A Few Quick Lessons From The Gorakhpur Bypoll Loss For BJP

A day after scoring a political victory of sorts with their successful handling of the Kisan March in Maharashtra, the ruling Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) faced one of its most significant setbacks yesterday in the bypolls of Gorakhpur (seat vacated by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath) and Phulpur (seat vacated by Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya) where the Samajwadi Party-Bahujan Samaj Party combine defeated the BJP candidates convincingly. The losses, especially of Gorakhpur, a seat Yogi Aditynath had won five times, and one that is considered as a BJP bastion, must rankle and a quick analysis might be in order.

Here are my first impressions from this loss:

1. Adityanath’s statement after the loss showed immense political maturity and faith in democratic process to accept people’s verdict, two qualities his principal opposition has been found lacking many times in the recent past. Adityanath did not try to shift blame, he accepted his party underestimated the challenge and promised to work hard in future. It was important for him to show his 21st century politician side, and he did that with great deal of poise. This should go a long way towards pushing the moderates in the ranks into supporting Adityanath even more in future.

2. As this piece shows, expect 2019 to be a lot tougher than 2014. Mainly because opposition is no longer caught by surprise (as they were in 2014). The natural phenomena of anti-incumbency is making its presence felt, and also faced with BJP’s stupendous electoral success, opposition is willing to forego internal differences to fight the ruling party. Neither the leadership nor the cadre can afford complacency. In Gorakhpur, the BJP candidate polled nearly 105,000 votes less than what Adityanath garnered in 2014. Early analysis shows that the swing was not out of BJP to SP, so it is safe to assume those 125,000 voters stayed home, whether out of complacency or disenchantment. In either case, BJP’s formidable election machinery has its job cut out.

3. Vikas can no longer be mocked: a vocal section of right wing’s fringe cultural base has often mocked Narendra Modi government’s single-minded focus on development, which according to them, has come at the cost of cultural agenda. Many from this section see Adityanath as a true champion for their hopes of following a more hard-line cultural agenda. This loss must come as a warning to BJP leadership everywhere to stay firmly committed to development and keep a safe distance with the hard-line cultural warriors. After all, if people were voting on the basis of their cultural concerns alone, BJP would have never lost Gorakhpur.

4. Subtle change in social media messaging: Adityanath-led government has brought about sweeping changes to the state’s broken law and order machinery. The savvy social media team also did a good job in making sure people knew about the work being done. I think it is now time for the UP government to let the police continue their work and bring other departments, like healthcare, education and infrastructure in focus of their social media information campaign. Let us not forget that a large section of the voters are as worried about bad roads and sanitation as they are about the gangster menace.

5. For BJP, no space for boutique issues or petty grudges: As Bill Maher warned Democrats in this hilarious take, the BJP support base too needs to understand the enormity of stakes involved and keep the focus firmly on defeating the opposition. This is no time or place for boutique issues or petty grudges. Those who feel United Progressive Alliance (UPA) era was a disaster for India, they must learn to ignore a range of issues and keep on back-burner a few others. I know from personal experience that it is human tendency to convince ourselves that the issue close to our hearts are the ones that truly matter, but unless the issue passes the electoral viability test, it must be kept aside until 2019.

6. Congress continues to become increasingly irrelevant and the acceptance is setting in. Congress candidates lost their deposits in both constituencies. Phulpur had sent the late Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru to parliament. In spite of this history, Congress’s vote share, abysmal to begin with, plunged even further, and yet from Siddaramaiah to Sanjay Jha and from Rahul Gandhi to the party’s official handles, all celebrated electoral success of SP. The falling vote share continues to paint a sad picture of the party’s sorry state of electoral performance, the celebrations at the loss points to a new resigned mentality, where the party ranks as well as the leadership are seeking comfort in their ‘enemy number one’s’ losses. This performance should also revive talks for the non-BJP, non-Congress third front and that can spell further disaster for the Rahul Gandhi-led Congress.

7. Arithmetical victories are not easy to replicate: The increasingly shrill opposition as well as the despondent mainstream media, in panic over the death of access journalism, have celebrated each of BJP’s electoral losses with great fanfare and touted the formula used therein as the magic pill to solve their problems with BJP. I was sceptical of the long-term impact of wins in Delhi and Bihar, and I remain sceptical now. Without going into too many details, there are two important things one would need to take into consideration before extrapolating these results on a national scale:

1. There are not too many states, where this model of two strong, non-BJP, non-Congress parties joining hands can be implemented. Even without getting into if SP and BSP can sort out their cadre differences well enough to arrive at a seat-sharing formula for 80 Lok Sabha seats (remember BJP-Shiv Sena headaches leading up to 2014 Lok Sabha elections?), let us also accept that in many states, the opposition will have to take Congress in its fold, and in the shape the party is right now, BJP should feel confident of trouncing such opposition in most places.
2. BJP’s ground game in stitching together alliances is much improved compared to its 1998-2004 era. At present, BJP has kept Congress out of power in three states in spite of being the single largest party. In our parliamentary system, where MPs across different states need to come together to cross the 272 number, the opposition as united as it is, might find it really difficult to counter Amit Shah machinations.

8. Mainstream media can no longer continue to even carry on pretence of neutrality: a large section of Indian mainstream media is not only biased against BJP but actively invested in its opponents. From M K Venu’s open threat to investigative agencies to other journalists tweeting advice to Congress on how to stop BJP, the gloves are well and truly off. With Congress rewarding rabid partisan Kumar Ketkar with a Rajya Sabha nomination, and Modi government’s complete lack of interest in continuing the old access and power to the Lutyen’s, it does not take a genius to figure out which side the mainstream media’s bread is buttered on. From here on, the masses would do well to take everything the mainstream media says with a giant pinch of salt.