The Assembly election results in the Hindi heartland states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh must have come as a wake-up call for the Bharatiya Janata Party, coming as they did less than six months ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. The BJP cannot afford to derive solace from the narrow victories carved out by the Congress in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, failing to reach the majority mark. What should be worrying the BJP is that in spite of finishing slightly ahead of the Congress in terms of vote percentage in Madhya Pradesh, and slightly behind in Rajasthan, it could not pull off even a slim victory in terms of the number of seats won. And what it received in Chhattisgarh can at best be described as a drubbing. It is time for the party to admit that it may have been a tad too over-confident in these states and has paid a high price for it. Shivraj Singh Chouhan overly depended on his “charisma” as everyone’s humble “Mamaji” and did not drop as many MLAs as the party leadership wanted him to. Similar was the case in Rajasthan with Vasundhara Raje, even though her unpopularity with the voters was there for all to see. As for Raman Singh, after 15 years at the helm in Chhattisgarh, he appeared jaded and had nothing fresh to offer to the voter. It is difficult to understand why the BJP did not promote a second line of leadership in these three states by infusing fresh blood, especially since a new generation of voters were casting their ballot for the first time—youngsters who had not seen rule by anyone but Shivraj Chouhan or Raman Singh, and had no memory of life under Congress rule, however bad or good. For them, the spectre of joblessness was real. As a result, unemployment became a major issue and the BJP was not seen to be delivering on this front, even though the same party has been governing the Centre for four and a half years. As internet spreads fast and wide, Indians youths are turning increasingly aspirational and not one of the BJP Chief Ministers was seen to be fulfilling the needs of the youth. In fact, this should serve as a lesson to the BJP as a whole that “hard Hindutva” issues may not always find a resonance with the youth, for whom jobs and a good life are more important. What should also worry the BJP is the slide in its urban voter base in these elections, with the Congress catching up with it in vote share in urban areas. In the rural areas, the Congress is anyway slightly ahead of the BJP, as was the trend even in Gujarat, where the BJP, however, managed to pull off a win even after 22 years of being in power, primarily because of its urban voters. But then Gujarat is more urbanised than most states and this latest slide in urban votes does not portend well for the BJP, for it may become a country-wide trend. In a bid to expand its footprint, the BJP is trying to carve out a vote bank among the poor, which is commendable. The problem for the party arises when it is perceived to be abandoning the middle class urban voters, comprising salaried people and traders. Traders in particular have been a core BJP base, but the fact that GST has been implemented shoddily, that the GSTN portal continues to be glitch-ridden, that innumerable returns still have to be filed, has resulted in cracks developing in this base. A badly implemented demonetisation has broken the back of small traders. The salaried class is sulking as it has not got any taxation benefits from the Central government in these four and a half years, instead interest rates for bank and PPF deposits have been cut, reducing the cash available in their hand. They still pay high interest rates on their housing loans, as a result of which the property market has not got the required spurt in spite of important changes like RERA. There is no doubt that many structural changes are being brought in by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government especially in terms of building infrastructure, housing, introduction of technology, electrification, sanitation, clearing of bureaucratic red tapes, delivery of benefits, etc., but in some of these areas, the incremental nature of the changes and last mile hiccups are not always making these visible on the ground. While big-ticket corruption is yet to become visible, the common man and woman continue to face corruption in their daily lives. In fact, one of the reasons there was anti-incumbency in Madhya Pradesh was because there was too much corruption among several bureaucrats and ruling party MLAs. Moreover, the Central government is not seen as proactive when it comes to bringing the UPA era corrupt to book.
The bottom line is, it’s time for the BJP to act in a manner as to generate greater appreciation about its performance, about itself and about the Prime Minister as the 2019 Lok Sabha elections approach.