The semi-final in UP
Uttar Pradesh is the key to the future of governance in India. I don’t say this because the state has nearly 15 per cent of Lok Sabha seats. It is possible that the BJP might lose the Assembly polls but people might still vote for Modi to be PM in 2024. We saw that happen in 2019, when Modi swept several states that the BJP had lost just a few months earlier.
The problem for Modi is that his political playbook is now visible to all parties, and anyone who gets a stab at power is going to use it to win votes.
There are several reasons why UP is crucial for the BJP, some of which have nothing to do with the state itself. The first is a matter of political economy. The BJP won UP with a commanding majority in 2017, at a time when India’s economy was still reeling under the impact of demonetisation. Many journalists and political watchers believed that the miseries caused by the sudden note-ban would cost the BJP dearly.
One of the few who believed the exact opposite was my former colleague, the late Kamal Khan. He had told me that the BJP was going to ride to power on the back of UP’s poor. He believed that the poor saw Modi as a messiah who had taught the rich a big lesson. The poor also happened to belong to the most backward castes, non-dominant Dalits, and Adivasis, who did not find adequate representation in either the Samajwadi Party (SP) or Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).
This consolidation of the subaltern vote sat on top of unprecedented levels of communal polarisation. A senior journalist, who had covered UP since the mid-80s, told me she had never witnessed such communal hatred in her career. This made the BJP doubly attractive to the poor, who were immersed in the polarising discourse of both mainstream and social media.
PM Modi took several days to finalise who would be the Chief Minister of UP. Several names were floated, mostly from the backward castes. It surprised many BJP-watchers when the party leadership settled on Yogi Adityanath. It was a calculated message to the entire system of power in UP. Yogi belonged to the Thakur caste, which had been historically considered to be a martial caste. At the same time, Yogi was a saffron-clad monk, a perpetual icon of political Hindutva.
In effect, as CM, Yogi fulfilled two key requirements of the BJP. The first was a permanent state of ideological messaging so that the new vote-base could be consolidated further. The second was to set up a new structure of physical dominance on the ground, to dismantle the network of strongmen and officials, who had been placed in positions of power by the SP government. This meant removing Yadavs and Muslims from positions of authority and de-facto power. This was the subtext of the government’s ‘war on crime’.
Along with this, the state implemented the key vote-winning formula of Modinomics – the economics of subsistence, where the poor were given handouts and cash through multiple schemes to augment their meagre income. Like the Modi government at the Centre, the Yogi government made no attempt to increase jobs. In fact, according to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy data, the number of employed people in UP dropped from 57.6 million to 55.8 million between September-December 2016 and September-December 2021.
But employment doesn’t necessarily fetch votes. When a voter gets a job, they don’t see the government as their benefactor. Handouts, on the other hand, are different. All benefits given by BJP governments now, are provided in the name of the PM and CM. This has a much higher recall value for voters when they go to the polling booth.
UP, therefore, is the laboratory of the Modi-BJP’s economic and political philosophy. It is a combination of constant polarisation and handout economics. On the one hand, there is an overt communal tone that the party’s leaders maintain, and on the other, there are record direct transfers to the poor by the state government. If the BJP fails to win UP with this political-economic combination, it will mean this strategy has reached a saturation point and is no longer yielding electoral results.
There is one more reason why a victory in UP is essential for Modi. The state sends 31 members to the Rajya Sabha, and a loss will affect the BJP’s dominance in Parliament, even if Modi manages to return to power in 2024. Losing UP will also weaken the Centre in its relationship with states. The Opposition currently rules many of the big states, and when they come together, they are able to push back against the Modi government’s policies and laws. The Modi government has a strong centralising vision, and if the BJP loses in UP, that vision will face a lot of turbulence.
The Modi-BJP’s politics is also heavily dependent on dominating public discourse. This is done by controlling and directing the media. Much of this is in the Hindi-speaking belt, where several popular newspapers and publications are closely allied with the Hindutva project. A non-BJP government could make life difficult for UP-based media houses who are close to the Sangh Parivar. This could make it difficult to control the messaging in the run-up to the next General Election in the crucial Hindi heartland.
Finally, anyone who controls UP also has the ability to give out contracts to big corporates. This has, ironically, been made easier by this year’s Budget, which gives interest-free loans to states to spend on infrastructure projects. This could make corporates more open to providing electoral funds to any non-BJP dispensation that rules UP. The moneys could not only help win elections but also move the media through big-ticket advertising.
The problem for Modi is that his political playbook is now visible to all parties, and anyone who gets a stab at power is going to use it to win votes. That is why, the BJP cannot afford to let anyone else win UP.
The author is a senior economic analyst
