Elections must be upon us. At least that is what the Congress and BJP, the two principal parties seem to be telling us with their actions. He who must not be named aka Dear Leader has been busy giving interviews (to a foreign newswire, Reuters), speeches and generally creating as much noise as possible in the best traditions of the Indian street corner. In response, Congress has deployed the insufferable Manish Tewari, Ajay Maken and the supercilious Shashi Tharoor to counter Dear Leader and his myths. By and large, the back and forth has been limited to social media and press conferences rather than actual rallies or public meetings. Now I have some doubts about the effectiveness of social media based campaign in a country like India with large rural population and still low levels of education. Indeed, the effectiveness of ad campaigns in Indian elections is itself disputed - see a piece in Caravan on this.
Be that as it may, what these initial exchanges aim to achieve is to define what Dear Leader stands for. Congress wants to score some quick hits and damage his reputation for good governance, development while deploying the secularism shield to block Modi's barbs. For Modi, this is the time to introduce himself to rest of the country - not to his breathless fans in the social media or among urban upper and middle class - but to the hinterlands of the country. He wants to set an agenda and tap into the curiosities and frustrations of large segments of the population that are fed up with UPA's shambolic second term. Even I was curious to see how the man approached his first national level campaign. And the hindu heartthrob didn't disappoint me. Be the puppy comments or the coded 'burqa of secularism' it is clear that Dear Leader wants to cement his core communal constituency, which pretty much also constitutes BJP's core vote base. In this, he is pretty much following the playbook used by successive Republican Presidential candidates in the US who always threw red meat to the core conservative bloc during the Primaries in order to secure the nomination. With his elevation as the presumptive PM candidate assured, it is a puzzle as to why Dear Leader feels compelled to follow this path. Could it be that he is so confident of the contrast between his economic successes in Gujarat and the UPA's utter failure on that front? He might feel that the contrast is so vivid that there is no need to harp on that. But this explanation is not satisfactory on two counts. One is what the columnist Swapan Dasgupta argues as the key difference between how the Congress/regional parties approach the voter and how the BJP ought to approach. While the BJP tries to appeal to voters at an aspirational level - like say by appealing to patriotism or to aspirations for economic growth-Congress and the secular parties appeal to the voter's default level - say his or her religion, caste or language. While this appears to be somewhat a simplistic analysis and self serving given BJP's record in nineties, there is still something to be said for this analysis, particularly when applied to BJP's efforts under Vajpayee in 1999 and 2004. If BJP has at least once tasted success with such an approach why is it not following it up this time around? Secondly, focussing on economics or what the Americans call pocketbook issues would appear to be a safe strategy to appeal to undecided or centrist voters in urban areas who might still have misgivings about the Dark Lord. After all, wouldn't BJP's best chance lie in generating a wave phenomenon which not only lifts BJP to the single largest party status but also strengthens its bargaining power with new allies.
Either way, it is mystifying why Dear Leader and BJP have gone towards soft and coded Hindutva to kick start the election campaign. That it is not a faux pas is made clear by the comments of Dark Lord's henchman aka kaali dadhi in UP when he alluded to the Ayodhya temple campaign. Witness also the BJP's gleeful 'Hindu Nationalist' poster campaign in Mumbai after the Reuters interview. It may be that this is the only way Dear Leader knows to fight. Remember how he won his first elections in Gujarat in 2002? Remember how he had to rely on fabricated encounters that highlighted supposed security threats from 'those people' and similar coded language (not to forget Sonia Gandhi's maut ki saudagar slip) in 2007 to win re-election. Give the man his due. This is how he knows to fight elections despite the ardent wishes of his legions of internet followers to turn this election into one about economics. After all a tiger cannot change its stripes.
Be that as it may, what these initial exchanges aim to achieve is to define what Dear Leader stands for. Congress wants to score some quick hits and damage his reputation for good governance, development while deploying the secularism shield to block Modi's barbs. For Modi, this is the time to introduce himself to rest of the country - not to his breathless fans in the social media or among urban upper and middle class - but to the hinterlands of the country. He wants to set an agenda and tap into the curiosities and frustrations of large segments of the population that are fed up with UPA's shambolic second term. Even I was curious to see how the man approached his first national level campaign. And the hindu heartthrob didn't disappoint me. Be the puppy comments or the coded 'burqa of secularism' it is clear that Dear Leader wants to cement his core communal constituency, which pretty much also constitutes BJP's core vote base. In this, he is pretty much following the playbook used by successive Republican Presidential candidates in the US who always threw red meat to the core conservative bloc during the Primaries in order to secure the nomination. With his elevation as the presumptive PM candidate assured, it is a puzzle as to why Dear Leader feels compelled to follow this path. Could it be that he is so confident of the contrast between his economic successes in Gujarat and the UPA's utter failure on that front? He might feel that the contrast is so vivid that there is no need to harp on that. But this explanation is not satisfactory on two counts. One is what the columnist Swapan Dasgupta argues as the key difference between how the Congress/regional parties approach the voter and how the BJP ought to approach. While the BJP tries to appeal to voters at an aspirational level - like say by appealing to patriotism or to aspirations for economic growth-Congress and the secular parties appeal to the voter's default level - say his or her religion, caste or language. While this appears to be somewhat a simplistic analysis and self serving given BJP's record in nineties, there is still something to be said for this analysis, particularly when applied to BJP's efforts under Vajpayee in 1999 and 2004. If BJP has at least once tasted success with such an approach why is it not following it up this time around? Secondly, focussing on economics or what the Americans call pocketbook issues would appear to be a safe strategy to appeal to undecided or centrist voters in urban areas who might still have misgivings about the Dark Lord. After all, wouldn't BJP's best chance lie in generating a wave phenomenon which not only lifts BJP to the single largest party status but also strengthens its bargaining power with new allies.
Either way, it is mystifying why Dear Leader and BJP have gone towards soft and coded Hindutva to kick start the election campaign. That it is not a faux pas is made clear by the comments of Dark Lord's henchman aka kaali dadhi in UP when he alluded to the Ayodhya temple campaign. Witness also the BJP's gleeful 'Hindu Nationalist' poster campaign in Mumbai after the Reuters interview. It may be that this is the only way Dear Leader knows to fight. Remember how he won his first elections in Gujarat in 2002? Remember how he had to rely on fabricated encounters that highlighted supposed security threats from 'those people' and similar coded language (not to forget Sonia Gandhi's maut ki saudagar slip) in 2007 to win re-election. Give the man his due. This is how he knows to fight elections despite the ardent wishes of his legions of internet followers to turn this election into one about economics. After all a tiger cannot change its stripes.
