Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, Dy CMs Devendra Fadnavis and Ajit Pawar during a meeting.
Credit: PTI Photo
Unless you are a compulsive EVM conspiracy junkie, a good approach towards the outcome of this round of Assembly elections may be by a counterfactual analysis of what went wrong for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, rather than dissecting what turned the tide so decisively in Maharashtra within a span of six months.
If hubris had brought the BJP and the NDA down in June, the Maha Vikas Agadi (MVA) has been bitten by the same bug. The MVA’s folly was to interpret the Lok Sabha results as a positive mandate in its favour rather than a chastisement of BJP’s ‘washing machine’ politics.
In Maharashtra, the BJP’s task was relatively simpler. Having learnt a lesson in the run up to the Lok Sabha, it had to quickly set its house in order. The MVA, on the other hand, not knowing what had really worked for it, regurgitated the same slogans of caste, community, Constitution, and Adani, rather than provide any alternative positive agenda or vision.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde was bearing the cross of ‘betrayal’ till the Lok Sabha elections. But Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Uddhav Thackeray invited his own nemesis by warming up to the Muslim clergy, thus abandoning Balasaheb’s Hindutva plank.
In the past, the MVA had relied largely upon Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Congress to bring the Muslim voters to the alliance. But as Thackeray discarded that veil by directly wooing the minority voters — it not only provided Shinde an ‘ideological’ upper hand, but also prepared the ground for the Narendra Modi-Yogi Adityanath’s ‘Batoge toh Katoge’ pitch. If Ajit Pawar was a liability for the BJP in the Lok Sabha, he was perceived to be a benign ally compared to his uncle who has always been a devotee at the altar of convenience cutting across religions.
In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, psephologists had nearly cracked the code of waylaying the BJP by consolidation of Opposition votes by invoking the spectre of danger to the Constitution and reversing the BJP’s social engineering by raising demand for caste census. In a world of ‘zero-sum’ games, BJP figured the answer to ‘minoritism’ and ‘anti-majoritarianism’ can only be unapologetic counter polarisation.
The BJP had realised this trend halfway through the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, as was evident from many of Modi’s speeches after the first few phases. However, it was too little too late for course correction. Thus, the BJP went into campaigning for these elections shedding the veneer of ‘feel-good’ secularism articulated in slogans like ‘Saabka Saath, Sab Ka Vikas’.
The Jharkhand story is a little more complicated. While the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) and the BJP may have fought eye-to-eye in the tribal seats — at an overall level the I.N.D.I.A. bloc has done better than the NDA with the Congress and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) both adding to its kitty.
This reflects a larger challenge for the BJP in the tribal — erstwhile ‘Santhal Parganas’ — belt of Jharkhand, Bihar, and West Bengal, where there has been a substantive demographic shift in recent years. For now, the setback may be glossed over by the victory in Maharashtra.
Strategy means little without last mile delivery. The Maharashtra Lok Sabha setback created an existential crisis within the Sangh parivar that, unless contained and corrected in time, would have major implications on the future of the ‘Hindutva’ ecosystem that was built over decades. Neither side could allow it to drift unchecked. That explains the return of the ‘unnamed’ and ‘inconspicuous’ RSS karyakartas first in Haryana, and next in Maharashtra and Jharkhand.
It will be interesting to watch how these results unravel on our national politics. Though Maharashtra and Jharkhand between themselves have half as many people as the population of the United States, it would be tempting to dismiss the results as those of only two states.
Haryana showed how the election of even a small state can affect the national political mood. Maharashtra — which most political pundits had written off for the BJP after the Lok Sabha polls — will surely have a salutary effect on the emerging national political discourse. This should augur well for the economic climate of the country — ending the mood of despondency and ennui that seem to have set in the last few months.
The timing, coinciding with the change in the US administration can only be termed as serendipitous.
(Sandip Ghose is a current affairs commentator and marketing professional. X: @SandipGhose.)
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.
Maharashtra Assembly poll 2024 results| Check constituency results here
Jharkhand Assembly poll 2024 results| Check constituency results here
Bypoll 2024 results | Check Karnataka results here
Assembly Elections 2024 | The Maharashtra Assembly polls took place against the backdrop of a fractured political landscape in the western state where the Shiv Sena and NCP went up against the Uddhav Thackeray and Sharad Pawar factions, even as the BJP and Congress tried to make their mark. Maha Yuti are currently comfortably poised to win. Meanwhile, in Jharkhand, the JMM faced a challenge after Hemant Soren's arrest and Champai, a longstanding party member, joining the BJP, but look set to retain power with its I.N.D.I.A. allies. Check live updates and track the latest coverage, live news, in-depth opinions, and analyses only on Deccan Herald.
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