“Is election mein chuppi bahut hai (this election is marked by a pervasive silence),” said a senior citizen at a tea stall in Amethi. “Chuppi kyun hai (why is there silence?),” I asked. He did answer, but only after the BJP office holder, also present in our group chat, had left. “Chuppi hai kyun ki badlaav aane wala hai (there is silence because change is coming)”. Others in the audience seemed to agree. But all of this happened only after the BJP office bearer was no longer at the tea shop. By then, the shroud of silence had slipped away.
Since 2009, I have travelled during all national elections. Each journey always has three or four pivotal moments. This was one of them. Elections in Uttar Pradesh (UP) are taking place in a climate that is reducing the candour typical of argumentative Indians. You can still get truthful narratives, but you have to probe much harder than before. This can legitimately be called a climate of fear, but it is not the kind of fear that will systematically cripple voting, some sporadic instances, such as the widely reported voter suppression in Sambhal, notwithstanding. It is mostly affecting open discussion on the ground.
By and large, academic research, which tends to have a statistical approach to studying elections, is unable to capture the insidious forces affecting electoral conduct. Through statistics, we ask: How many voted for the incumbents or the Opposition? Which social categories — caste, religion, gender, age — voted for whom? What were the main issues relevant to the electoral verdict?
This statistical approach will always be necessary, for we need to make sense of the larger picture, which travel alone can’t reliably produce. Travel is always geographically focused. Even the best-funded reporter can’t cover all 543 constituencies in a month or so. But focused travel has one great advantage that statistics doesn’t capture. It reveals which narratives are rising or falling, how people are expressing their preferences, how anger or affection is formulated, whether what voters tell you is influenced by those present at a collective corner. To learn about all this, 40 degree Celsius mein sadkon ki dhool khana zaroori hai (one must wrestle with the heat and dust of streets).
My choice of UP for election travel was governed by a standard methodological protocol, namely, the idea of a “critical case”. The latter signifies the most unlikely setting for understanding whether important changes might be coming. UP is not only the largest determinant of who wins power nationally; scholars of contemporary India also argue that other than Gujarat, UP is where Hindu nationalist hegemony has been established. If there is a bend in the Hindu nationalist river in UP, that would count as a most unlikely development, imbued with larger significance.
So what do my UP election travels suggest? If what I observed holds good for the rest of the state, the BJP’s vote share is very likely to go down. Whether the seats will also decrease remains wholly unclear. In a first-past-the-post parliamentary system, a candidate can win even if the large older margin of victory shrinks. Vote can come down, but seats can stay the same.
Why is the BJP vote share in UP likely to decline? First, very few are speaking about Ayodhya. In January, when I was in India, there was an unmistakable Ayodhya wave all around. On January 22, when PM Modi said that “kaal chakra badal raha hai” and “agle 1,000 saal ki neev daal di gayi hai” (times are changing for ever, and the foundations of the next 1,000 years have been laid), a new political order, with Hindu primacy at its core, appeared to be taking birth. Many argued that the 2024 elections were a “done deal”. Unless the silent voter has a different calculus in mind, the subsidiarity of Ayodhya in election talk is generating a huge puzzle, which political analysts will have to solve. Be that as it may, Ayodhya taking a back seat is likely to depress BJP’s vote. It was the surest hegemonic bet four months back.
Second, unemployment ranks high among the youth, the group that hugely supported Modi in recent years. Many are even willing to say that the “paper leaks” are a deliberate ploy by UP’s BJP government to not provide jobs. When you ask “don’t the BJP government’s welfare benefits compensate for the absence of jobs?”, the answer, repeatedly, is that having rozgar (employment) is better than being a labharthi (welfare beneficiary). If you have a job, they say, you can buy the benefits; otherwise, they are like a begging bowl. Even the younger voters who would vote for the BJP said that jobs should have been a priority of the BJP government. The rozgar-over-labharthi trope may not reflect what women, looking after the household, are thinking. The 5kg free ration dominates women’s response about what is right about the Modi regime. But many young men are undeniably upset.
Third, young Dalit voters are beginning to express serious concerns about the samvidhan (Constitution). The 370 seat target, announced by PM Modi, is partly a source of this concern. Why talk of 370 if the purpose is not to overturn the Constitution? Would constitutionally enshrined reservation end? In many Dalit minds, if not all, these doubts have emerged. The Constitution is also linked to their veneration of Babasaheb Ambedkar, undeniably an icon. The scholarly argument has always been that the Constitution was basically discussed in elite politics. It has finally made an entry into mass politics. How far it will go remains uncertain.
But after all is said and done, how women would vote remains a highly unpredictable and key variable. Election travel, at least by men, rarely captures women’s preferences as much as men’s. Women are not regularly out on the street in large numbers, nor present in tea shops. In the past, a lot of election observers, including me, have made mistakes in assessing electoral trends, primarily because women’s preferences could not be adequately ascertained. Later data showed that compared to men, women voted in larger proportion for Modi in many states.
Will the women continue to be devoted to Modi? Or are the winds of change affecting them as well? This may well turn out to be the most critical determinant of these elections.
The writer is Sol Goldman Professor of International Studies and the Social Sciences at Brown University, where he also directs the Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia at the Watson Institute
