Telangana Elections 2023: BRS-Congress duel boils down to whose welfarism is better

Telangana assembly polls 2023: Voters rewarded KCR in 2014 and 2018 for the struggles to get Telangana statehood.

Anti-incumbency is the buzzword in the five state elections and Telangana is no different. K Chandrashekar Rao (KCR) is facing one of the toughest battles of his life with opinion polls predicting a tight contest and even a hung assembly situation.

The Congress, upbeat after victory in neighbouring Karnataka, hopes to cash in on disillusionment against sitting BRS MLAs, KCR’s dynastic-feudalistic politics, corruption allegations and discontent amongst backward classes over representation in power.

The Congress will need to beat BRS hands down as a hung assembly would lead to parties like AIMIM and BJP bailing out KCR. BJP would want to let the grand old party taste another win in South India after being routed in Karnataka.

BRS: Consolidation Through Poaching

BRS has been dominating state politics with little or no competition as voters rewarded KCR in 2014 and 2018 for the struggles to get Telangana statehood. BRS also grew by poaching leaders/MLAs from rivals TDP and Congress, which were big parties in the state in the pre-2014 era. Twelve TDP MLAs joined BRS (then TRS) in 2016 while 12 Congress MLAs joined BRS in 2019.

In the 2014 elections, when the state was carved out, Andhra based parties TDP and YSRCP had bagged 15 and 3 seats respectively in Telangana. However, in 2018 their influence was significantly reduced as TDP MLAs merged with BRS.

Congress party’s alliance with TDP in 2018 helped BRS spread the narrative that the state will be remote controlled by Chandrababu Naidu sitting in Andhra. It worked wonders for BRS as both TDP and YSRCP had opposed the formation of Telangana and votes polarised towards BRS.

Mixed Economic Performance, Competing Welfarism

Unemployment, price rise, farmer’s welfare, corruption and development are amongst the top issues in the state. While Telangana was the country’s fastest-growing state in FY22 during the Covid pandemic, recording a GSDP growth of 11.97 percent, this softened to 7.76 percent in FY23, which is lower than the growth recorded in the years prior to the pandemic.

While at 4.4 percent, the state’s unemployment rate stood higher than the national average of 3.2 percent, according to the 2022-23 annual Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) figures, only 5.88 percent of the state’s population lives in multidimensional poverty, lower than the national average of 14.96 percent.

At 5.97 percent retail inflation in September 2023, Telangana recorded a higher price rise than the national average of 5.02 percent. At the same time it has one of the highest per capita incomes in the country at Rs 1.64 lakh at constant prices for FY23, 67 percent higher than national average which is around Rs 1 lakh.

Congress is attempting to convert the battle into a battle between “an elite landed party” versus a party which represents the poor. It has announced slew of guarantees like LPG cylinders at Rs 500, Rs 2,500 per month financial support to women, Rs 15,000 per acre to farmers including tenant farmers and Rs 12,000 per year to agriculture labourers.

BRS is also banking on successful schemes for farmers like Rayuthu Bandhu, farm loan waivers and 24 hour electricity, Dalit Bandhu, Shaadi Mubarak for Muslim brides, Asara Pension for senior citizens, and Kalyanalakshmi for SC/ST/BC brides.

BRS has tried to neutralise the impact of Congress guarantees through its manifesto by promising to set up a committee to examine implementation of the old pension scheme,  cooking gas cylinders to the poor at Rs 400 each and life insurance cover of Rs 5 lakh to 93 lakh poor.

BRS’s Upper-Subaltern Coalition

While KCR comes from the influential Velama community (1-2 percent of state population), BRS also enjoys support of the rich and powerful Reddy community through giving tickets to a large number of Reddy candidates.

Over the years, BRS has won the trust of BCs, SC-ST and Muslims through schemes mentioned above. KCR has built a pool of labharthis and cracked the caste code by creating class divisions within voting blocks like farmers, labourers, poor.

He joins the ranks of Ashok Gehlot and Nitish Kumar who have been long-time CMs despite coming from a numerically weaker community.

Congress Battling History

Congress has never won a simple majority in the Telangana region in the past three decades, even when the region was in united Andhra Pradesh. It was leading in the Telangana region of united Andhra only in 2004, and that too in alliance with the BRS (then TRS), CPI and CPM.

Congress and its allies TDP, CPI and TJS were winner/finished runner up on 99 seats in 2018. Hence the party is likely in contention in only 99/119 seats. Of these 99 seats it needs to win 60 seats to get a simple majority, requiring a high strike rate.

To sum up, KCR and BRS/TRS are credited with getting statehood for Telangana and enjoy the same benefit that the Congress enjoyed in the initial years in independent India and which the JMM enjoys in Jharkhand.

Will the nostalgic sub-regionalism fervour endure five more years or can Congress exploit the fatigue against KCR and MLAs?

Amitabh Tiwari is a former corporate and investment banker-turned political strategist and commentator. Twitter: @politicalbaaba. Views are personal, and do not represent the stance of this publication.