Hindustan Times

Prashant Jha

The 2014 and 2019 elections were fought in the name of one man, one leader. But the causes and consequences of those results went beyond him. They reflected changes in society, and produced new trends in Indian polity.

A behemoth is born

In 2009, almost 79 million Indians voted for the candidates of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to represent them in the Lok Sabha. In 2014, over 171 million Indians backed the party’s candidates, giving the BJP an outright majority in the lower house of the Indian Parliament. And in 2019, over 220 million Indians decided to repose faith in BJP candidates, giving the party a majority for the second consecutive time.This staggering rise in the BJP’s vote share in the span of a decade, from 18.80% to 31% to 37.36%, corresponded with the voices on the ground.If, in 2014, voters from Muzaffarnagar in western Uttar Pradesh to Purnea in Bihar’s Seemanchal to the east, told this writer that their vote was for Narendra Modi for he had delivered the “Gujarat model” and would bring “acche din”, good days, in 2019, voters spanning the Hindi-speaking heartland said that the Modi government had delivered on welfare and national security. If, in 2014, voters decided that the Centre needed a “strong” leader and government after the perceived corruption and weakness of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA)-2 years, in 2019, there was yet another question they confronted, “Modi versus who?”, and answered it decisively.These data points and anecdotes perhaps best capture the story of India’s elections over the past decade. And there is only one inescapable conclusion.The 2014 and 2019 elections for the Lok Sabha were fought in the name of one leader; they reflected the electorate’s approval for the leadership of that one man as the head of India’s political executive; and without that one man, the nature of the electoral outcomes — or at the very least, the scale of the results — would have looked radically different. And that is why, both 2014 and 2019, which marked a return of one-party dominance, were Narendra Modi’s elections.But the causes and consequences of those electoral results went beyond one man, and reflected both the changes underway in society and produced new trends in society. And they reveal a story of changing voter aspirations, changing political narratives, changing social landscapes, changing modes of political communication, and a changing India.<h2 style="text-align:center;">The foundational triumph</h2>The story of the 2014 elections actually began 12 years earlier. Narendra Modi’s decisive victory in the Gujarat assembly elections of 2002, despite, or perhaps because of (depending on who you speak to), large-scale violence against Muslims where the state was perceived to be complicit or ineffective, cemented his reputation as a Hindutva leader. But unlike other leaders who get stuck with one image, Modi, by the time of the the 2007 state elections, had added an additional layer to his image, of being a competent administrator and pro-industry leader. And when Modi won his third term in December 2012, with the national BJP suffering from an acute leadership crisis at the top, the path was clear for him to lay claim for a national role. To be sure, there was resistance, including from the party’s old guard and existing allies, but Modi’s connect with the cadres, both in the party and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and his innovative messaging, ensured that the resistance dissipated soon enough.On the other side, the UPA-2 government, after an impressive Congress performance in the 2009 elections, had lost its momentum. Saddled with multiplicity of power centres, faltering economic parameters, and an explosion in allegations of corruption, the regime cracked when the India Against Corruption (IAC) movement, led by Anna Hazare and Arvind Kejriwal, boxed it into a corner but did not have the machine to take political strength or advantage of it at a national level. Tired after 10 years in power, unable to offer a fresh narrative and new leadership for the next election, torn between the party’s old guard and others patronised by Rahul Gandhi, and out of touch with newer modes of political communication and propaganda, even Congress leaders acknowledged that they would lose seats; the only question was, how many?If the two national parties presented a contrasting picture in terms of morale, the regional parties were undergoing their own transition. For one, the young men who had been the pioneers of caste-based parties which came to be known as the “social justice parties” in north India had become grand old men, from Mulayam Singh to Lalu Prasad, and their sons, Akhilesh Yadav and Tejaswi Yadav, were still finding their feet in politics. Second, the governance record of these parties had paled in comparison to the promise they made to their constituencies; their stint in power did increase access to decision-making for marginalised social groups but it was also accompanied by perceived corruption and lawlessness, a lack of focus on growth, poor government services and creation of newer forms of hierarchy within backward communities. And finally, voters were beginning to get tired of the coalition era which enhanced the role of these parties in Delhi but also made the central executive fragmented.

It was in this political backdrop — of a rejuvenated BJP under a new leader, a tired Congress saddled with the baggage of the past and yet to make up its mind about the future, and regional parties that had failed to reinvent themselves even as the concerns of their voters evolved — that Modi stepped into campaign in 2014. He campaigned on the basis of the perceived progress in Gujarat during his 12-year old term as the CM (critics suggested that the achievements of the Gujarat model were overblown and ignored the historical advantages of the state); promised vikas (progress; from electricity to roads, jobs to enhanced incomes) and a strong security response to cross-border terrorism; and, sometimes subtly and sometimes explicitly, tapped into Hindu resentment against “appeasement” of minorities by “secular parties”.But hidden in the focus on what was a presidential style contest, with the BJP explicitly focusing on the question of leadership at the national level, were underlying social trends that enabled the party’s victory.Urbanisation, both in terms of the rise of big cities as epicentres of growth and small towns as hubs for regional migration, had created a pool of voters who yearned for a new language of politics promising a better life. They found in Modi a figure who might be able to deliver that and who was seen as motivated by public interest rather than private aggrandisement.Twenty-five years of Mandal politics had empowered backward communities, but also created fault lines between those who had benefited in terms of resources and power and those who remained excluded. They found in the BJP’s careful messaging around Modi’s backward identity as well as more inclusive approach to caste a vehicle for their own rise and quest for equity.Twenty years of television media, and half a decade of the spread of social-media platforms at a time when mobile penetration in India was increasing, had created a pool of more aware voters and new possibilities of political communication that parties which were ahead of the curve were able to exploit.

Decades of distortions in the politics of secularism, where parties reduced the idea of pluralism to weaving electoral coalitions between specific Hindu castes and Muslim minorities and reduced governance to tokenistic steps to woo minorities without delivering substantive benefits, had led to resentment and created a fertile ground for the BJP to accuse others of engaging in “appeasement” and tap into Hindu votes.The personality focus, a clever sociological reading of the changed aspirations of demographic groups on the ground, and a high-voltage campaign that saw a return to big rallies and relentless use of social media worked. In 2014, Modi won the biggest mandate that any PM-aspirant had obtained in thirty years since Rajiv Gandhi’s mammoth victory in 1984. It was the birth of a new political era, the return of one-party dominance.<h2 style="text-align:center;">Building on success</h2>Five years later, the BJP went to the voters of India with the same strengths that had catapulted it to power — a clear leader, a narrative against the opposition’s record, a focus on “vikas”, careful caste management, majoritarian rhetoric, and dominance over modes of communication.But by then, the party had also built on other strengths.For one, the Modi of 2019 was no longer the Modi of 2014. To the image of a Hindu figure, a development man, and a strong leader, he had added yet another set of layers. Modi had become the gareebon ka neta, the leader of the poor, as he leveraged technology to radically overhaul India’s welfare architecture. Direct cash transfer moved from being an academic idea on the margins to a political winner. The government’s record on rural homes, toilets, gas cylinders and incomes to farmers became the staple of the political narrative of the ground. The PM was also now projected as a global leader who had enhanced Indian prestige and power on the world stage, with his foreign visits and diaspora outreach, but also taken strong and decisive action against terror. Don’t underestimate the power of the post-Pulwama Balakot attack in adding energy to the BJP’s campaign. And Modi was projected as a “chowkidar” who kept India’s treasury safe from corruption. As the Opposition, mistakenly, chose to focus on alleged corruption during a defence deal, Modi owned the tag which was used to attack him and played up the image of his integrity.

Two, Modi’s power was a result of India’s social attitudes and structures, but also shaped India’s social attitudes and structures. The sense of Hindu resentment had only grown, rather than dissipate, as Muslims were constructed as the other in everyday politics on a range of issues. Even as exclusivist politics vis-a-vis Muslims had only intensified, the BJP’s attempts to construct inclusive politics within the Hindu fold had only increased. Other Backward Classes (OBCs), Dalits and tribals were consistently wooed both in terms of their specific social identities but also through the more universalist language of welfare benefits for citizens across social categories. At the same time, the party was conscious of retaining its upper-caste base with radical moves such as enhancing reservation and allotting 10% for economically weaker segments, the primary beneficiaries of which were traditionally dominant communities in their local contexts.The change in the social character of the BJP was accompanied with an expansion in its geographical spread. Just as in 2014, the party swept west India (winning all seats in Rajasthan and Gujarat, while doing exceedingly well in Maharashtra), retained its dominance across the Hindi-speaking states of the heartland (of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh), dominated both hill states (such as Uttarakhand) and tribal states (Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand). But it also expanded eastward (picking seats across Northeast, West Bengal and Odisha) and in the south (consolidating its presence in Karnataka and making a dent in Telangana).The BJP’s control over state institutions and dominance of the media ecosystem had also grown in the intervening five years. If Modi’s team disproportionately relied on social media to push out the leader’s message in 2014, while still using the mainstream media by leveraging news television’s fascination for Modi and his rallies, by 2019, political power had given BJP deeper inroads into the mainstream media. It now faced a degree of competition on some modes of social media where parallel narratives found space (think Twitter), dominated other forms of digital communication with wider reach (WhatsApp and Facebook), and had an enormous advantage in the national electronic media (think Hindi news channels).And finally, the BJP of 2019 was a new party. It had used the years in power to build what this writer has termed the Amit Shah school of election management. This entailed a relentless focus on enhancing the party’s membership, compiling and using databases to remain constantly engaged with both real and prospective voters, mobilising front organisations, reaching out to new social groups, creating a more permanent physical infrastructure to serve as a base for party activities across the country, unleashing a propaganda blitz ahead of polls to project the inevitability of victory to create a “hawa” (mood), ensuring that booth level structures were robust to be able to leverage Modi’s popularity on the ground into votes, betting on micro seat-wise caste calculations and candidate selection through information gleaned from multiple feedback mechanisms, investing resources in deepening communal polarisation while cementing Hindu unity, and poaching leaders and smaller outfits in areas where the party needed to add value.Even as the BJP had built on its strengths, the wider Opposition remained trapped, unable to find a new and effective political vocabulary to take on the BJP. Its social coalitions were shrinking; its geographic imprint was limited to pockets; its ideological narrative wasn’t clear and wasn’t getting deeper traction; it was unable to present a single leader or a set of leaders as potential alternatives to Modi; it was unable to convert one national general election into 543 local elections to take away the focus on national leadership and prioritise local issues and candidates, an area of clear vulnerability for the BJP; it remained fragmented; and the biggest party of the Opposition, the Congress, remained its weakest link as the BJP swept states where it was in bipolar competition with the Grand Old Party.The Modi-led BJP achieved what was thought to be impossible, not just replicating but improving on its performance with 303 seats in 2019. The verdict enhanced the leader’s political capital. It gave the party the confidence to read it as a mandate to push their ideological agenda, from effectively revoking Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir to enacting the Citizenship (Amendment) Act to creating an enabling political climate for a favourable judicial verdict for the construction of a Ram Temple in Ayodhya.But, since the 2019 victory, Modi has also had to deal with an unprecedented pandemic, economic contraction and then a skewed revival, a supply-chain crisis, the most severe challenge to India’s territorial integrity from China since 1962, a turbulent geopolitical climate with the most serious war in European theatre since World War 2, the rise of new and critical technologies, and social and political unrest (think of the farmers’ movement and the crisis in Manipur).Looking ahead, the 2024 elections will depend on whether the BJP is able to retain the strengths that it displayed during the 2014 and 2019 elections and build on them. Does Modi trigger the same enthusiasm or is there fatigue? Does the BJP still represent the hope for a better economic future or has disillusionment set in? Is there a sense that the party has addressed governance challenges adequately or do voters feel they have been left behind to survive on their own devices? Is a substantial portion of the Hindu electorate in north and west India still angry and resentful or has the systematic political disempowerment of Muslims satisfied their yearning for a different political order? Has the welfare architecture delivered newer modes of assistance to vulnerable citizens and made their lives easier? Will the BJP’s multi-ethnic, multi-regional, multi-class, and multi-coalition persist? Does the Opposition, be it the Congress or regional parties, present a more credible alternative for citizens?It is the answers to these questions that will determine if the political cycle that began in 2014 will continue and get reinforced in 2024 or whether there will be a rupture, even if a minor one.