The Art of Reinvention

WHEN TRAVELLING ACROSS India for my social-science research, I notice a political shift in the public sphere. Since there is no separate political public sphere in India, the term refers to the political content of the public space, such as chaupals, village wells, tea stalls and paan shops, bus stands, etc. Anyone analysing the changing modes of the Indian public sphere can understand that voters of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), who were vocal earlier, have now turned into a silent voting community. That does not mean all BJP voters vote silently, but a large section of them expresses itself silently in the booth.

This shift has happened because of the changing profile of the BJP voter over the last 10 years. This change is the result of the emergence of a large group of beneficiaries of various developmental and socio-economic schemes implemented by the Narendra Modi government. Such beneficiaries may be outside the media discourse but they are present at the grassroots level with their growing aspirations. They are mostly Dalits, the poor, as well as nomadic and other marginal communities. As we know, in the grammar of the weak and vulnerable, silence is often both a compulsion and strategy or weapon. I believe that such beneficiaries of the Modi government’s policies have joined the BJP voter bloc and changed its profile drastically. They are now using silence as strategy in the politics of development to retain state benefits critical to their own survival.

When psephologists conduct their field surveys, they look for vocal BJP supporters and don’t find them, certainly not in a majority. Therefore, they end up underestimating BJP’s electoral performance. They usually miss the changing profile of BJP voters. The poor tend to talk less about politics and avoid giving clear answers about their political choices. Then again, the governments in many BJP-ruled states have made the theory of anti-incumbency irrelevant because of their pro-poor and pro-people policies as well as their constant monitoring of policy implementation. The moral pressure that BJP’s politics gets from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) also regulates it one way or another. Prime Minister Modi himself keeps an eye on the implementation of schemes which helps disseminate them at the grassroots.

Modi and members of his team like Amit Shah, Dharmendra Pradhan, Mansukh L Mandaviya, Nirmala Sitharaman, S Jaishankar and others have shown their capacity to reduce the element of anti-incumbency in BJP-run states and turn them around to pro-government sentiments. The recent Assembly election in Haryana, coordinated by Pradhan, is the most recent example of making anti-incumbency irrelevant.

On the other hand, it is easily observed that Congress’ opinion-makers and its voters appear aggressively in the public sphere. There are various reasons for this. First of all, they derive their confidence to speak from the psychology of protesting against the establishment. Pro-establishment sentiment emerges from the success of government schemes while its anti-establishment counterpart evolves over time based less on fact and more of rumour. It is easy to manufacture fiction than generate facts.

Secondly, in Congress’ new, more left-leaning identity, many ultra-leftists have joined the centrists and they are vocal in their political makeup. They see opinion-making as a strategy to create an anti-government public space. They see expression as a mission and work for it with commitment. They create an echo chamber in which the voices return to them over and over again, making them confident about their own opinion.

Psephologists and political analysts listen more to such voices. They draw their misleading conclusions from such aggressive volubility. And such conclusions fail to reflect the views of the largest section of the electorate which is silent or says little. They either escape from publicising their choice or leave a false impression.

When examining these shifts in the Indian political public sphere, I must emphasise that these may not be permanent. They are most likely temporary and changeable. If the government keeps a watch on changing desires and aspirations of the people and plan policies accordingly, it can stay in power for long. Otherwise, the saying “power is all-pervasive but transitory” may hold true for any establishment. Nevertheless, BJP has emerged as a party that constantly tries to reinvent itself to respond to new challenges. There is a word in Hindi for such reinvention: Punarnava.

caste politicsDalit votersdemocracyelectionsgovernanceIndian politics