Opinion: How BJP Is Trying To Counter Farmer Anger In Western UP

In the all-important bellwether state of Uttar Pradesh, the Opposition appears to have a better chance than was anticipated a few months ago. There are a couple of big factors for this:

1. Akhilesh Yadav has braided alliances with key smaller parties which helps him expand his appeal beyond the traditional Muslim-Yadav support base of the Samajwadi Party (SP).

2. The election takes place in the backdrop of economic devastation. Unemployment and prices have risen significantly, combined with the collapse of small and medium industry in urban centres and the destruction of standing crop by unclaimed cattle in rural areas.

Yet the BJP is powerful in the state. In 2017, it won 312 of 403 seats with 40 per cent of the vote; that went up to 50 per cent in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls where it won 62 of the 80 seats.

The BJP, known for its rigorous internal surveys, will base its initial estimates on the turnout in specific areas as also on informal exit polls after the first phase of voting on Thursday when elections will be held for 58 seats.

Some of these seats lie in the region most impacted by the farmers' agitation which helped generate some early tailwind for the Opposition. In recent weeks, the BJP has recovered some of that ground with the campaigning and PR generated by supporters and workers who are assigned to map each constituency down to the last polling booth.

The fightback by the BJP is intense as the party is almost like a mission force working to a larger plan with dedicated cadres and huge resources. The leadership and workers are going door-to-door, besides organizing separate meetings with village heads and pradhans. Only a few candidates from the alliance of the Samajwadi Party and Jayant Chaudhary's RLD are spending as much money on the ground as their BJP competition; the alliance appears to have fundamentally left the costs and management to those who have been selected as candidates. Ashish Chaudhary, the Jat Pradhan of a village in West UP complains of some members of his community wavering due to the better outreach of the BJP "although their hearts this time are with the RLD".

In some seats, the Jat-Muslim numbers add up, which is good news for Jayant Chaudhary and Akhilesh Yadav, but there are other social groups such as Kashyaps, categorized as Other Backward Castes, who are likely to stay with the BJP as the SP-led alliance has not chosen many candidates from their groups. Other potential OBCs who could choose the BJP in the first phase of voting are the Lodhs and Sainis who have 20,000 to 50,000 votes in many seats while Gujjar OBCs, whose numbers go up to one lakh plus in some seats, are divided between the BJP and SP front. (In the absence of a caste census, exact numbers are not available for the individual population of Other Backward Castes). The upper castes, loosely adding up to 10 to 15 percent of Western Uttar Pradesh, are unlikely to ditch the BJP.

The BJP can be counted on to pull out the stops in persuading indifferent voters to get to polling booths. This is juxtaposed with details from the ground that are counter-intuitive. For instance, in the seat of Kairana, seen to be divided on communal lines, the BJP candidate is also reaching out to Muslims in specific villages because of old caste and clan linkages (both Hindus and Muslims are from the Gujjar OBC caste here and the SP candidate, Nahid Hasan, and the BJP's Mriganka Singh come from families that belonged to the same Khap panchayat till one wing converted to Islam). Likewise, Hindutva poster boy Suresh Rana, who was an accused in the deadly 2013 communal riots in Muzaffarnagar and runs from the seat of Thana-bhawan in Shamli district, also reaches out to a particular village of Rajput Muslims, some of whom do indeed vote for him. Jeetendra Hooda, an RLD loyalist and influential farmer in this seat says that the "mood" is with the Opposition, but the BJP outreach is "phenomenal".

There is a conundrum surrounding Dalits. According to the 2011 census, they make up 21 per cent of the state's population; more than half are Jatavs, the sub-caste of BSP chief Mayawati. She is perceived as being a late entrant to the polls, but if the BSP leader holds on to her vote share of around 20 per cent, that could curiously help the SP-RLD as this would mean this voter bloc did not move to BJP. This counts as in the first phase very few Dalits of Western UP would opt for a formation seen to be led by Jats and Yadavs, often land-owning peasant castes.

Jatav Dalits are statistically the most loyal vote bank of the BSP, but if they do succumb to the consistent wooing by the BJP, then the national party would get a boost. There is no good data for the assembly polls of 2017, but CSDS analysis from the 2019 elections suggests that a substantial chunk of the poorer voters, that includes Dalits, voted BJP.

This is more likely to have happened among non-Jatav Dalits. For instance, in places such as Agra and Mathura, a section of the non-Jatav Dalits were loyal BJP voters in the 2017 and 2019 elections, but a month ago were speaking against the regime of Chief Minister Adityanath Yogi. Now they are slowly making their way back to the BJP. Satish Valmiki, a safai karamchari in Agra, says that although there are complaints against the BJP, the BSP supports only Jatavs, and the SP front has not accommodated enough Dalits.

Through its welfare schemes, the BJP could have created a cross-caste constituency in Western UP. Cash transfers to daily wagers, the building of low-cost houses in pockets often inhabited by Dalits, and the delivery of free ration have gone up in the months preceding the election. Despite media reports, this is not seen to be a Hindu-Muslim election on the ground. Yet there are examples in some seats of hesitation in voting for Muslim candidates among voters who want to vote out the BJP. A key BJP/RSS strategist, who chooses to be anonymous but handled West UP in 2019 says that "polarization happens when all Muslims go in one direction and then the Hindu voter does not fit in, so they stay with the BJP".

Hindutva is not overtly a point of discussion, among voters at least. The anti-Muslim messaging is however being amplified by traditional media and the social media groups that are formed around each seat. The BJP does not reportedly want to take this to the level of clashes, as even its own supporters say the economic situation is too fragile to tolerate grave disruptions. Besides, maintaining law and order is one of the pitches of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, and a lot of the campaign material visible in posters in urban centres paints the Opposition as rioters.

Again, the sentiment of "being Hindu" may work differently in rural and urban areas. In Eastern UP for instance, in the region known as "Purvanchal", it is hard to understand how the ideology is supposed to dovetail with the issues villagers are engaging with. People are not talking about Muslims and "Love Jihad" and cow slaughter, the emblematic themes that have been raised in the past in the state. Indeed, if they are talking about cows at all, it is to complain of them being abandoned to wonder in their fields to damage their crops.

This part of the state is far poorer than Western UP and people complain of hunger and how tough it is to get work under MNREGA. Free rations have been a life-line for some families who intend to vote for the BJP. The so-called "aspirational young" could be a key demographic as many young people complain of being unemployed and forced to live on doles.

Should the BJP win comfortably, in spite of the economic downturn, it would indicate that Hindutva plus welfarism, along with the personality cults around both the Prime Minister and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, have worked for the party.

But a loss or a significant drop in seats compared to last time could raise questions about the waning charisma of the BJP leadership and their economic (mis)management. In such a scenario, even if the party forms the government, the supremacy of the Chief Minister will definitely be challenged. 

(Saba Naqvi is a journalist and an author.)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author.