The election is over, and now the verdict must be read. It isn’t quite as simple or straightforward an exercise as it might seem — even when, as it happened in Maharashtra, the winner wins decisively and the loser loses comprehensively.
What explains the spectacular turnaround in the BJP’s fortunes, from the Lok Sabha setback in the state in June to the assembly poll sweep in November? How did it beat back farmer distress, unemployment, and the scourge of rising prices? How did the Congress manage to fritter away the advantage it had gained in the same state, nearly six months later?
It is being said, by the BJP and its allies, and by several analysts, that the BJP-led alliance’s massive victory in Maharashtra is due to the “women’s vote” that came its way because of the Eknath Shinde government’s Ladki Bahin Yojana — a cash transfer of Rs 1500 to women between 21 to 65 years of age, whose annual family income is less than Rs 2.5 lakh. At least 2.26 crore women are estimated to have benefited already through four instalments; Congress had promised to double the amount in the scheme.
While the cash transfer scheme may indeed have played a role in the Mahayuti’s victory, the over-estimation of its impact is problematic.
One, it smacks of a recourse to the easy answer, a political and analytical cave-in. Two, it unsees and unhears the voices from the ground, including and especially of women voters, the scheme’s targeted beneficiaries, that have raised questions about its adequacy or efficacy.
In my travels through the Vidarbha region in this election, the women voters I spoke to were far less misty-eyed about the scheme than political pundits in Delhi who attribute to it magical properties. Most women voters I met on the Maharashtra ground acknowledged that they had received the cash transfer but immediately followed it up with a question — how far can Rs 1,500 a month go in times when farmers are not getting the proper “bhaav (prices)” for their crops, and when prices of essential commodities are skyrocketing? “Take away this cash and give us lower prices and jobs for our children, instead”, said many. “The government is taking from us and giving it back to us as largesse, it is taking more and giving back less”, others said.
The questions by both female and male voters in Maharashtra about the short-term hand-out, as opposed to a long-term leg-up, echoed the anxieties and concerns raised by voters in Madhya Pradesh, a state I had also travelled to ahead of the assembly election almost exactly a year ago. In MP, too, the incumbent BJP government returned to power. There, too, the cash transfer scheme, the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government’s Ladli Behna Yojana, was all-too-hastily crowned the match-winner.
The unnuanced celebration of the cash transfer scheme, especially one in which women are the targeted beneficiaries, takes a toll — it reinforces the image of women as only labharthis. Of course, this is a problem with all such schemes in general, aimed at both men and women. But when it comes to women voters, who are turning out in increasing numbers to vote in successive elections at the state and central levels, it also means that little or no effort is made to identify and understand the factors that have contributed to the new stirrings on the ground, and to respond to them. The rising turnouts of women cast a responsibility on parties in terms of framing agendas that are more sensitive to them as rights-bearing, not just largesse-receiving, citizens.
To be sure, the cash-transfer scheme is enormously valuable in times of economic downturn in an unequal society, and in a period of distress like the one triggered by Covid. In a setting where the conditions for an enabling environment for all citizens is missing, where there is little or no political will, across the spectrum, for bringing necessary reforms and creating crucial opportunities, in education and health care, for instance, such schemes can play a role in helping ease the pain, apply a balm. But by losing sight of their inherent limitations, and by talking up their effects excessively, parties and pundits do a disservice to the very voters in whose name they claim to speak.
The centre-staging of the Ladki Bahin Yojana in the aftermath of the Maharashtra outcome also has another intended effect. It helps to divert attention from other, less palatable, elements of the campaign of the winner. In this election, the BJP flashed two new slogans — “Ek hain toh safe hain”, said PM Modi; “Batenge toh katenge”, said CM Yogi.
Both slogans sought to wreak communal polarisation and consolidate the “Hindu” vote. This is not a new strategy for the BJP, of course, and it is also sometimes one that is over-read and over-estimated. Many will point out that the same polarisation strategy did not work in Jharkhand — but that could arguably be because the BJP-fuelled polarisation came up against the JMM government’s welfare schemes in Jharkhand, whereas in Maharashtra the BJP’s politics of polarisation added to the BJP government’s schemes.
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In the aftermath of the election verdicts, the Prime Minister has sought to recast “Ek hain toh safe hain” as a slogan that spoke of unity as a counter to the Congress’s alleged attempts to deepen the caste divides — but that is only the spin of the winner. After all, the BJP itself played the caste card to the full, wooing sub-castes within the OBCs and Dalits separately. On the ground, moreover, voters read the BJP slogan for its core message — the majority needs to unite to take on the threat from the minority.
The BJP also won because its opponent lacked the will or imagination or organisational energy to put up a genuine fight. The Congress remained stuck in the windfall moment of six months ago, when it did well in the Lok Sabha election in Maharashtra. Its leader, Rahul Gandhi, has climbed out of the corner the BJP’s propaganda had for long imprisoned him in, but the effects of his two yatras is wearing off and he is still seen by large sections of voters as a leader with an unremarkable CV.
There are several factors, therefore, that explain the BJP’s election win in Maharashtra. The women’s vote on account of the cash transfer scheme may be one of them. Inflating its role leads to an abbreviated political conversation and reckoning.
Till next week,
Vandita
