2014: The Election That Changed India (52 page)

But Modi must know as a shrewd politician that he
was elected as an agent of change, not continuity. That is what the idea of ‘hope’ was
premised upon. That Modi is capable of being a change agent is doubtless. A Modi acolyte tells a
delicious story of his leader taking on the Planning Commission when he was Gujarat chief minister.
Modi was convinced that the Planning Commission was an impediment to faster growth. So at a meeting
in Yojana Bhavan, he insisted on showing all the commission members a ten-minute video before
meeting them for additional grants. The video showed in stark terms why Modi believed the Planning
Commission should not exist!

A similar desire to rewrite the rules was witnessed
when the Modi government decided to call off Indo-Pakistan foreign secretary-level talks after the
Pakistan high commissioner met separatist Kashmiri Hurriyat leaders. The Hurriyat meetings at the
Pakistan High Commission had been a familiar kebab and
kahwa
ritual; the ministry of
external affairs, too, didn’t seem to get agitated over it. Modi, though, has drawn a
Lakshman-rekha for Indo-Pak
diplomacy. As a seasoned diplomat remarked,
‘You just can’t have cross-border firing and sari–shawl diplomacy at the same
time. Modi is not Manmohan, he is not even Vajpayee.’

It is that ability to break with convention, to
challenge the Lutyens’ Delhi establishment, to be adventurous in his thought and execution
that will define Modi’s prime ministership. He is leading India’s first genuine
right-of-centre majority government—Vajpayee’s NDA was a loose coalition
arrangement—and therefore has the mandate to effect a dramatic transformation.

Will this change alter inter-community relations as
well? The 2014 election verdict has revived and emboldened the RSS and its affiliates—RSS
chief Mohan Bhagwat has described India as a Hindu nation and Hindutva as its core identity. A Goa
BJP minister echoed the sentiment. Minority affairs minister Najma Heptullah even went so far as to
suggest there is nothing wrong in calling all Indians ‘Hindu’—it is a badge of
national citizenship. Modi hasn’t criticized or distanced himself from the remarks. In
Gujarat, once he had settled down, Modi did marginalize the VHP hotheads. As prime minister, he is
faced with a similar challenge of reining in his own saffron brotherhood. Will there be a genuine
outreach to the minorities or will that run counter to his original persona as the face of
unapologetic Hindutva politics?

During the Ramzan month in 2014, Modi did not host
the traditional prime minister’s iftar. ‘You know he doesn’t believe in these
token gestures,’ was how the decision was explained by a PMO official. Instead, I was reminded
by the official how the prime minister’s Jan Dhan financial inclusion scheme did not
discriminate between Hindus and Muslims. ‘Our slogan is “Sabka Saath, Sabka
Vikas”,’ I was assured. Will that assurance satisfy minority groups who coexist uneasily
between fear and radicalization?

Catchy slogans have been Modi’s
trademark—when he visited Kargil, he assured the soldiers on the border,
‘Na khaunga
na khane doonga’
(I won’t take bribes, nor allow others to take bribes). A few days
later, I met a senior bureaucrat and asked him whether he felt red-tapism and corruption had
significantly declined in
government. He just smiled: ‘This is India,
Rajdeep. Nothing changes overnight.’

On 15 August 2014, Narendra Modi addressed the
nation for the first time from the ramparts of the Red Fort. Only a year earlier, on Independence
Day again, he had begun his audacious bid for prime ministership by virtually challenging Manmohan
Singh to a public debate. Now the challenger was prime minister. Wearing a short-sleeved kurta and a
red Rajasthani safa, Modi reverted to his success mantra in the 2014 elections—a masterful
orator directly communicating with the voter. In an extempore speech peppered with ideas and an
infectious energy, Modi spoke of himself as a ‘sevak’ and an ‘outsider’ in
Delhi. He focused on sanitation and ‘toilet building’ as a national mission, and
rhetorically asked, ‘What kind of prime minister stands at the Red Fort and talks about toilet
building?’ This was quintessential Modi—breaking with tradition, almost challenging the
ruling class to reorder its priorities.

He even threw up a ‘Make in India’
catchline, an invitation to the world to make India a manufacturing hub. He called for a ten-year
moratorium on divisive politics and asked for parents to check rising crimes against women by
educating their sons. And yes, he did promise to disband the Planning Commission. The tedium of
using the 15 August speech to pay ritualistic obeisance to past achievements was forsaken. Instead,
Modi was offering a glimpse at a future aimed at growth and harmony. The rousing speech received a
thumbs up—Television Audience Meter (TAM) ratings show that it was watched by a viewership
three times higher than the 2013 Independence Day speech. Modi had pressed all the right
buttons—now, importantly, he needs to walk the talk.

Only a few days before Modi’s virtuoso
performance, his general election Man of the Match, Amit Shah, was also given his reward—he
was made the BJP president. For someone who, just eighteen months ago, was facing an extended prison
sentence in a
fake encounter case, it was an astonishing turnaround. Indeed,
never before have two leaders from the same state outside of the Hindi heartland come to dominate
national politics in such a sudden and dramatic manner. As a bureaucrat laughingly told me, ‘I
hope that we now at least get a half-decent Gujarati restaurant in Delhi!’

Shah has his task cut out—he has to be a
bridge between party and government but, importantly, also ensure that his winning formula of the
general elections is sustained in the state elections as well. In his first speech as party
president, he set out the BJP’s goal. ‘We must capture power from Jammu and Kashmir to
Kerala, from Nagaland to Gujarat.’ It is an ambitious project, but after his stunning success
in UP, Shah seems to believe he has the organizational machine to deliver the results. Certainly,
his eye for detail and micromanagement mark him out as an ideal election strategist.

And yet, the Shah model of fighting elections has
also thrown up real concerns of a worrying revival of communally divisive politics. His decision,
for example, to make the party’s rabble-rousing Gorakhpur MP Yogi Adityanath one of his star
campaigners in UP has sent out a signal that saffron politics is an intrinsic part of the
BJP’s UP strategy. Western UP continues to simmer in the cauldron of religious polarization.
The UP BJP wants to make an election issue of ‘love jihad’—a dangerous term being
used to suggest that Hindu–Muslim marriages are based on forced conversion. In Jammu and
Kashmir, the call for a ‘nationalist’ government which will seek to abolish Article 370
is also disconcerting—politically sensitive issues cannot be settled in a cavalier manner.
‘We are playing with fire,’ warns a security official who has worked in the valley for
years.

The apparent shift in strategy from the
‘development driven’ pattern to a sharper ‘Hindutva’ identity politics has
already backfired in a series of by-elections since the general elections. The triumph in the 2014
general elections was driven by a recognition that the BJP needed to reinvent itself, adapt to a
changing India by making governance and rapid growth its core issues, with Modi as the face of
change. While the prime minister seems to have been astute enough to the embrace the new paradigm,
some of the Sangh’s foot soldiers
seem a step behind. Unless, as some
political observers suggest, the dualism of a prime minister who is striving to appear statesmanlike
and a party leadership which is more ideologically rigid is part of a well-crafted double act by the
Modi–Shah duo. Moreover, the BJP’s decision to break ties with its twenty-five-year-old
ally, the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra, only suggests that the duo are convinced that the mandate of
2014 was for a Modi-led BJP government, and not for an NDA-like coalition. Unilateralism, it seems,
is the new mantra for the BJP leadership.

Modi and Shah, controversial but successful—easily
the two stand-out politicians of 2014. Their rise will continue to attract sharply divided opinion.
Modi, for example, will always be seen by his critics with a measure of scepticism. Eminent social
scientist Ashis Nandy had written an article in the
Seminar
magazine in 2002, recalling an
interview he had done with Modi as a pracharak in the early 1990s: ‘It was a long, rambling
interview but it left me in no doubt that here was a classical, clinical case of a fascist . . . all
set within the matrix of clear paranoid and obsessive personality traits.’ Modi’s
supporters reject the Nandy thesis. As one of them told me,
‘Modi is a karma yogi, a remarkably hard-working politician with a human touch and communication skills who has
consistently fought and won over adversity. He represents the triumph of Indian
democracy.’

This is not an appropriate time to either demonize
or deify Narendra Modi. His prime ministership is, after all, work in progress. What is certain,
though, is that Verdict 2014 has placed India at the cusp of change, with the future direction
pregnant with a range of possibilities, good and bad. If a Congress under Nehru ushered in
India’s republican Constitution, a BJP led by Modi could well redefine the idea of India, or
at least the way it is governed.

2014 Election Result: Some interesting aspects based on Election Commission of India (ECI) figures

• Out of the 282 seats that the BJP won, in 137 it secured more than half of the total votes polled; moreover, in 169 seats the party’s vote share was greater than the vote shares of parties that finished second, third and fourth put together.
  
• 73 per cent or nearly three out of four BJP victories were by margins of over one lakh votes.
  
• BJP’s success was mainly against the Congress as nearly three out of five BJP victories were against it.
  
• For the first time the BJP’s national vote share was greater than that of the Congress. Even in the national elections held during the Vajpayee years, the Congress had been ahead of the BJP in terms of overall vote share.
  
• Punjab is the only state in the country where the BJP’s vote share declined since the 2009 election. Among all the states, the BJP’s highest vote share increase in percentage point terms was in Uttar Pradesh at +24.8.
  
• BJP and allies won 67 out of 70 seats where voter turnout went
  up by over 15 per cent since 2009.
  
• In six states, the BJP secured more than half of the total votes polled. These are Gujarat, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Goa and Himachal Pradesh.
  
• In six states, the BJP won each and every seat on offer. These are Gujarat, Rajasthan, Delhi, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Goa.
  
• One in three seats won by the BJP is from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
  
• The BJP won two-thirds of the highly urban seats (37/57) and more than half of the rural seats (178/342); Congress could win only two seats that had an urban population of over 75 per cent, Ernakulam and Ludhiana.
  
• Out of the 44 seats that the Congress won, only 13 were won by margins of over one lakh votes; seven were narrow wins by margins below 10,000 votes. In as many as 178 of the 464 seats that the Congress contested, the party’s candidates secured less than 16.66 per cent of the total votes polled, hence losing their security deposit.
  

2014 Election: Some interesting points based on Centre for Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) Surveys

• Narendra Modi’s popularity (people’s preference as prime minister) at the time of the Lok Sabha election was nearly twice that of Rahul Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh put together. Modi was preferred by 36 per cent of the voters, whereas Rahul, Sonia and Manmohan together totalled 19 per cent.
  
• Modi’s popularity jumped by nearly two times (from 19 per cent to 36 per cent) between July 2013 and April–May 2014; Rahul Gandhi’s increased only marginally from 12 per cent to 14.
  
• For the first time in a national election, more Hindu Dalits and Hindu Tribals voted for the BJP than the Congress; Congress was ahead of the BJP only among Muslims and Christians.
  
• While about two out of every five Muslims voted for the Congress,
  Hindu Upper Caste support for the BJP was one out of two.
  
• The BJP secured about 36 per cent votes among the youngest/ first-time voters (18–22 years); the Congress got less than half as much (17 per cent).
  
• BJP’s relative unpopularity among women voters continued in 2014: 29 per cent women voted for the BJP as opposed to 33 per cent men, a difference of four percentage points. In 2009, the difference between the two was of two percentage points.
  

Note

ECI figures and CSDS Survey data analysed and compiled by Researchers at Lokniti, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies. ECI figures for the 2014 Lok Sabha election accessed and downloaded from http://eciresults.nic.in/. Survey data is from the following election studies conducted by Lokniti, CSDS:

1. National Election Study 2014, Post Poll, conducted in 26 states; sample size: 22,301.
   
2. National Election Study 2014, Pre Poll, conducted in 21 states; sample size: 20,957.
   
3. Election Tracker January 2014 conducted in 18 states; sample size: 18,596.
   
4. Election Tracker July 2013 conducted in 18 states; sample size: 19,062.
   
5. National Election Study 2009, Post Poll, conducted in 29 states and one union territory; sample size: 36,641.
   
6. National Election Study 2004, Post Poll, conducted in 29 states and two union territories; sample size: 27,189.
   
7. National Election Study 1999, Post Poll, conducted in 20 states and one union territory; sample size: 9436.
   
8. National Election Study 1998, Post Poll, conducted in 18 states and one union territory; sample size: 8133.
   
9. National Election Study 1996, Pre Poll, conducted in 20 states and one union territory; sample size: 9602.
   

During all the above-mentioned surveys, face-to-face interviews
with randomly selected voters from the most updated electoral rolls were conducted by specially trained field investigators. All National Election Study Post Poll data sets have been weighted by the actual vote shares garnered by the main parties/alliances in the respective election.