJP crack South India?

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s New Year resolution appears to be the conquest of South India. He had launched his marathon pre-election tours on the second day of this year beginning with Tamil Nadu, a state that has traditionally rebuffed his party. Ever since then he has single-mindedly focused on the southern states.

During his first domestic visit of the year, apart from Tamil Nadu, he visited Lakshadweep and Kerala (January 2 and 3, 2024). A couple of weeks later, he was again in the South: this time in Andhra Pradesh and Kerala (January 16 and 17); a few days later he returned to Tamil Nadu during a three-state (Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu) tour (19-21 Jan); and then again, at the end of February, Mr Modi flew to Kerala and then to Tamil Nadu (27-28 February).

The first week of March once again found him in Tamil Nadu and Telangana (4-6 March), which was followed less than ten days later by yet another tour of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Telangana and Karnataka (15-16 March).

In the period between the 2019 May Lok Sabha polls and the end of February this year, Mr Modi has made 14 trips to Tamil Nadu, 13 to Telangana, 11 to Kerala, five to Andhra Pradesh, one to Lakshadweep and 19 to Karnataka. The frequency of the visits suggests a clear intent.

The South holds the key to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 370-plus seats ambitions for the 2024 parliamentary elections. The South, with 132 seats, accounts for roughly 24 per cent of the total Lok Sabha seats. The north, central and west together have a share of 269 seats, or about 49 per cent of the Lok Sabha. In the 2019 parliamentary elections, 68 per cent of the BJP’s seats came from these regions, compared to just nine per cent from the South.

Given that the east (barring West Bengal) and the Northeast hold little promise for a large number of additional BJP seats, Mr Modi needs to prise open the South if he is to get anywhere near the resounding pan- India victory he is aspiring for.

Unfortunately, the South has and continues to be a hard electoral nut to crack. In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP had floundered in the South. Of the five states in the South, the party won zero seats in Tamil Nadu (39 seats), Andhra Pradesh (25 seats) and Kerala (20 seats). In Telangana, the BJP got just four out of 17 seats but it secured a whopping 25 out of 28 seats in Karnataka. It lost the single seats in the three southern Union territories of Puducherry, Lakshadweep and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Without Karnataka, the South would have been a total rout for the BJP.

The question now is whether the scenario in the South has changed dramatically for the BJP? Traditionally, the BJP has not been able to make much headway in the southern states where regional parties or alliances are strong. Thus Tamil Nadu with the DMK-AIADMK duo, Kerala with the UDF-LDF and Andhra Pradesh with the YSR Congress-Telugu Desam combination have proved unbreachable. Karnataka has been something of an outlier with local interests represented not by regional actors but by national parties, currently the BJP and the Congress -- and to a diminishing extent by the Janata Dal (Secular). In Telangana, it is the Congress that has managed to emerge as the first party as a “national” alternative to the BRS, which despite its national pretensions is basically a state-level entity.

Mr Modi is trying to gain acceptability in the South by projecting the development mantra and promoting the notion of a common national ethos. These are not bad goals in themselves but they do not mitigate fears about Mr Modi being a staunch North India focused politician with a pro-Hindi bias, which works against people in the southern parts. From all indications, Mr Modi so far has not been able to establish a strong emotional connect with the South.

Mr Modi’s outreach also needs to be bolstered by a ground level network of party cadres, which is evident in Karnataka but absent in most of the other southern states.

Electoral alliances can make up for some organisational deficiencies but this is not happening in any significant way, except in Andhra Pradesh where the BJP has tied up once again with the TDP led by N. Chandrababu Naidu. In Tamil Nadu, Mr Modi has pulled an ace in the form of the highly articulate former police officer K. Annamalai, who has enthused large sections of younger Tamilians.

The southern leaders have taken up Mr Modi’s challenge and have propagated alternate agendas that focus on northern domination and discrimination by the Modi government. There are a number of real concerns here, and the southern leadership has decided to articulate and manipulate them to their advantage.

In Kerala, for instance, chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan blamed the Modi government for allegedly holding up development funds. The Kerala demands were endorsed by the Karnataka and Tamil Nadu leaderships. However, these southern demands are old hat and nothing in the political language of non-BJP southern leaders points to new directions. Mr Modi, on the other hand, promises change.

Mr Modi is not playing the communal card in the South but the nationalistic card.

Whether that will work or not is anybody’s guess. However, most observers feel that while the BJP might not be able to dramatically increase its seats in the South, it will do better than before, at least in terms of vote share.

What is very likely is that, unlike in the last Lok Sabha elections, this time the BJP will pick up a couple or more seats in Tamil Nadu and Kerala. In Andhra Pradesh, where the ruling Jagan Mohan Reddy government is facing headwinds, Mr Modi’s alliance with the TDP is certain to yield seats in this state for the first time. The BJP’s vote and seat share in Telangana is also certain to rise while Karnataka, as in the past, is expected to wholeheartedly support the BJP.

While precise numbers are impossible to predict, the overall upswing is sure to be a symbolic boost to Mr Modi as even a partial victory in the southern states could weaken if not break the notion that his charisma is restricted to mainly the Hindi belt and parts of western India.