Elections
2014: Between Wave And Reality, The Shadow Of Figures
Saeed Naqvi
Anil Trivedi, tall, with an unkept grey
beard, settles down over a cup of tea in my Indore hotel room, putting aside
his AAP cap. His companion, Gaurav Chandak, a younger man, is an Indian
Institute of Technology graduate and committed social worker. He “had to vote”
for the BJP in the December elections, he complains, because the Congress has
not offered much of a contest in Indore in recent years.
Therefore when AAP erupted with the
suddenness of revelation in the Delhi elections on December 8, Gaurav began to
inquire if there would be an AAP candidate from Indore for next month’s
Parliamentary elections.
A fortnight ago, friends led him to Anil
Trivedi, the AAP candidate who was himself looking for help. Since then, Gaurav
has been Anil’s one man secretariat. The two have discovered that campaigning
on two wheelers is a huge convenience in a city which has 16 lakh cars in a
population of 22 lakhs. “Whenever we stop, a crowd gathers enabling us to
address street-corner meetings”. He proposes to mobilize “a car or two” to be
able to campaign in the 700 villages under the constituency.
The sitting BJP MP, Sumitra Mahajan, not
accustomed to too much exertion in past elections, is suddenly having to
contend with a different culture of electioneering. It would be risky to pick
victors and vanquished, but the electorate in Indore are finding the intimacy
of AAP’s door to door canvassing persuasive.
From Patna, Lucknow or Indore, the overall
picture also looks different. In the course of channel surfing the avid
election watcher does linger longer on the manufactured Modi show beamed from
the principal English and Hindi channels, but these images are not as
overpowering as they tend to be in New Delhi or Mumbai. Smaller cities are
reliable listening posts for the rural hinterland where the influence of the trunk
route media declines.
A conversation in the plush office of Indore’s
powerful Hindi daily is much more down-to-earth, based on real figures. There
are a total of 200 seats in Andhra, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Kerala, Odissa,
Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand, West Bengal, Delhi, Arunachal, Manipur, Meghalaya,
Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, Tripura, Chandigarh and Pondicherry. In this
substantial chunk of India there is, at present, not a single seat with the
BJP. In a Lok Sabha of 543, the party has 343 from which to coax a majority for
the NDA. This is a feasible proposition except that pocket calculators are out
in every constituency where alternative coalitions are being dreamed up.
The party is certain to pick up a seat
or two in Uttarakhand, Haryana but where else? Tamil Nadu?
In Bihar, Chattisgarh, Gujarat, Himachal
Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh the BJP has a total of 66 seats out of a
total of 126. It will probably add to its numbers here.
UP, Rajasthan, Punjab account for 118
seats of which the BJP has only 15 at present. Will it double these seats or
treble them? This is precisely where the BJP could grow exponentially if its
ambitious project of social engineering succeeds. This entails saffronization
of the lower castes.
Will this project be to the liking of
UP’s Brahmins who have been wandering from camp to camp in search of patronage
and stability ever since their secure edifice, the Congress, collapsed in the
late 80s. They shifted to the BJP imagining it to be the new parking lot for
the upper caste. But the BJP at this stage was adjusting to the post Mandal
commission caste politics. Kalyan Singh, a lodh, became Chief Minister, much to
the Brahmin’s chagrin. He has over the years adjusted even to Mayawati’s
blandishments.
This time, if a section of Brahmins
stays with Mayawati her chances will be considerably boosted. It is of vital
importance to Modi that this support somehow becomes available to the BJP.
The Muslim vote in UP is drifting
towards the BSP. But here too there is a complication. In every alternate seat
one runs into the same unexpected campaigners, wearing an AAP cap and riding a
two wheeler. In a four cornered contest, Muslims will vote in the following
order of preference – AAP, BSP, Congress and Samajwadi Party. Never was the SP
so much out of favour with Muslims in UP. They are punishing the SP for
Muzaffarnagar just as they punished the Congress in Rajasthan for it
callousness in Gopalgarh.
The BJP will have to fight tooth and
nail to improve its tally of 32 seats from a total of 90 in Maharashtra,
Karnataka and Assam. The Gandhi family will be in deeper trouble if Uma Bharati
and Smriti Irani are fielded from Rae Bareli and Amethi respectively. Congress workers
in both these constituencies wait anxiously for Priyanaka who remains absent.
The greatest unpredictability imposed on
these elections is by AAP which has changed the terms of the game but whose own
score will remain a total mystery until the votes are counted on May 16.
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