By Darrow Leo, Twocircles.net
If you live in a city and voted Narendra Modi in 2014, good chances are that you are not too pleased with the latest budget presented recently in the Indian Parliament.
The BJP-led coalition government has caught both its admirers and critics off guard by announcing major economic incentives for India’s rural electorate in the coming financial year, while somewhat ignoring the urban voter.
On top of no new significant initiative to drive investment in cities, the government plans to increase the tax on cars, mobile phones and computers, the symbols associated with the booming middle class largely residing in cities.
A proposal to tax the job savings of public and private sector employees drew flak from some sections of loyal BJP voters, mostly the salaried middle class. The proposed tax was withdrawn for reconsideration after the backlash.
The approval of urban voters was the main reason behind Prime Minister Narendra Modi managing a sweeping win in the 2014 national election. Around 42 percent of the people among those living in cities voted BJP, compared to its overall voteshare of 31 percent at national level.
The cities are where the BJP has found a loyal following since rising to prominence in the national politics in the 1990s.
The party’s activities in the villages and small townships have been mostly controlled by allied Hindu groups, notorious for moral policing and sponsoring anti-minority events. In some tribal areas and small towns, there have even been reports of BJP-allied groups organising mass conversion ceremonies for pagans and minorities. However, economic welfare hasn’t featured much in the BJP’s strategy to win over the country people.
But the 2016-17 budget allocation is a tell-tale indication of the push from within the Hindu Nationalist party to build a regional base. The political logic behind this strategy makes complete sense, with 5 Indian states with a combined population of 170 million holding state elections this year. India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh is also scheduled to go to polls early next year.
Winning the predominant regional vote in all these states is crucial to BJP’s chances of not only winning power in these states, but also control the upper house of the national parliament. Even Tamil Nadu, hailed as the most rapidly urbanising Indian state, had more than half of its population living in villages in 2011.
Sixty-nine percent of India’s population still lived rural in 2014, according to the World Bank, a number powerful enough to explain the party’s keenness to expand into the country.
These are the parts of India where socialism of Congress and like minded regional parties has held sway over the years.
And the BJP’s political equation with rural India has more or less been the same even after it won power in the 2014 national election. The party fared rather poorly in the last year’s state poll in the largely backward state of Bihar, winning just 53 of the 158 seats it contested. The result was despite of PM Modi, who is seen a crowd puller, making personal appearances at numerous election meetings in the election lead up.
Much less a vote-winner, the budget strategy to make political inroads into the rural heartland may turn out to be double edged sword for the BJP. It risks upsetting its urban middle class base which may veer toward other parties, who may not see the economic incentive in voting the BJP anymore. The city voters in the past have shown shrewd political discretion like in Delhi, where the BJP returned just 3 candidates to the 70-member state parliament in 2015. Mr Modi campaigned extensively during that pre-election phase, but the voters of the capital territory chose a rookie party over the BJP.
Already, the party is not getting favourable press these days because of what’s being viewed as government’s increasing interference in university administration and attempts at controlling dissent in popular culture.
Though still the most popular party with a supremely popular leader, the last thing the BJP’s strategists would want is alienating the loyal urban voter.
(Darrow is a Melbourne-based freelancer who publishes on South Asian politics and culture. He grew up in Delhi and aspires to return to his hometown soon.)