Real lesson from by-polls: India will keep the Modi govt on its toes

As usual, a lot will be read into the by-poll results where the BJP will be seen as having lost a lot of ground since the spectacular Lok Sabha victory in May. While the party would be foolish to dismiss the results as just one of those things, jumping to the opposite conclusion is equally hazardous.

Among the things that will be said are: (1) the Modi wave is over; (2) the Sangh parivar’s over-the-top statements on Hindutva and Love Jihad is costing the party and dear old secular values are back; and (3) regional parties are roaring back to life.

We can’t dismiss any of these statements, but most of them are really assumptions that cannot be proven.

For example, how can we say that the Modi wave is over when the man never campaigned even for one seat? And remember, the first reverses came just weeks after the May victory in Uttarakhand — where the BJP won all five Lok Sabha seats in the Modi wave in May and lost all three assembly by-elections immediately thereafter when the central government had hardly settled down.

The only tentative conclusion we can draw is that people may vote differently in state and central elections, and that a victory in one does not guarantee victory in the other.

Second, in the last two rounds of by-elections — in Bihar, Karnataka, and MP last month, and in UP, Rajasthan and Gujarat today (16 September), the BJP clearly got mauled. To attribute this to Hindutva is empty analysis for the Love Jihad and Hindutva rhetoric was confined largely to UP. Hindutva was not an issue in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh or Gujarat — where too the BJP slipped. Something else is at work here, and I venture this explanation: the people have balanced their overwhelming mandate to the BJP in May by voting in the regional parties so that there is no monopoly of power. People want strong regional leaders and strong national ones. This is their way of doing it.

The third point is the BJP’s ability to score in Assam and West Bengal, where the party opened its account in the latter state assembly. This is actually an extension of the argument that people want a strong opposition in the states too. In both Bengal and Assam, the monopoly of the Trinamool Congress and Congress is being challenged. This is why the BJP’s fortunes are rising in these states. In Assam, as it appeals to regional fears of being swamped by immigration, and in Bengal because the Left is discredited and Trinamool is taking over the Left space.

If we take the two points together - the BJP losing where it should have won and making gains where it was not expected to, the conclusions are different: people are looking for credible alternatives or strong opposition voices too. This is far from a repudiation of Modi or even the BJP.

The other point — about this being a vote against communalism — thus falls flat. Unless we are saying that Assam and Bengal want communal parties while UP does not. And it still does not explain Gujarat, where a “communal” party has dominated for two decades or more.

And where does this leave Modi’s own credibility and political power? Actually, it may end up strengthening him against both the Sangh extremists and the opposition. The Hindutva shrillness has not worked in UP; this will enable Modi to tell the Sanghis to back off and let him focus on his development agenda. Also, by not campaigning in the by-polls, he has shown that he is the only one who counts in BJP. Neither he nor Amit Shah staked their reputations in the bypolls where they had calculated that the opposition would do its best to score gains - and they did. The opposition scored as it had more to lose from not going all out.

The opposition has buoyed itself up with the by-poll victories but the real tests are in Haryana and Maharashtra — where Modi and Shah presumably will go all out for a win.

We can start coming to conclusions about the BJP and Modi’s bankability only after Haryana and Maharashtra. For now, the only lesson for the BJP to learn are these: it has to shed complacency, and it has to acknowledge that Modi is the only one who counts in the party.