The recent Gujarat elections results have been interpreted in different ways. The BJP has claimed a victory, saying that it has won Gujarat for the sixth time in a row beating anti-incumbency trends and it’s a vote for the development politics that has been ushered in by the Modi government. The Congress claims a victory indicating that the margin of victory is only 19 seats and the BJP has got its lowest tally in Gujarat at 99 seats. The Congress has also been claiming that it the party has been revitalized by the energetic campaign by Rahul Gandhi and reflected in the election results. Whatever the analysis and trumpets blown by the parties, the Gujarat elections has thrown some interesting trends which have far reaching implications on the national politics.
The first major trend is the shift towards Hindutva politics and not playing the minority card. The BJP`s stronghold has been the Hindu vote which was latched onto by the Congress this time. Rahul Gandhi`s temple visits and playing to the Hindu vote base was a clear-cut realization that the days of the KHAM vote base are past and banking on the minority vote is not smart politics anymore. The root to the issue lies in the UP elections wherein the BJP, without any Muslim candidates, won even in the Muslim dominated seats by the inducing the Muslim women to vote for them with their policies for the upliftment for the Muslim women. Hence the days of parties playing the minority card, without any concerns for their development, are probably numbered. It might also lead to a realignment of community based politics where parties will need to have a developmental agenda to win this vote base.
The BJP was supposed to lose the trader dominated seats like Surat because of the angst due to demonetization and GST. Alas, the BJP managed to win all the seats even in Surat probably due to the timely action on the GST relief in the run-up to the elections. Even all the anti GST campaigning by the opposition parties proved to be of little effect in shaking up the strong trader vote base of the BJP. Even though demonetization and GST implementation would have led to short-term pain to the trading community, this vote base is almost still intact with the BJP and alludes to the point that the business community still reposes faith in the developmental agenda of BJP. If the business community is still voting for the BJP it indicates the faith in BJP`s vision, to take Indian business and trade forward, in the global arena.
The critical area where the BJP lost vote was in the Saurashtra area, especially with the farmers. The ostensible reason was that the government didn’t respond to the farmer demands for loan waivers, etc. similar to the waivers in UP and Maharashtra. Probably true! Even in Maharashtra, the loan waiver came with reluctance with the government insisting on farmers raising their productivity levels so as not to fall into the debt trap again. In the past, governments have splurged money on the loan waivers stressing their finances as well as make the PSU banks having to waive off huge amount of loans at taxpayers expense. Even though the BJP will prefer to address this issue of farmers, hopefully without much populism, the trend shows that elections can still be won without buckling under populist pressure.
Despite sloganeering by the opposition parties, the Gujarat elections reflects the shift in the Indian politics of development agenda moving to be the core issue of Indian politics and elections. We will certainly see quite a bit of populist politics thanks to the challenges of a democracy and we might and certainly see the BJP making some populist moves in 2018 before the next general elections. However, the core issue still remains “Development” which if taken as the criteria makes BJP the clear victor from the Gujarat elections. Next – Karnataka elections!
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