What is the strategy of unaligned parties for the 2024 general election? While the “INDIA” alliance (or the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance) has grabbed the headlines, the neutral camp that is sandwiched within the two big coalitions, subject to various push and pulls, provides an interesting portal to contemporary national politics.
The neutral parties
There are three major parties in this camp: the Biju Janata Dal (BJD), the Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party (YSRCP) and the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS, earlier known as the Telangana Rashtra Samithi, or the TRS). The Bahujan Samaj Party is left out of the present analysis. These parties had racked up a combined 43 seats in 2019 (22 seats for the YSRCP, nine seats for the TRS, and 12 seats for the BJD), making this camp a crucial arbitrator of national fortunes. All three parties have largely followed the equidistant route since 2014 (except the TRS for a few years, although it seems back in the camp).
We can make two broad comments on the stance of these neutral parties — both explain how these parties have a symbiotic relationship with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the Centre.
The first deals with a personalistic settlement between the Prime Minister and the Chief Minister involving the “credit attribution of welfare”. The second deals with the comfort of these ruling parties in facing a challenger that follows a route to power, based on top-down defections of elite groups rather than bottom-up mobilisation of subaltern groups by taking up “positional” issues relevant to them.
On the credit attribution point, a few days before the Parliament vote, Union Home Minister Amit Shah met Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on a visit to the State. At a public event, Mr. Shah not only congratulated Mr. Patnaik on becoming the second-longest serving Chief Minister of a State in India, but also praised him as a “popular CM”.
It appears like the next round of elections in the coastal State would follow the paradigm set in 2019: the BJP is allowed a fraction of seats in the Parliamentary polls while the BJD’s supremacy is not threatened at the Assembly level. To use a chess analogy, this stalemate is most clearly expressed through a tacit agreement not to attack the respective “kings” of each side.
The BJP’s top leadership’s engagement with Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy of the YSRCP mirrors its engagement with Mr. Patnaik. Last November, when the Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the State, both Mr. Modi and Mr. Jagan Mohan Reddy praised each other from the platform, while vowing to continue their cordial partnership for the “development” of the State. Thus, both leaders contributed to building each other’s personalistic aura as the unchallenged and capable leader in their respective realm, rather than cutting each other down, even as the State units of their parties clash against each other.
Credit attribution of welfare
As Yamini Aiyar and Louise Tillin (2020) point out, the electoral spearhead of BJP’s model of “one-nation” federalism is the game of credit attribution of welfare. The BJP drills away at the substantive power of oppositional Chief Ministers as it strives to convert the national election into a “presidential” referendum, rather than a series of State-level contests. Thus, the party is particularly virulent in attacking Chief Ministers such as Arvind Kejriwal, as it did in Parliament this week. The object is to ensure that the developmental benefits received by the people, even if the schemes are implemented by the State government, are associated with the Prime Minister instead of the Chief Minister.
In States such as Andhra Pradesh and Odisha, where the Chief Ministers are co-opted into the BJP’s national dominance, this fractious game of “credit-attribution” of schemes is largely uncompetitive. In both these States, the Prime Minister is allowed to win votes for the BJP in the Lok Sabha on certain central schemes, while the Chief Minister walks away with the credit, and the votes, for development benefits provided by the State government.
As regards “positional issues”, these neutral parties are players within the protean ideological space which can be termed as the “Congress space”, that of moderate centre-left politics. It is easier to define this space in the negative: if you take the Indian political universe and remove Hindu nationalism, Mandal politics, and exclusive sub-nationalism, what remains can be termed as the “Congress space”.
The YSRCP is the regional breakaway unit, and the TRS/BRS is the former junior coalition partner of the former Congress in undivided Andhra Pradesh. The BJD had a different path of origin, as part of the Janata coalition. Yet, even as the Janata parties in then-neighbouring Bihar coalesced around the social justice plank, the BJD competed merely as a party promising “cleaner government” without really taking up “positional” political issues based on social cleavages of the State. While the issue of subnational Telangana pride could be electorally mined by the TRS in 2014, and to a lesser extent in 2019, there is little electoral benefit to be gained through sub-nationalism now.
All three parties display a pattern of political mobilisation on a similar patronage-based pattern to the erstwhile dominant Congress party. This means forging the dominant caste (Reddys in Andhra, Velamas in Telangana and Brahmins-Karans in Odisha) into a hierarchical coalition with the large subaltern population comprising Dalits and tribals. These subaltern constituencies are mobilised through generous welfare schemes. They have proved more effective in elections in the last few decades than the Congress because the respective Chief Ministers have been able to forcefully link their personality with the provisioning of these welfare benefits, resulting in a wide personal loyalty.
In these three States with large Dalit and tribal populations, the minority population is comparatively small. The Dalit-tribal combine comprised 40% of Odisha’s population, and 23% of undivided Andhra Pradesh (the respective share of minorities is 6% and 12%, respectively), based on Census 2011. This demographic make-up favours a model of mobilising subalterns on positional issues rather than on communal issues, which the BJP has been unable to achieve.
The BJP’s strategy in West Bengal and Delhi (the home State of “INDIA” constituents, the All India Trinamool Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party) is different for two reasons. One, the Muslim population in Bengal is large, a third of the State population, giving a fillip to its “natural” communal mobilisation strategy. Two, the BJP’s organisational base is strong in Delhi, going back several decades where it has intermittently shared power with the Congress. In the three States under consideration, however, the BJP’s organisation has been historically weak. Its strategy to build its network through elite defections rather than ground-up mobilisation has not paid off either as the Chief Ministers concerned have run tight ships, keeping politicians of the elite communities within their organisational folds.
A shift in Telangana
Telangana is a good and recent example where the Congress has overtaken the BJP following a revival of Congress sentiment, post the Bharat Jodo Yatra and especially following the Karnataka Assembly elections. The BJP’s strategy of becoming the second pole of Telangana politics had depended (apart from communal mobilisation) on elite defections rather than on issue-based mobilisation of the subaltern sections. A key piece of this strategy, the expected shift of the Reddy political elites from the Congress to the BJP, has failed to materialise. Instead, the movement has been the other way around, with Congress snatching away key Reddy leaders, signalling the Reddy community’s continuing affinity to the party. Also, the Congress has deepened its advantage vis-à-vis the BJP on positional issues with regard to the support of Dalits and the tribals, not only through the Bharat Jodo Yatra, but also State-level mobilisations of its subaltern leaders. In fact, it was the perceived stickiness of the traditional Dalit-Muslim support which has influenced the recent movement of Reddy elites towards the Congress, rather than the BJP.
Thus, these three parties, arguably do not mind the present arrangement of a strong BJP at the Centre as long as they are able to contain its presence at the State level. A revived Congress presents a sharper threat to the patronage-based flank of these parties among Dalits and tribals, using a positional platform of social justice, rather than a BJP overdependent on the appeal of Mr. Modi and elite defections.
Asim Ali is a political researcher and columnist
