From farm distress, MNREGA payments, Aadhaar-linked benefit transfer to minor administrative failures and successes, the ongoing Assembly elections, particularly in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, have underscored many points for political observers to ponder.

But a bigger picture is emerging here which presents a sharp contrast to the two central features that have thus far characterised electioneering and the BJP’s successive poll victories since 2014 general elections.

Starting from the fateful summer which saw the Congress being decimated and the BJP forming the first majority government at the Centre after three decades of alliance rule, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had become a centrifugal force that enveloped all and everything in every election held since 2014. Whether it was Haryana, Jharkhand and Maharashtra in the immediate aftermath of the Lok Sabha polls, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat in 2017 or Karnataka earlier this year, in every election, the PM had been the focus and the star campaigner who swung voters and influenced poll outcomes.

The second significant aspect of electioneering in all these polls was the BJP’s ability to create a meta narrative that was organically articulated by the PM through his powerful polemic. The BJP successfully crafted the narrative for each election — from Achche Din that continued to be the central theme in the Assembly elections following the last Lok Sabha polls, to Uttar Pradesh polls where demonetisation was successfully marketed as the PM’s “surgical strike” on black money against the “ Bua-Bhatija (reference to Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav)” duo stained with the taint of corruption and Gujarat where the PM was successfully marketed as the personification of development with the slogan Mein Hoon Vikaas (I am growth).

Moment of departure

The present tranche of elections present a sharp difference from these two critical frames of reference.

To begin with, the BJP has not been able to set the tone or narrative. Not, of course, for want of trying with the VHP and its cohorts in the media unsuccessfully building a hype around their sustained campaign on the Ram temple at the disputed site in Ayodhya. The PM and his deputy, BJP President Amit Shah, have joined the chorus with the rather outrageous claim that the Congress has influenced the Supreme Court where the title suit in Ayodhya is currently pending.

The VHP’s current working President Alok Kumar, a PM loyalist, is on record asserting that they had been “assured” that the judgement title suit would facilitate temple construction but former Chief Justice Dipak Misra did not deliver according to the plan. Thus, says Alok Kumar, the VHP is constrained to renew its campaign for Parliament to pass a law in the upcoming winter session to pave the way for Ram temple in Ayodhya. These claims are, however, being publicly refuted by the former working President of the VHP, the loquacious Pravin Togadia, who has repeatedly accused the ruling BJP in UP and at the Centre of “betraying Bhagwan Ram”.

While the Sangh Parivar is engaged in these internal struggles even as they peddle the temple campaign, the reality, as this correspondent sensed in travels across Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, is that Ram temple has simply not gained any currency as a poll issue. Perhaps the law of diminishing returns has caught up with the VHP and its temple campaign while the exhausted voter is preoccupied with more mundane concerns, especially the raging rural distress which has now emerged as the single most important issue in the ongoing elections.

Be it Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan or Chhattisgarh, the voters are more concerned with their input costs with fertiliser, pesticide and diesel prices going up and incomes suffering a blow with demonetisation shrinking liquidity flow in rural markets for cash crops and low MSPs and fall in bonuses depleting revenues in crops like paddy and wheat. The price of garlic which the farmers in all these three States sold previously at anything between ₹85-150 per kg is now being sold at ₹4-6 per kg, leading to widespread resentment among farmers.

Coupled with the BJP’s inability to set the political discourse and tone of the campaign is the fact that it is the individual chief ministers, be it Shivraj Singh Chouhan in Madhya Pradesh, Raman Singh in Chhattisgarh and Vasundhara Raje in Rajasthan, whose personalities would make or mar the elections for the BJP in these States. If the BJP manages to win in Madhya Pradesh, it would not be because the PM succeeded in creating a virtual reality with the force of his personality.

In the face of acute agrarian distress and anti-incumbency that plagues several sitting MLAs and ministers, if the voters still depose faith in the BJP, it would be because Shivraj Singh Chouhan delivered tangible results and people-oriented policies.

Rural discontent

With falling MSPs and withdrawal of bonuses, when international soya bean prices fell and oil imports were enhanced, Madhya Pradesh witnessed widespread agitation with the police resorting to opening fire at the farmers in Mandsaur last year. The Chief Minister moved fast, announcing Bhavantar Bugtan Yojna in October 2017 which was aimed at paying farmers the difference between the government’s MSP for any crop and the corresponding trading rate at the mandis.

The Madhya Pradesh government made payments of ₹1,952 crore to farmers in the 2017-18 Kharif marketing season. Additionally, the local government has conceptualised and implemented the Mukhyamantri Krishak Samruddhi Yojna for the 2017-18 Rabi crops.

According to the Mayor of Jabalpur, Swati Godbole, the Chief Minister has personally supervised the grih pravesh of 5,500 families in houses constructed under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojna this year. Even after 15 years in power and visible agrarian distress, Chouhan is still a formidable force in Madhya Pradesh. His neighbour and colleague, Raman Singh in Chhattisgarh is caught in a very close fight with the Congress which has run a spirited campaign in a State won by the BJP in 2013 with only 0.75 percentage point difference in their vote share. The PM’s rallies in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh have made little or no difference to the BJP’s poll prospects this time.

At the same time in Rajasthan, Vasundhara Raje’s dismal performance and image as an arrogant ruler has received no boost from the PM’s public performances. The BJP’s difficulties in Rajasthan persist despite the PM addressing a spate of rallies there.

Clearly, the centrifugal force is suffering from a slowdown in its velocity. The Assembly elections in Rajasthan, MP and Chhattisgarh would be won or lost on individual CM’s performance and the one issue that trumps all is agrarian distress. This is the most distinguishing feature of the last Assembly elections before the country braces for the Lok Sabha polls next year.

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