In 2009 after UPA returned to power, I had interviewed Akhilesh Yadav, the youthful leader of Samajwadi Party.
My question was: "UP politics has changed....The Congress is in a resurgent mood and your (SP) vote share has declined".
Mulayam Singh Yadav's son Akhilesh had countered quite assertively: "..... But what about our bigger political message. Did you notice how far it has gone? We are grateful to the UP voters that they chose us as the largest party. We did not want the BJP and BSP to do well; that was our campaign and that way we have succeeded.
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| The Statesman, 27th June, 2009 |
The Congress had won 21 seats and the vote share went up to 18.25% -- a rise by 9 seats from 12 it had polled in 2004.
But it required hard work to consolidate the gain. The Congress just lost the plot essentially because they took the voters for granted.
By 2014 .... by the time elections to Lok Sabha were over -- entire story had changed. Uttar Pradesh was drenched saffron and BJP had 71 Lok Sabha members for itself and two others for its ally Apna Dal. The Congress hope of a turnaround in north India was shattered completely.
In 2018 assembly elections, it again did well to return to power in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh; but in 2019 Lok Sabha polls again the voters had shown faith in Narendra Modi.
In 2023 May, Congress won Karnataka. A few months back, it had won Himachal Pradesh too. The Congress strategists and power brokers grew ambitious and also selfish.
It did not want to act for a while in building the coalition presuming after victories in three Hindi-heartland states (Dec 2023); they will bargain hard and force the entire opposition camp -- the so called INDI alliance - to back Rahul Gandhi. The game simply flopped !
In the north now it is virtual Modi wave and in Uttar Pradesh; the BJP has countered all other narratives by their own phenomenon called neo-MY card -- Modi-Yogi combine.
The success of it lies in factors that actually led to BJP victories in 2022 and 2017 assembly elections in UP notwithstanding the Sickular ecosystem talking loud about farmers' stir, the Jat anguish etc etc.
In this decade and overall, came a new offering of Hindutva and politics as well as governance of Bulldozer. Intellectuals debated something else; but voters liked it.
Life conditions improved with power supply, good roads and toilets and there was construction of the Ram temple and a measured 'accommodation' of backward castes.
The sickular ecosystem could be crying once again that there was 'marginalisation' of the imagined enemy. The fact of the matter is law and order situation improved.
"Please do not underestimate our inclusive development agenda. This is one thing which is not appreciated in the media, but I tell you this makes all the difference. Just when there was sinister campaign that minorities are not happy, we have Muslim voters in Uttar Pradesh and Christian voters in Goa and Manipur voting overwhelmingly for the BJP," Virendra Sachdeva, a key BJP leader, had said in 2022. (Organiser magazine).
Sachdeva is now president of Delhi unit of the BJP.
When the going gets tough, it is the tough who gets going. If the maxim applies to Modi ideally; it is actually only a LESSON ... Rahul Gandhi did not bother to learn.
The entire campaign narratives of Congress and other INDI alliance constituents were based on sheer negativity and hate Modi deliberations. These just cannot work.
Ultimately, as the poll results would be coming in on June 4, it is becoming clearer by the day that Prime Minister Modi's mass appeal, repeated utterances about Double Engine and 'performance' at various states and his big vision about Viksit Bharat by 2047 had takers and seemed to make all the difference in electoral politics.
Modi critics could be frustrated. They could be in for a fatigue; and instead they tried a spin -- will Hindi belt tolerate 'Modi fatigue', they asked.
It did not have any impact.
"The Hindi belt or the Hindi heartland is a central factor in the shaping of political power in India. In part, this is due to numerical strength — the north accounts for a massive 245 seats to the Lok Sabha and, barring Punjab and Jammu & Kashmir, the Hindi belt has 226 seats. But more than mere strength, it is important because of an underlying uniformity in its approach to socio-cultural matters and in its political behaviour. Historically, the churnings in the Hindi belt have signalled momentous political shifts." -- says 'Indian Express'.
The article also notes:
"In 1967, the entire Hindi belt registered its disenchantment with the Congress. This shook the Congress system, but more than that, it marked the beginning of a new politics both within Congress and outside it. In 1977, the Hindi belt contributed to the rout of Indira Gandhi’s party and facilitated a reconfiguration of political forces.
"In both these moments, the deeper churning in the Hindi belt had an undercurrent of social realignments — the unrest of intermediate and backward castes against the continued dominance of upper/forward castes. The realignment politically manifested itself as a protest against the Congress.
That logic was further extended in 1989 when Congress was thrown out yet again — more decisively. At all these three points in time, the Hindi belt behaved more or less uniformly."
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