The election fever has returned in 2022. While five states would have their Assembly polls, Assam will witness municipality and other elections at hand. Prashant Kishore, the master election strategist who helped Mamata Banerjee beat the BJP in the 2021 Bengal elections while speaking to NDTV recently, said two of BJP’s biggest weapons in elections, apart from Hindutva, are hyper-nationalism and public welfare.
While public welfare schemes are a key tool that helps BJP lure the masses, especially sections below the poverty line (BPL), other strategies help the party score goals in the public imagination.
If we list the advantages that BJP has over other political parties in elections, Hindutva, hyper-nationalism, welfare schemes (borrowing from Kishore), roads and bridges do hold a special reference. But another of the less highlighted political strategies of the BJP is the portrayal of being a non-elitist party.
While champagne-sipping intellectuals have debated many times over about PM Modi’s ’10 lakh ka suit’ and his travel expenses, the party’s alignment with the Adanis and the Ambanis, to the common populace, he is still the chaiwala who rose to fame by sweeping the floors of RSS karyalays, who left home at a tender age and came from rags. While now he walks the red carpet, people cannot help but take into account the humble origins from where he has risen to the zenith of power and authority. Hence, he will always be preferred over someone like a Shashi Tharoor who smells of elitism and exudes perfumes of unintelligible English that is foreign even to Englishmen and looks like a superhuman style icon in his silk Kurtas and Pashmina handkerchiefs attached to matching waistcoats and bandgalas.
The non-elitism factor has always worked BJP’s favour in the new era of one-party dominance, and to that end, the selection of party presidents in different states may also be taken into account.
In the context of Assam, no one would have probably imagined that someone like Bhabesh Kalita, who was at least overtly nowhere in the race would be made President. While the man is popular in his constituency(Rangia in lower Assam), the strategy for choosing him this time around instead of other stalwarts like Siddhartha Bhattacharya, who is reputed to be part of the local gentry, can be said to be a masterstroke. Despite all jokes surrounding Bhabesh Kalita concerning a few of his comments in the public domain, when in rallies, he speaks in his typical lower Assam accent and does not shy away from that, it is easier for people to empathise with him.
Once in a particular assembly, he said that he was part of the ABVP and later the BJP when there would be just four or five people in the meetings, and also mentioned that if he can rise the party hierarchy, anyone can.
This motivates the people further to align to the party and participate more in rallies and programs organised by it.
Another example is Manoj Tiwari, who was made the President of Delhi BJP IN 2016. While many made fun of him, as he is branded as ‘Rinkiya ke Papa’ based on one of the most famous folk songs sung by him, the party performed exceedingly well during the 2017 municipal elections held under his Presidentship. This shows that people accepted him as their leader, despite his crude speeches and ‘unsophisticated’ appearance as pointed out by many.
The other day, the Assam CM, Dr Himanta Biswa Sarma, lambasted the DC of Nagaon, stepping out of his car and personally chiding the DC for security arrangements made to welcome the CM by bringing the town to a stand-still and harassing the common people. The video of the incident started doing the rounds, and many over social media and Progressive intellectuals came out in extreme opposition of the CM’s behaviour, questioning how he can publicly insult a man of honour like the DC. When a lower-middle-class person plays the video on loop and hears the CM saying, “Logon ko kasht ho raha hai,” “Koi Raja Maharaja Aaya hai Kya?”, though he might feel a little awkward at the treatment of the bureaucrat. But, he would also smile and be perhaps proud of the non-elite stand taken by the CM.
This instance, the selection of Bhabesh Kalita, who has a track record of winning elections and being extremely popular in his constituency where there is hardly any anti-incumbency, which becomes apparent when anyone visits the ground, the pro-poor welfare schemes, and the ‘tacky’ taste of the government and the ‘uncouth’ appearance of many of the leaders, that people can empathise with more than tongue-twisting English phrases and continued dynasty politics, where Rahul Gandhi resigns from the post of the Congress President only to be succeeded by his mother, proves before the people that the Congress is bereft of choices, and even if they have choices, they will stick to the Gandhian Elitism and their Tharoorosaurus, both of which are obsolete and of no use to the common public.
Reverting to Prashant Kishore’s interview, he has also mentioned, “the household and individual level welfare-ism, nationalism and Hinduism put together is a formidable narrative.”
Another significant reason that the BJP wins national polls, even when they might sometimes fall short in state-level elections, according to Kishore, is that in the latter, the spirit of sub-regionalism might pose a formidable opposition to that of nationalism. But in national elections, nationalism wins over the other sentiments, even though he maintained that he “wanted to help form an opposition front that could defeat the BJP in 2024.”
But distancing from Kishore on his confidence that the formation of such an alliance is still possible, at least in the near future, anything of that sort does not seem conceivable.
Swaswati Borkataki works as an independent researcher and is a Research Scholar in JNU, New Delhi.
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