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PRAFUL BIDWAI COLUMN

An emerging new social coalition?

The BJP got more votes from the rich (35%) than from other income-groups. It thus built a less inclusive variant of the Congress coalition of the 1950s-1960s, comprising the upper castes-Muslims-Dalits-Adivasis. The new bloc, with Hindutva consolidation through communal violence, won the BJP the Lok Sabha elections in the North.

PRAFUL BIDWAI
f I 1 HE Bharatiya Janata Party I has emerged as the largest
1 party in the Maharashtra
and Haryana Assemblies, reconfirming its status as the main point of reference in Indian politics. Behind its latest success lie factors which will influence politics for some time.
An even more assertive, masculine BJP is now likely to evolve under an absolutist leadership which isn't bound by any constraints in pursuing trademark Hindutva agendas, including a Ram temple at Ayodhya (which the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has re-invoked), as well as "love jihad," which has yielded dividends.
The BJP won a majority in Haryana despite most Jats voting against it and ally Akali Dal deserting it. But even more significant is its 122/288-seat victory in Maharashtra, India's most-industrialised and second most-populous state.
The BJP risked going solo despite the assured victory of its 25-year-old alliance with the Shiv Sena, which led in 244/288 Assembly segments in the Lok Sabha.The risk paid off.
Three factors explain the BJP's performance, each more important than so-called "Modi magic." These are: unpopularity of incumbent governments; creation of the elements of a new coalition across different caste-community layers; and the BJP’s surcharged election campaign which overwhelmed its opponents' lifeless canvassing.
According to a survey,
Maharashtra's Congress-National Congress Party coalition was widely seen as ineffective and corrupt. More than five times more people thought it "very corrupt” than those who thought it "not-all-that-corrupt." In Haryana, 75% thought the government was suppressing the land controversy involving Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law Robert Vadra.
In both, the BJP built a "coalition of the extremes": the upper castes, on the one hand, and Other Backward Classes (OBC), and to an extent, Dalits and Adivasis, on the other.
In Maharashtra, 52% of the upper castes voted for the BJP. The BJP also won 38% of OBC and one-third of Adivasi votes. But it got only 13% of Muslim votes (Congress, 53%).
The BJP got more votes from the rich (35%) than from other income-groups. It thus built a less inclusive variant of the Congress coalition of the 1950s-1960s, comprising the upper castes-Muslims-Dalits-Adivasis. The new bloc, with Hindutva consolidation through communal violence, won the BJP the Lok Sabha elections in the North.
In Haryana too, upper-caste groups favoured the BJP. Dalits and OBCs backed it under the influence of the Dera Sacha Sauda and khap panchayats.
Another factor was social conservatism. A recent poll says 80 percent-plus of Haryana's respondents oppose marriage within the same clan/village; only 22% oppose khap panchayats, and 70% object to women wearingjeans. The BJP gains from this reactionary conservatism.
The BJP will probably turn such coalition-building, combined with reaction, into a national election strategy, especially if it can attract OBC-Dalit youth by promising Gujarat-style "development."
Gujarat isn't about development, but GDP growth, which doesn't lead to modernisation, or human capacity enhancement through healthcare, education, etc. For aspirational unemployed subaltern groups which have invested all their family savings in low-quality education, it means some kind of employment.
Regrettably, no party has policies to generate jobs or gainful self-employment for these restive subaltern layers. The BJP will let them down. Its policies can deliver sweetheart deals and super-profits to corporations, not jobs or a living wage.
Not to be underrated is the Modi-Amit Shah leadership's high-powered election campaign, financed by Big Business and run by RSS foot-soldiers. Under its spell, an astounding 40 percent-plus of voters chose the BJP close to election day.
The Maharashtra-Haryana results will further feed Hindutva hubris, and increase insecurity among the minorities. Hyderabad-based Majlis Ittehadul Muslimeen has debuted in Maharashtra: it won two seats and was runner-up in three others. This reaction to Hindu-communalism spells further Muslim ghettoisation.
The BJP's victory run has aggravated the Congress's paralysis. The Congress must accept that the Sonia-Rahul leadership - which temporarily stemmed its post-1984 decline - has failed. But it lacks the courage to do so -and its leadership the decency to make way for others.
The Congress cannot recover unless it reinvents itself through an
imaginative, frankly Left-of-Centre programme, without ifs and buts, which reconnects it to the masses.
A strong presence of the Left parties, which could have helped shift India's political centre of gravity in a pro-people direction, will be sorely missed. Alas, they’re in a grave crisis, which they can't diagnose, leave alone resolve.
What does the BJP's dominance mean for the regional parties? Will they go the Shiv Sena way? The Sena was vulnerable. Its long-term decline was partially masked by its alliance with the BJP, but got accelerated after Bal Thackeray's death.
However, this doesn't quite hold true of regional parties embedded in two-party systems, like Telugu Desam/Telangana Rashtra Samiti, AIDMK-DMK or Biju Janata Dal. But the Samajwadi Party, Janata Dal(United), Rashtriya Janata Dal, Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, and especially Bahujan Samaj Party, will face a tough BJP challenge.
Despite its deviousness and corruption, the BJP isn't becoming another Congress. Whether a "BJP system" of politics evolves, which rivals the once-famously-described "Congress system”, remains an open question. What's beyond doubt is more social turmoil and political trouble.The writer is an eminent Indian columnist.