Shikha Mukerjee | Trade, profits & elections: How will Cong, BJP fare?
There are different ways of looking at elections. Regardless of the outcomes vis-à-vis the predictions made by poll result forecasters and pundits and even politicians, the fact of the matter is that they are only onlookers. On the inside are voters. The game is between the voters and political parties and each side has a different perspective.
The contest in the two states of Maharashtra and Jharkhand is between the BJP and the National Democratic Alliance led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance, in which the Congress is the largest stakeholder after the 2024 Lok Sabha election results. As two states that turned into a proscenium theatre for the performance of an over-the-top script replete with acts of betrayals, disloyalty, poaching, allegations of abuse of power and corruption, between 2019 and now, voters have a decision to make; will they confirm the verdict that was delivered in 2019 and months ago in the Lok Sabha election, or will they change their mind?
In the Lok Sabha elections in 2024, the parties of the INDIA coalition were given a mandate by the voters to make change happen. It was not a clear mandate to replace Mr Modi and the NDA, but it was a verdict. It is relevant to note that the choice to not vote overwhelmingly in favour of the NDA and Mr Modi in the 2024 Lok Sabha election in Maharashtra and in Jharkhand was made after “Operation Lotus”, that is, after the poaching, dismembering shenanigan staged by the BJP against the Maha Vikas Aghadi coalition of the Congress, Nationalist Congress Party and the Shiv Sena.
Likewise, in Jharkhand, voters demonstrated that they did not approve of the arrest and incarceration of Hemant Soren, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha chief minister, for alleged corruption.
The Maharashtra and Jharkhand elections are therefore about how the INDIA coalition reads, implements and performs on the basis of the Lok Sabha verdict and the 2019 state Assembly results.
The contest is between two coalitions, regular teams that are playing against each other. Each member of each team, as in football or cricket, is equally critical to pulling off a victory or delivering a defeat. The Congress may believe it is the biggest stakeholder and natural leader, but that is a myth the sooner it abandons the better; wisdom has prevailed in relinquishing its claims to nine Assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh, but that same wisdom has failed in Assam, where it has grabbed all five seats for itself despite other claimants from allies.
Political parties create narratives to keep voter attention focused on the highlights of the story, instead of getting distracted by what rivals and competitors say, and the mundane concerns and brutalities of a cost-of- living crisis, joblessness and unemployment, the pervasive despair of few opportunities to make life easier, hunger and poverty, that is, the fundamentals that determine their day-to-day existence and the uncertainties that besiege them. Insofar as these fundamentals are concerned, nothing has changed for voters in Maharashtra from June 2024, when the Lok Sabha results were announced, to now, when the state Assembly elections are weeks away. Inflation and unemployment remain the main priorities for voters, as the well-respected survey by Lokniti-MIT School of Government reveals.
If government and governance is based on a contract between voters and the State represented by the ruling party, then whichever side, be it NDA or INDIA, that can show voters a path to relief, not in full but in part, from the hardship and the pain, ought to be the choice. Heaping cash hand-outs, subsidies and half-baked half-hearted tax and other offsets, by segmenting voters into different categories, is not likely to change voter perception in any big way. Such subventions are always on the margin, in terms of positive returns for the party in power.
There is a lesson in understanding the relationship in an election between the “ruling party”, which has to first win a majority, and the person, the “Boss”, who calls the shots in the election exercise.
Persuading voters is what political masterminds and party managers do. The function of the political leadership is to get a perspective on what is most likely to resonate with voters and give focus to the exercise of wooing the electorate in all its diversity.
Addressing the diversity can be done by dividing people into castes, sub- castes and small pockets of interest, or it can be done by assuring them of levelling the playing field through progressive positive discrimination policies building up to greater equality, justice and rights. Differences can be highlighted by promising an equalising Uniform Civil Code or differences can be respected by upholding the Constitution.
From the perspective of voters, there is nothing new in the repetitive and therefore stale narrative of Hindutva that can galvanise a frenzy of support for the BJP and its Mahayuti partners in Maharashtra and in Jharkhand. In contrast, there is a certain freshness in the INDIA coalition’s narrative about the role of government as a mechanism to address people’s everyday concerns within the structure of the Constitution that promises equality, equity and justice.
The real excitement of elections therefore is not in being bludgeoned into numbness by the same old spiel. Throughout the frenzied bustle before election day, the voter is an onlooker, entertained and by extension engaged in watching as in a serial on a streaming platform, the trades during seat-sharing fights within coalitions, the transactions over ticket distribution within parties, rebels, Independents and dummy candidates who could potentially profit from the business. In Maharashtra, it could boil down to fragmenting voters over OBC Maratha reservation and the appropriation and marketing by the NDA and INDIA coalitions of Babasaheb Ambedkar, described as an “inert godhead” and a sectarian figure. In Jharkhand, it could spiral around the RSS-BJP narrative that Muslim illegal immigrants, branded as Rohingyas, will marginalise the tribals, already edgy as they constitute only 26.21 per cent of the total population, because Modi 3.0 does not want to engage with the JMM on adoption of the Sarna Code, and its opposition to his agenda of legislating the Uniform Civil Code.
Voters are neither inexperienced nor stupid. Their votes hoisted the INDIA coalition into a challenger position against the NDA and Narendra Modi. Should the INDIA coalition fail to live up to voters’ expectations, it risks sputtering to a halt, because voters may get tired of waiting for the Congress and its partners to get their act together.
