ANALYSIS. In Gujarat, the BJP’s battle is far from over

Opinion polls may have predicted a win for the BJP in Gujarat but the ruling party’s protagonists – Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah – are leaving nothing to chance in the high-stakes Assembly elections, especially with the Congress claiming political green shoots in a State it has failed to win in 22 years.

The BJP Joint General Secretary in charge of the West Zone, V Satish, and General Secretary Bhupendra Yadav are camping in the State under Shah’s constant gaze. Elections to the 14th Vidhan Sabha will be held in two phases — on December 9 and December 14.

Two opinion polls — one by Times Now-VMR and another by India Today-Axis My India — have given the BJP between 118-134 and 115-125 seats respectively in the 182-member Assembly.

“We are comfortable (in Gujarat). The process of candidate selection is currently under way. It is the most democratic process in Gujarat where the local leadership is very actively involved. There is a lot of hype…The secular media has been predicting the Patidars’ shift away from the BJP for a long time and the successive results have proven them wrong,” said a senior BJP leader, responding to questions about the Congress attracting young caste leaders such as Alpesh Thakore and Hardik Patel.

The challenges that the BJP faces in Gujarat includes collapse of infrastructure at many places due to the recent monsoon mayhem, the sudden resurgence of the Congress among the ruling party’s support base. The BJP has had to weather multiple agitations spearheaded by caste groups that it had painstakingly roped in since the 1990s. Historically a trading State, Gujarat is also battling the twin impact of demonetisation and GST implementation.

Since 2002 Assembly elections, when Modi successfully consolidated on the subnational identity and pride of “5 crore Gujaratis”, his successors find themselves facing a population which has now swelled to 6.5 crore, which includes 4.33 crore voters. Of them, around 65 per cent — or 2.8 crore — are young voters in the 20- 35 year age-group. And large sections of this age-group are participants in the reservation movements which reflect the landed communities’ angst against unemployment and jobless growth in an uncertain and increasingly automated economy, failing farm sector, etc.

Since 2002, these 20-somethings have experienced both hope and despair. The Patidars, for instance, claim that many of their youths turned unemployed due to the 2008 meltdown, and after their MSMEs suffered grievously after demonetisation and the GST implementation.

Unemployability in the liberalised private sector has increasingly pushed these youth from the Hindutva fold back into their own caste groups, as they sought or opposed quota. In other words, caste insurrections, papered over by Hindutva since the 1990s, have returned to haunt the ruling party.

The Congress, under the careful steering of old warhorse Ashok Gehlot, is seeking to harvest electoral dividends from the social tornadoes unleashed by youngsters like Hardik Patel, Alpesh Thakore and Jignesh Mevani.

Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi’s secret parleys with some of these leaders points to a considered outreach towards the OBCs, among whom the party has not had much traction in the past. Not only is the Congress negotiating the percentage of reservation it will promise to the Patidars in its election manifesto, it is also taking assistance from these leaders in choosing candidates among these communities, who have traditionally voted for the BJP.

“A lot of these people are secretly working for the Congress,” said a senior BJP leader.

Clearly, a lot is at stake for both Modi and Shah as well as Rahul in the “Hindutva laboratory”. In 1974, the unemployed youth-led Navnirman Andolan (Movement for Reconstruction) in Gujarat began to shape up into an anti-Congress agitation across North India, leading to imposition of the Emergency and subsequent realignment of political forces. In 2017, the boot is on the other leg: now the Congress is leading a Navsarjan Yatra (Journey for Resurgence) against the BJP and NDA, also from Gujarat.

The outcome in Gujarat Assembly polls may well, therefore, be the bell-weather for India’s political destiny in the next couple of years.