A few months, or maybe a year ahead of the Uttar Pradesh elections, there was a general feeling on the ground that even if Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party would better its 2017 performance in 2022, the Yogi Adityanath-led Bharatiya Janata Party would return to power comfortably. Somewhere along the way, the buzz started growing that Akhilesh Yadav had stitched together such a caste alliance that not only would he give a close fight to the BJP, but he may even romp home to victory. To Akhilesh Yadav’s credit, he spun this narrative so well, that from an easy victory for BJP, the UP race came to be perceived as neck-to-neck, which led to swathes of SP supporters coming to believe that they were actually winning. The major advantage of this buzz, seen even among political commentators, was that the election became largely bipolar, with parties like the BSP and Congress falling by the wayside. It’s a different matter that in the end, the election results turned out to be exactly what the buzz was around a year ago—a comfortable win for the BJP alliance, with the SP alliance not winning even half of the seats the victors won. The fundamental mistake that commentators in particular made was to judge the mood of the ground from the large, very vocal crowd at Akhilesh’s meetings, while overlooking the fact that this support was coming from his own caste group and from the minorities, and perhaps from some non Yadav OBCs. The majority of voters stayed silent. Also, given that women played a major role in the return of Yogi Adityanath’s government, very few noticed that their silence was deafening. Rather, no one was listening to them. While the talk was about caste and community—apparently Akhilesh had stitched together a “competitive” caste combination—the BJP walked away with the delivery narrative; not just delivery of government schemes, including “ration”, but also delivery of law and order and infrastructure.
Even after eight years of Narendra Modi as Prime Minister, there is a refusal among both the Opposition and the commentariat to realise that it is simplistic to see elections through the prism of identity politics. The shift is taking place towards development or delivery politics, even though India has a long way to go for elections to be called “post caste”. It is the refusal to see this reality that made Mayawati last week speak of the need to have a Dalit-Muslim “alliance” to do well electorally, when in reality, a large part of her Dalit vote has shifted to the ruling BJP because of welfare measures implemented on the ground. While there is no doubt that BJP too is quite sensitive to the demands of caste and community, but it has successfully transformed itself from being an upper caste party to being more representative of various caste groups—and this has been possible because of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s focus on development/delivery politics.
As for the Congress, its campaign was hobbled by a disconnect with the ground. Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s “Ladki hoon lad sakti hoon” campaign did not find any resonance in a state where women’s security was one of the biggest poll issues and it was the Yogi government that was seen to have delivered on this front. Congress did not have a message to counter Yogi Adityanath’s claim. Also, the selection of a beauty contest winner as the party’s candidate from one of the seats, or the talk of women having the freedom to wear purdah, jeans and bikini made the Congress appear as a non-serious party. New Delhi-style urban feminism does not work in a traditional and largely rural society like UP. The sooner the Congress realizes this disconnect, the better for it.
In conclusion, now that the BJP has been voted back to power, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath needs to up his performance by several notches. People have voted for him with great expectations and it is time to carry forward the good work of his first term and make the second term even better.