Welfare beneficiaries or labharthis have emerged as an important bloc of voters in today’s electoral arena. They have always been there but have gained prominence since the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s current tenure. The PM is credited with developing a loyal and committed voting bloc of labharthis which supports the BJP cutting across religious and caste lines.
Since the beneficiary community comprises the poor, downtrodden and marginalised sections of society who outnumber the middle and rich classes, this brand of welfare politics is believed to tilt the scales in favour of any party.
The Modi Strategy
This beneficiary class includes not only those who get direct benefits but also their families and a larger group of potential beneficiaries. It creates an aspirational group of people who vote on apeksha (expectation) of being one day included in the beneficiary list.
After becoming Prime Minister, Modi formulated a strategy revolving around the material reality that for voters, individual benefits matter more than community benefits or benefits from public goods, taking a leaf out of the shock loss of Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 2004.
The maturation of the DBT architecture in the post-2014 period which cuts out middlemen has also greatly helped PM Modi’s schemes. Among welfare projects, PM Awas Yojana, PM Ujjwala Yojana, Jan Dhan Accounts, PM Kisan Nidhi Yojana, Mudra Loans, PM Jeevan Suraksha Yojana, Aayushman Bharat, etc. have great currency. During the COVID pandemic, additional free rations to 80 crore beneficiaries had gained a lot of traction, which helped BJP in Bihar in 2020 and UP in 2022.
Building Labharthi Votebank
A record Rs 12.5 lakh crore was transferred to DBT Beneficiaries through 1,300 crore transactions in the last two years as per government data. This accounts for roughly 15 percent of the total expenditure budget of the government.
In 2019 elections, BJP launched a mass contact programme with the 25 crore beneficiaries and claimed that they played a major role in the party's return to power. Recall that BJP received 22.9 crore votes in the elections.
According to a paper by Eswaran Sreedharan on voting patterns by class in 2019 elections, one-fifths of households had received some money over the past month and the key nine welfare programmes had benefited between 13 percent and 34 percent of the respondents with a large proportion in each case crediting the Union government and hence BJP or Modi personally.
Given that NDA enjoyed a lead of 18 percentage points against the UPA in 2019, it would be reasonable to assume that this happy lot of labharthis could have contributed to the big BJP win, especially in the Hindi heartland.
What Poll Surveys Say
In the 2018 state elections of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, the beneficiaries did not seem to have backed the BJP in large numbers and hence it lost the elections. Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan were amongst the top performing states in a few schemes. This is because voters attributed these welfare outreach as “PM schemes” and not “CM schemes”.
In the 2022 Uttar Pradesh elections, beneficiaries did the trick for the BJP. UP, because of its sheer population, topped in six schemes of the central government with 13 crore beneficiaries. As per India Today-Axis MyIndia survey, 12 percent respondents said they voted for the BJP as they were beneficiaries of the free ration (6 percent) and other schemes (6 percent).
However in Karnataka, the beneficiaries couldn’t bail out the BJP. Though 25-35 percent of the population were labharthis of some or the other schemes, only 1 percent voted for the BJP because they benefited from some schemes.
The Opposition’s Counter
Opposition parties like Congress and AAP have now come to grips with labharthi politics. Through their guarantees of free power, water, monetary assistance to women/unemployed, social security and subsidised LPG cylinders, the opposition is creating a future pool of labharthis and is trying to project that its welfarism is better than BJP’s.
The BJP’s mistake in Himachal and Karnataka was that it inserted in its manifesto promises that were seen as counters to the Congress Party’s guarantees. An incumbent cannot promise, it needs to deliver. For example the first tranche of PM Kisan Nidhi was released before the first phase of elections in 2019. Ashok Gehlot and Shivraj Singh Chouhan, learning their lessons from this, have not just announced various poll-eve schemes but also started their implementation, including money disbursals.
On the other hand, the Opposition can make promises but has to make it look credible, which the Siddaramaiah and DK Shivakumar jodi managed to do in Karnataka, something Rahul Gandhi failed with NYAY in 2019.
However, one should note that labharthis are not the only factor which influence the outcome of elections. If labharthis always voted for the incumbent governments, all of them would end up retaining power and never lose. Other factors like leadership, track record of governance, ideology, development, image of local candidate, organisational strength of parties, etc, combine to determine the outcome of elections.
Amitabh Tiwari is a former corporate and investment banker-turned political strategist and commentator. Twitter: @politicalbaaba. Views are personal, and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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