When underdog pushes top dog

The third Modi govt has quickly moved away from dismissing all Congress ideas as unimaginative and is now implementing several of them. Think poll-bound Haryana and Maharashtra

We often use situations and metaphors from cricket to explain political complexities. This, however, is the season of the Olympics and the Euro, so football and hockey would be more contextual. Therefore, let’s go ahead and see how a typical turn in a hockey or football game applies to the way national politics has moved, as indicated at the end of this Monsoon/Budget Session of Parliament.

Take your mind back to the hockey quarter-final where India played with 10 men against Great Britain for 42 minutes. Taking advantage of this, Great Britain attacked relentlessly as India struggled to put men in front. But on the odd occasion that they did, the game seemed dramatically altered. This is called a counter after having been on the defensive, pushed to the wall  (in this case, the magnificent P R Sreejesh) for a long time. This is precisely what is playing out in national politics.

That the 2024 general election has rebalanced national politics has been known since June 4. The entire Opposition, pushed to the wall and hopeless for a decade, found a well-earned opening for a counter. It’s just that it wasn’t widely expected that the counter would be so strong and effective as to force the winner to alter their own plans and strategy. In the process, Rahul Gandhi, the politician more mocked and ridiculed than any in our history, is now seen in an entirely different light.

See objectively, however, what is happening now. Here’s a list of ideas and campaign points that came up in the election manifesto of  the Congress:

lJoblessness among the youth and subsidies to create more employment and an internship plan.

lCash giveaways to the poor, the jobless and farmers.

lLegal guarantee for minimum support price (MSP) for all major crops and loan waivers for farmers.

lQuestions over the Agnipath scheme.

lA nationwide caste census and then reallocation of government benefits and spoils according to each section’s numerical strength.

Many of these were simply dismissed by the BJP as falsehoods. All caste issues were ducked, and generally countered with even stronger appeals to Hindu opinion.

In fact, the Congress approach to distributive socialism following a caste census was dismissed contemptuously as revdis. In simpler English, the argument was that the Congress wanted to buy votes by distributing free candy. Now, we need to also list what’s been happening lately.

The third Modi government has quickly moved away from its dismissal of all the Rahul/Congress ideas as unimaginative and useless jokes. It is now implementing several of them. Take for example:

lThis Budget makes sizeable allocations and promises to directly address the unemployment challenge. There are incentives for companies to hire more, and a plan for 10 million internships over five years.

lBJP state governments, especially those heading for elections, are already expanding agricultural MSP. The Haryana government, for example, has extended MSP to all 24 major crops from the previous 14.

lIf you check out the full-page advertisements in  newspapers these days, you also read a plethora of other freebies in Haryana: LPG cylinders at just Rs 500 to 4.6 million families. A free milk scheme for schoolgirls, and the waiver of canal water cess.

lThen, there is free bus travel for all members of families with incomes of up to Rs 1 lakh for up to 1,000 kilometres a month. The BJP had been ridiculing similar schemes in Delhi, Karnataka and Telangana. This was the definition of revdi.

lThe state has also raised the creamy layer income limit for OBCs to Rs 8 lakh from Rs 6 lakh.

It is even more worthwhile to look at Maharashtra. It has already rolled out revdis that will cost it at least Rs 96,000 crore per year. Here are some highlights:

lWomen, youths, senior citizens below an income level, as well as the unique sect of Warkaris (casteless, Bhakti cult followers, about 1.6 million in number) will all get cash handouts and subsidies. The Warkaris will get subsidies for their annual Pandharpur pilgrimage, too. Wait till Yogiji unveils something similar for the Kanwariyas before UP elections in 2027.

lA monthly stipend of Rs 1,500 to women in the 21-65 age group with an annual income below Rs 2.5 lakh. Just the cost of this is Rs 46,000 crore.

lSix-month stipends for Class 12 pass (Rs 6,000), diploma-holders (Rs 8,000) and graduates (Rs 10,000) to help them train and reskill.

lEach family of five will get three free LPG cylinders per year.

I would think that all of this adds up to sufficient evidence that it’s the Opposition, which had cowered in defence for a decade, that’s setting the agenda at this point. From mocking such distribution, the BJP itself has become a revdis-for-votes party. The underdog is repositioning the top dog.

Just in case you are inclined to dismiss all this as mere election-eve profligacy, we can move to a more substantive, durable—in fact eternally so—ideological issue in our politics. See if the same logic, the dominant team falling back on defence applies there.

Since 1989, one binary has determined who will rule India: Can you employ caste to divide what religion united? Or can you use religion to re-unite what caste divided. We’ve often said that for the first 25 years, caste won. The rise of Narendra Modi saw the unification of the larger Hindu vote cutting across the caste divides. This is when the epoch of religion, or Hindutva began.

This was challenged again by Rahul Gandhi with his caste census slogan. He brought it up again in Parliament and asserted that his party will ensure a caste census “from this Parliament.” The BJP has struggled to find an answer.

It is because of a paucity of ideas on the caste issue that the BJP is doubling down on religion. The new Waqf Bill, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma’s talk of “land jihad”, Yogi’s proposed law amendment to bring life imprisonment for “love jihad”, Rajasthan Chief Minister Bhajan Lal Sharma accusing one community of not controlling its population are instinctive, defensive moves.

I call it confusion because the same approach was used in the general election but it did not work. The BJP is struggling with the caste issue again. Forget caste census, it isn’t even talking of holding the normal decennial census delayed since 2021. The BJP itself talked of sub-categorisation of backward castes and set up a commission under retired Delhi High Court chief justice G Rohini to examine it, but is sitting on that report. If it moves towards sub-categorisation, a caste census will become imperative, handing another victory to Rahul Gandhi. If it doesn’t, the redivision of Hindu vote along caste lines will gather pace.

The Opposition can sit back and watch as it does not rule any Hindi state. The BJP cannot even whisper the thought of amending the Constitution, given how big an issue it was in the campaign. It is still like a team in the lead, but thrown on the defensive and searching for ideas to break out, with the challenger in full press.

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