Uttar Pradesh’s voters and their four choices - Hindustan Times
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Uttar Pradesh’s voters and their four choices

Jan 15, 2022 08:48 PM IST

The outcome of the election in India’s most-populous state will depend on whether the electorate decides to support a party or a person, vote on the basis of their caste or faith, and whether a majoritarian order is successful in papering over local grievances

Who will win a majority in the assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh (UP)? The question, which is animating all those who inhabit the universe of Indian politics is important — for the outcome will determine the fate of over 200 million citizens, affect inter-caste and inter-religious ties in the heartland, illustrate whether the political theatre remains governed by the hegemony of a single party or is opening up, and shape national politics in the run-up to the 2024 general elections. And, in this particular case, the result will also affect leadership dynamics within the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the future.

The practice of Indian political parties, the science of Indian psephology, the discipline of Indian political science, and the craft of Indian political journalism, for the most part, has been unable to keep up with changing voter preferences. That makes it more challenging to answer the question with any certainty. (PTI) PREMIUM
The practice of Indian political parties, the science of Indian psephology, the discipline of Indian political science, and the craft of Indian political journalism, for the most part, has been unable to keep up with changing voter preferences. That makes it more challenging to answer the question with any certainty. (PTI)

Notwithstanding all the speculation, the answer will only be known on March 10, for, as the late Pranab Mukherjee once said, one can only understand an election after it is over. The state’s social landscape is fragmented and the interplay between micro and macro factors in each constituency is hard to judge. The practice of Indian political parties, the science of Indian psephology, the discipline of Indian political science, and the craft of Indian political journalism, for the most part, has been unable to keep up with changing voter preferences. That makes it more challenging to answer the question with any certainty.

What we now know, however, is that the poll result will be shaped by four decisions that UP’s voters take in the course of the next month.

One, will voters choose their legislator, or vote for the party irrespective of the nature, calibre and background of the prospective legislator? In the last five elections in UP (encompassing both assembly and Lok Sabha polls), voters largely decided to pick the party. That is why the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in 2007, Samajwadi Party (SP) in 2012 and the BJP in 2014, 2017 and 2019, swept the polls comfortably.

This is not to suggest that candidates didn’t matter — they added or subtracted votes for their respective formations. But at the core of it, voters decided that having their preferred party or leader in power in Lucknow or Delhi was more important than the quality of the legislator or parliamentarian representing their constituency, even if this often meant voting for candidates who did not particularly inspire them. This is also the reason why there have been fairly decisive verdicts in UP in the past 15 years (since 2007), breaking the trend of fragmented verdicts of the preceding 15 years (from 1992 to 2007).

In 2022, if the pattern holds, neither ticket distribution nor the trend of constituency-level community leaders switching from one party to another will make a substantial difference — and either the BJP or the SP will walk into the Lucknow Vidhan Sabha with a comfortable majority. If this trend breaks, then the individual candidate will once again become more important, the local will prevail over the regional, and a clear decisive verdict may be elusive.

Two, what will constitute a more important memory for voters belonging to non-dominant sub-castes within the broader Other Backward Classes (OBC) category — now widely referred to in UP’s political vocabulary as non-Yadav OBCs? Will their voting preferences be shaped by what many of them saw as Yadav domination between 2012 and 2017, and political exclusion, or will it be shaped by what they perceived as Thakur domination between 2017 and 2022 and the lack of promised political empowerment?

The BJP is hoping that the anger against the SP, Narendra Modi’s own identification as belonging to an OBC sub-group, the government’s welfare schemes, and the improvement in law and order (often code for keeping Yadav and Muslim “criminals” in check) will be enough to keep the wider non-Yadav groups with the party. The Lodhs, after Kalyan Singh’s death, have not showed any sign of moving away from the BJP; with Anupriya Patel, the party hopes to continue to have Kurmi support in Purvanchal; Sanjay Nishad’s support helps with the Nishad vote base; and Keshav Prasad Maurya, the party hopes, will be able to offset the loss in optics caused by Swami Prasad Maurya’s defection among the Maurya and Shakya communities. The BJP’s organisational machine is also banking on its ability to reach out to the small caste groups scattered across constituencies through direct outreach.

The SP, recognising its fatal flaw was the politics of Yadav chauvinism, is working on two strategies. One, to offset the anger, Akhilesh Yadav is promising to be more inclusive and proportionate when it comes to power-sharing — while alleging that the upper-caste controlled BJP failed to meet the ambitions and aspirations of backward groups and merely used them. Two, it is making an effort to downplay Yadav leadership — the fact that Krishna Patel, Anupriya Patel’s mother, chaired a meeting of the SP and its allies was a symbolic message to Kurmis; the SP is conceding leadership to the Jats, led by Rashtriya Lok Dal’s Jayant Chaudhary, in west UP, it has given Om Prakash Rajbhar an important place in its coalition; it made a big splash, focusing on caste identity, of the OBC entrants from BJP on Friday; and its ticket distribution will probably reflect greater social diversity than in the past.

Three, how will Dalit voters in UP respond to the most serious electoral crisis faced by India’s most successful Dalit party? There is now a widely held belief that after four successive electoral setbacks (2012, 2014, 2017 and 2019), and an inability or unwillingness to hit the streets and revive her direct connect with voters, Mayawati’s political prospects are grim. But the BSP, despite these setbacks, has maintained a broad vote share of around 20%. This has come largely from its supremely loyal Jatav base, but also a smattering of votes from other Dalit sub groups (even though there has been a larger shift among non-Jatav Dalit communities towards the BJP).

In 2022, as the BSP stares at a crisis, will Dalit voters — including even its core Jatav voters — begin shifting towards other parties? And if this shift happens, will it happen towards the SP or the BJP? Could the BJP offset its possible losses among OBC sub-groups with an addition of Dalit votes? Or has the perception of increased atrocities against Dalits eroded the BJP’s growing appeal? The Dalit vote is of course heterogeneous, but given the focus on the OBC vote, which is even more heterogenous, there is a gap in how much we know about the churn among the most marginalised.

And finally, while it is often suggested that the outcome will hinge on whether a Hindu voter in UP will vote as a Hindu or on the basis of his caste, the binary is flawed and does not capture the new political reality enough.

The question is this: Has the majoritarian political order created by Yogi Adityanath — through executive fiat, administrative decisions, political representation, legislation, extra judicial means, and everyday rhetoric — pleased Hindu voters across castes so much that they are willing to ignore all other grievances to support the BJP? Or are there limits to such policies and politics?

This question will determine not just UP’s outcome but the future of Indian politics.

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