Opinion BJP’s success in UP and three other states consolidates its position as the primary pole of national politics

The scoreboard after the latest round of assembly elections is confirmation, if more was needed, that the BJP is the primary pole of this country’s politics. At one time, it now seems very long ago, India’s polity was described as a one-party dominant system, with a Congress which was more a coalition than a party, its centrepiece. That time is long gone, the Congress is inexorably becoming a paler and more shrunken shadow of itself. And a BJP that got new life with the ascent of Narendra Modi at its top in 2014, is notching up achievements. With this round of elections, it has all but upended one of the last few caveats to its spectacular success – the party is yet to conquer the country’s south, barring Karnataka, it is pointed out, and even elsewhere, its performance in the states does not match up to its dominance of the Centre. While the south remains a challenge for Modi’s party, its decisive victories in four out of the five just-concluded assembly elections, including and especially UP, have, at least for now, put paid to the latter criticism. In politically crucial UP, the Yogi Adityanath government has become the first to get a consecutive second term in more than three decades.

The BJP’s formidable electoral successes are a result of larger changes on the ground and they also serve to deepen the new currents and transitions. In UP, fighting as an incumbent, it had etched its pitch and appeal clearly: One, a promise of “suraksha (safety)” that melds the promise of stricter law and order at the local level with the pledge of a more self-conscious nationalism and harder national security, both backed by the redefinition of the state as a less forgiving, more retributive entity. Two, the state as the provider of direct transfers and schemes to the citizen as labharthi or beneficiary – in UP, the free ration scheme had touched large sections in a time of severe economic distress exacerbated by a public health emergency, but there were other schemes too that had reached those who had not felt touched by the state before, from Ujjwala gas cylinders to PM Kisan Samman Nidhi to toilets. And three, a Hindutva both more assertive and insecure. In UP, the BJP has stoked a cultural and religious consciousness that feels it was long denied its due in echelons of power and in public spaces and feels that its moment has finally come.

Advertisement

The BJP’s political opponents do not have an answer that is either coherent or credible to any of the strands of its multi-vocal appeal. That is, of course, a challenge for the country’s Opposition. But in a democracy that is large and diverse, in this moment of triumph, there is also the victor’s challenge: To respect voices that oppose and disagree. To give the non-elected and countervailing institutions, the checks and balances, their due space and hearing. To include sections of the electorate that do not feel represented in its spectacular victory. The hard-fought election campaign was the party’s, but the government is, always, of the people.