After the coronation

Praful Bidwai
The News, Friday, May 30, 2014
From Print Edition


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The swearing-in of Narendra Damodardas Modi in the presence of 5,000 invitees at a ceremony
unprecedented for its grandiose style, and pomp and circumstance, resembled a king-emperors
coronation more than the installation of the prime minister of a democracy. It was of a piece with the
excess and extravagance of Modis lavish multi-billion-dollar election campaign.

Modi invited the heads of South Asian governments, including Pakistan. This was itself a welcome
move, although also purely symbolic, yielding little.

In substance too, Modis choice of ministers resembles the centralised decision-making around one
person found in states where chief ministers command more power than does the prime minister at
the centre. The cabinet is dominated by Bharatiya Janata Party office-bearers and state leaders, and
above all, by the triumvirate that has captured the party, including Modi, party president Rajnath
Singh and general secretary Arun Jaitley.

The three, who have never before held a Cabinet Committee on Security-level portfolio, will now wield
powerful CCS positions, with Jaitley holding three portfolios, including finance and defence, which has
never happened before. Jaitley was rewarded despite losing his own election for defying his
mentor LK Advani over Modis nomination as PM-candidate.

As for Singh, he was forced to declare repeatedly that he would have no role in government. This was
to dispel the impression that someone else might become PM in case the BJP didnt win a majority and
its allies wanted someone less divisive: Either Modi would head the government, or the BJP would sit
in the opposition. Modi reportedly extracted this promise from the RSS.

The 34-strong new team comprising cabinet ministers and ministers of state with independent charge
includes only four non-BJP members. They hold relatively unimportant portfolios such as food
processing and civil supplies. All the weighty portfolios have gone to BJP ministers, including education
to the inexperienced Smriti Irani (38). This is a reward for brazenly defending Modi and reducing
Rahul Gandhis victory margin by two lakh-plus votes.

The council of ministers is heavily tilted in favour of the north, especially Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, and
the west, and against the south and east. It also under-represents Dalits, Adivasis and, especially,
Muslims.

Two persons have been given major independent portfolios: Prakash Javadekar (environment, and
information and broadcasting) and Nirmala Sitharaman (commerce and industry), for their loyalty.
Gen VK Singh, a controversial newcomer, has been given external affairs and the northeast despite
the armys hard line on these. This doesnt speak of merit, balance or prudence.

Perhaps the cabinets sole positive feature is that a quarter of it consists of women, who form 11
percent of the Lok Sabha. Yet, the cabinet bears the indelible impress of a single person, just as the
BJPs election campaign did. If the cabinet were to reflect collective responsibility as opposed to the
dominance of an individual it should have had greater diversity, and more checks and balances.

Going by business leaders increasingly strident demands, the government will try to boost economic
growth by dismantling or further weakening already feeble environmental and labour regulations.
Gujarat-style economic elitism and rampant privatisation of public resources will violate the rights of a
majority of Indians, especially the poor and vulnerable.

In some ways, this would reflect the polarisation wrought by the BJP along caste, class and
community lines. Apart from the Congress unpopularity, such polarisation was key to the BJPs
victory. It only won 31 percent of the vote, and hence represents barely one-fifth of the electorate.

Contrary to the dominant Modi-media narrative, the people didnt discard considerations of caste and
religion to vote for the BJP because they believed it would deliver higher economic performance, or
fulfil their (especially young peoples) aspirations to a better life.

According to post-poll surveys by Lokniti-CSDS, the election saw the greatest-ever polarisation of the
upper-castes in favour of the BJP, and of the Muslims (who felt threatened by Modi) in favour of its
opponents, including the Congress. Nationally, almost 60 percent of upper-caste Hindus voted for the
BJP, while 43 percent of Muslims backed the Congress.

The BJP performed strongly in constituencies with a significant Muslim presence. Where Muslims form
10-to-20 percent of the population, the BJP won 33 percent of the vote (Congress, 17 percent), and in
seats with a 20-to-40 percent Muslim population, it won 35 percent votes (Congress, 14 percent).

Polarisation was even sharper in the three biggest states, UP, Bihar and Maharashtra, where the BJP
won 116 seats. In UP, more than 75 percent of Brahmins, Rajputs and Banias voted for it. Thanks to
the Muzaffarnagar violence and the BJPs love jihad campaign, three-fourths of the Jats too backed it.
This yielded the BJP an unprecedented 71 of 80 seats.

In Bihar, more than 80 percent of Brahmin, Rajput, Bhumihar and Kayastha voters backed the BJP,
giving it 22 of 40 seats. BJP allies won another nine seats. This caused sharp reverse polarisation:
two-thirds of Yadavs and Muslims voted for the Rashtriya Janata Dal-Congress alliance. Similarly, the
BJP won 23 of Maharashtras 48 seats.

If BJP seats in its home states Madhya Pradesh (27 of 29), Gujarat (all 26), Rajasthan (all 25) and
Chhattisgarh (10 of 11) are added to its UP-Bihar-Maharashtra tally, the total rises to 204 seats,
almost three-fourths of its national score.

In other words, the BJPs vote was highly concentrated in just seven of Indias 29 states. True, it
made inroads in terms of votes in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Kerala and
Assam, where it was virtually non-existent or extremely weak. But it won only 14 seats in these.

Vote concentration allowed the BJP to win an enormously disproportionate number of seats: each one
percent vote resulted in 1.68 percent of seats, in contrast to just 0.42 percent for the Congress.

Other factors too helped the BJP, in particular an eight percentage-point higher voter turnout over
2009. The BJPs vote-gain among young voters (under 35 years) was an impressive 14 percentage-
points. But fewer women (29 percent) voted for it than men (33 percent).

The relatively affluent too favoured the BJP. Rich and middle-class voters delivered it a gain of 31
seats (of a sample of 125 seats). In contrast, the poor supported it in only eight seats. Thirty-eight
percent of graduates backed the BJP, as compared to 27 percent of those with only primary education
and 25 percent of illiterates both lower than its overall 31-percent vote.

The Modi factor undoubtedly helped the BJP presidentialise the election and run a high-voltage
mediatised campaign, marginalising all opposition. But even more important was its successful
disinformation campaign about the Gujarat model.

As discussed here three weeks ago, this claim is false. Gujarat has far poorer social indices than many
states, including Maharashtra, Kerala or Tamil Nadu. But such critical analysis never made it to TV.
Thus, when asked by Lokniti to name Indias most developed state, 54 percent said Gujarat, and only
four percent named Maharashtra. Such is the power of Goebbelsian propaganda!

Besides, for many in the upper-caste elite, Gujarat represents their favourite model of growth without
equitable distribution, and also Hindu-majoritarianism. Modis ascendancy, then, does not represent a
victory of the Indian nation, but only an elite-driven, polarising phenomenon.

The writer, a former newspaper editor, is a researcher and rights activist based in Delhi.