'Akhilesh Yadav made voters think why is the BJP asking for 400 paar.'
'They understood his words and believed the BJP wanted 400 paar only to demolish the Constitution and end reservations.'
Among all the election results from states that came on June 4 the most shocking was from Uttar Pradesh.
The Samajwadi Party and Indian National Congress alliance shocked the Bharatiya Janata Party by winning 43 seats out of 80, effectively halting Narendra Modi's victory march.
The BJP fell short of a simple majority by 32 seats and was forced to depend on its allies to get past the 273 seat mark.
The SP-Congress gained 37 more seats from their 2019 count. Modi's victory margin in Varanasi was reduced to 152,513 votes. In 2019, he had won by a margin of 479,505 votes and in 2014 he won by a margin of 371,784 votes.
Why did the UP voters reject the BJP this time?
Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com spoke to Dr A K Verma, director, Centre for the Study of Society and Politics, Kanpur, to know more.
How do you look at the outcome of the elections where the Congress-Samajwadi Party alliance outsmarted the BJP in UP to win 43 seats?
It was unexpected. The elections were contested closely and this reflected in the empirical study that we conducted. The expectation was that the BJP would not do so badly, but they did.
What worked for the Samajwadi Party and Congress?
There was a massive shift of votes of two social denominations from the BJP to the Opposition.
Firstly, the Muslim-Yadav combination votes shifted to the Opposition. Our study shows that 90 percent of Yadavs and 80 percent of Muslims voted for the Samajwadi Party in this election.
In addition to that, the Other Backward Castes, Most Backward Castes and Dalits, especially Jatavs, too shifted in big numbers to the SP.
This did not happen in the 2022 assembly election so why this change of heart in these communities to shift from the BJP to SP-Congress in just two years?
SP capitalised on the fundamental mistake made by the BJP. Modi had set a target of winning 400 paar seats in the 2024 general elections. The SP and Congress caught this slogan of the BJP and convinced the Dalits and OBCs about the purpose (of this slogan).
They convinced the voters that the BJP wanted 400 paar because they want to demolish the Constitution.
They successfully created a fear psychosis in the minds of Dalits that the BJP wants to demolish the Constitution written by Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar.
They convinced the voters that this will lead to the end of reservations in India, which panicked OBC voters too.
And when fear starts working in the minds of people, nothing works against it. No matter what you do to give rational answers against a fear narrative, people will not believe you.
And the most surprising thing on the BJP's part was that they could never explain to the people why they were targeting 400 paar seats out of 543.
Was it just a joke statement?
Was it to motivate their party workers?
They did not build a counter narrative among voters suggesting why they need 400 paar when it was very clear they will win the elections on their own strength and easily get 300 paar.
'400 paar' changed the BJP's fortunes in UP. Can we say it was like the Vajpayee government's 'India Shining' slogan in 2004 which backfired and the NDA lost power?
India Shining was a positive statement which did not create fear. Here the successive narrative was from the Opposition side as they created fear in the minds of two major communities: The Dalits, 20 percent of the population, and OBCs who are around 50 percent plus of the population.
But weren't Dalits and OBCs solidly behind Modi in the 2014 and 2019 elections?
Yes, they were, and if I recall correctly the BJP got more than 50 percent votes in successive general elections from Uttar Pradesh.
But the trouble this time was that the BJP was not clear why they wanted 400 paar. They took it for granted that they were coming to power.
In our studies we do ask voters why they voted, for which they will give you 100s of answers, but then they give a fundamental or what we call a prime answer. And whether this prime answer of voting has been able to create some kind of optimism, assurance, met aspirational needs or conversely created a panic or fear situation.
Akhilesh Yadav was not in power and he could not do anything but what he did was to provoke and create a fear in the minds of people. He made the voters think why is the BJP asking for 400 paar? They understood his words and believed the BJP wanted 400 paar only to demolish the Constitution and end reservations.
Why didn't we see that fear working in Madhya Pradesh or even Bihar which is more of a caste-based society?
Because there was no Akhilesh Yadav or Rahul Gandhi who played this kind of politics in the other states. And therefore the results which you see in UP was not pan-India.
State after state, the BJP swept the general elections if you look at Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand or Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Uttarakhand or even Assam.
This fear factor phenomenon of 400 paar was only seen in UP for which Akhilesh needs to be given credit.
And. of course, constituency to constituency selection of candidates in UP also mattered as caste calculations were kept in mind.
What about other issues? There must be something more to the SP-Congress victory.
Yes, unemployment was also a factor that worked against the BJP in UP. They were able to capture the imagination of youth which is from 18 TO 25 years of age. Our study shows they sided with the SP and Congress.
What about Modi's last mile delivery? Didn't people feel they would lose the freebies if Modi did not win?
Freebies and all are fine, but people do not want panic in their lives. The BJP did hit wicket with 400 paar slogan.
- Part 2 of the Interview: 'Voters Gave Modi Course Correction'
