What will decide Maharashtra and Haryana assembly elections: issues or narrative?

Mangalore Today News Network

October 11 2019: Issues of public importance dominate politics but elections are won on narrative. Issues in India - unemployment, unprofitable agriculture and access to quality education, robust healthcare system, drinking water etc -- have remained almost the same since the first election in 1951-52. Still governments have changed or returned to power in states and at the Centre despite their performance.

 

A similar build up of ’issues versus narrative’ is being seen in Maharashtra and Haryana, two states that will vote on October 21 to elect their next governments. The two states have much in common. Both are the BJP-ruled and in both the states the BJP came to power after a long gap. Maharashtra and Haryana are among the more developed states with per capita income better than most.

Both Maharashtra and Haryana have similar issues of agriculture, irrigation, drinking water, unemployment, and those related to small and medium scale industries. Both the states are dominated by particular caste group with comparable population share in the state - Marathas forming about 30 per cent in Maharashtra and Jats comprising 28 per cent of Haryana’s population.

Beyond these similarities the nature of politicking has been markedly different in Maharashtra and Haryana which may be because of the size of the two states. Maharashtra has 288 seats in the assembly and sends 48 MPs to the Lok Sabha while Haryana has 90 MLAs and sends 10 MPs to the Lok Sabha.

But when these two states would go to polls on October 21, they may be voting on same election narrative that the BJP said would be built around nationalism punctuated by scrapping of special status of Jammu and Kashmir. If the BJP built its poll narrative for the Lok Sabha on Balakot strike in the aftermath of the Pulwama terror attack, the party is equipped with Article 370 to fight assembly elections in Maharashtra and Haryana.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah has addressed multiple rallies in both the states and talked about nationwide NRC (national register of citizens), Article 370 in Kashmir and Rafale fighter jets, thus building the election narrative.

The Congress, in contrast, is talking about more quota in jobs, public canteen for the poor, loan waiver schemes and pension for the old age people. Interestingly, corruption does not seem to be an election issue either in Maharashtra or Haryana. Both these states were actively debating corruption as national issues in 2014. Maharashtra, in particular, was in the mood set by Gandhian activist Anna Hazare. The anti-graft momentum saw the BJP reaping rich dividend in elections - for the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha in both states.

To counter the BJP’s narrative of nationalism and Hindutva, the Opposition appears fragile. The best phrases that the Opposition leaders shout in their rallies are, "murder of democracy" under the Modi government, "BJP has a divisive and communal agenda" and the charge of crony capitalism. The voters seem not too deterred with this narrative.

Surprisingly, this counter-narrative suits the BJP, which has contested almost all elections since 2014 by projecting the face of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In most cases, the move has paid off well for the party.

The only major losses the BJP suffered came in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh last year. Interestingly, in all these states, the chief ministers were once considered challengers to Narendra Modi in the BJP, when he was one of the contenders for the national leadership in the party.

The Congress’s slogan of "chowkidar chor hai" (the watchman is a thief), coined by Rahul Gandhi, made noise in newsrooms in the 2019 Lok Sabha election but failed to elicit popular support as PM Modi gave a counter-slogan of "main bhi chowkidar" (I too am a chowkidar). The result was such that the BJP returned with greater majority.

In ’Modi versus the rest’ election battle, the prime minister has been winning the race by a huge margin over the last five years. He has proved to be a better narrative builder than his political rivals. He mastered this art in Gujarat where he won three back-to-back assembly elections.

The first - of 2002 --was fought under the shadow of the Gujarat riots but in the other two, Modi countered the Congress’s narrative - of "maut ka saudagar" (the merchant of death) with his own building on Hindutva and development.

In 2004, when BJP-led NDA lost power, the outgoing Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee remarked that his government paid the price for 2002 Gujarat riots. Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat back then. Ten years later in 2014, Modi weaved a different narrative without losing his post-Gujarat riots image to take the BJP home with the first single-party majority in 30 years.

A similar counter-narrative against the ’Brand Modi’ is missing in the Opposition camp as it tries hard to gather its act together in Maharashtra and Haryana. Whether the Opposition is able to sell its "murder of democracy" narrative to people in these two states would be clear on October 24, the day of assembly election results.

Courtesy:Indiatoday.in