Narendra Modi’s first reaction to the election results was that a ‘New India’ has given its verdict. This New India has only two castes: one constituted by poor people and the other standing for people who make contributions to end poverty, he added in the same breath.
Modi has not claimed credit for creating a New India. For, it was not his creation. But he deserves credit for comprehending the change. He could get a sense of the evolution of New India, happening right in front of his eyes, and he recognised the reality where others failed miserably.
New India has emerged from the failure of the ‘Idea of India’ that our liberal intelligentsia — the so-called Khan Market Gang—has been holding close to heart. But little did it matter to them that the Idea of India was all about posturing and little about doing things. It was playing out in policies of appeasement, pseudo secularism and caste and community-based governance, all of which have now been rejected by the people. The public has also dumped the political parties wedded to the idea.
The people have a solid reason for doing what they have done: the governance based on the Idea of India has failed them completely. Otherwise, the poor, the minorities, women and all the underprivileged people would not be in the situation that they are today, which means it is time for a change and they have embraced change.
This is the biggest lesson to be learnt from the 2019 elections. The vote bank politics based on caste and communal calculus does not work any longer. The country’s politics has changed although the political parties have failed to fathom this change, except Modi’s BJP. And more than the party, it is Modi’s astuteness that made this possible.
The BJP’s clean sweep in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand, where alliances were forged purely on the basis of caste-based vote banks, proved that Modi has managed to win over the confidence of people beyond caste loyalties. The Bua-Bhatija bonhomie of Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav, in concert with Ajit Singh’s Rashtriya Lok Dal, in Uttar Pradesh appeared solid on paper. The only missing link was the Congress, but given the Grand Old Party’s surreal existence in the state, that should not have mattered much.
But when the results came, the BSP-SP-RLD alliance, which had briefly emerged as a giant killer in the by-elections only a year ago, polled just about 39 percent of votes compared to the BJP’s almost 50 percent. As Modi claimed after the elections, arithmetic had been completely undone by chemistry.
The results show how economic programmes can bring about social engineering on the sly. Modi’s programmes such as Swachh Bharat, Ujjwala, Kisan Yojana, Ayushman Bharat and the like had touched the life of the common people and made a difference, cutting across castes and communities. A large number of beneficiaries may have belonged to oppressed castes and communities, but that was incidental as most of them just happened to be from these categories.
Otherwise, these programmes had no colour, unlike those under the communist regime and later the Mamata dispensation in Bengal, where welfare came in the hues of red and green, respectively. People in the state have now started seeing things in black and white and the election results are a testimony.
Modi’s schemes may not have brought relief to all the people in need, but they made a beginning. If some households in a neighbourhood found they were left out of the Ujjwala scheme, under which free LPG cylinders were distributed to the poor, they knew that it would come to them, too. The same with the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, which brought permanent housing to the deserving. The Rs 2,000 that farmers received in their bank account under PM’s Kisan Yojana was good money that worked for them.
The beneficiaries were, of course, happy, but these also brought hope to the others. New India is all about these people. And they are the ones who voted for Modi, cutting across barriers created by politicians and their honchos to chain them down to the shackles of castes, colour, class and creed.
Honestly, there was no credible offer from the opposition, except vague promises in the air that never made real sense. Rahul Gandhi’s much-hyped NYAY, promising a minimum guaranteed income of Rs 6,000 per month to 20 percent of all Indians, was consigned to the cocktail circuit of Lutyen’s Delhi. It had no use for the poor who had started getting something or the other from the schemes launched by Modi.
Modi has hit the nail on its head when he says the so-called political pundits have to let go of their outdated craft, reminiscent of a bygone era, and have completely lost their relevance for a New India.
(K Raveendran is a senior journalist. Views are personal.)
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