How Right is Obama…about BJP in UP

"..I think it's fair to say that the places where we are going to have to do the most work are the places where people feel most cynical about government…..And they fell through the BJP (Clinton) administration, and the Mulayam Singh (Bush) administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to caste (guns) or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-Brahmin (anti-immigrant) sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

This is from Barrack Obama’s speech at a fund-raiser in San Fancisco. The words in parentheses are the original words of Obama which I have replaced with words that reflect the reality of UP. In the 36 years since 1972, Democratic party has been in power (President’s post) for only 12 years. It is lucky that there is a two party system in the US, and with the Iraq war and looming recession it may win the November election. There won’t be any such luck for BJP (or for that matter Congress) in UP, which is far the largest state of Indian union (no other state has even 50 Lok Sabha seats compared to the 80 from UP). And Obama’s statement above explains much of the reason for BJP’s plight in UP. Being more right of center than left, I am more worried about BJP’s fortunes than Congress, so the BJP perspective here.

Many in BJP presumably feel, after being stung by 2004 defeat, that ‘governance’ or ‘development’ does not make good policy and hence activist Hinduism (and I use it here to mean all the negatives of this movement which has many positives as well – but that’s a topic for another blogpost) is important to create a core votebank. This is where BJP needs to look at UP and listen to Obama. All this ‘core votebank’ has slipped away in UP to the extent that only one of the 5 party candidates who saved his deposit in recent bypolls is a history-sheeter who defected on the eve of the election. The Hindu votebank did not exist as it has not existed in most elections in UP during this decade.

People vote based on caste or religion when they lose faith in Government – this becomes identity politics. BJP benefited by the affirmation of religious identity in 1990s is now being hurt by the reaffirmation of caste identity. The people cannot be blamed when they did not see the neighboring primary school get teachers or District hospital provide the promised free healthcare or new jobs created. So development becomes a non-issue. As does corruption, when BJP politicians are also not seen to be any different.

So what can BJP do then to make development an issue? First get its Obama in UP. A person with charisma to make people believe that there is ‘hope’ for their fortunes to ‘change’ – it isn’t for no reason that his campaign has been called a campaign in poetry rather than prose. Before you say ‘but this isn’t America’, let me remind you that VP Singh made people ‘hope’ that there will ‘change’ in corruption in government, at a time when all of us had accepted corruption to be integral to the system. So it can happen – it requires a mascot (Obama) to carry the message (Hope and Change).

Second, to fight skepticism and create a platform for this mascot to work from, they need to leverage their peer-less grassroots cadre to provide glimpses of what is possible. Fight for the teacher appointed to the primary school to come to the school – village level workers can do it. Attempt something similar with Primary Health Centers. Once on a visit with my son to a private Clinic of a Government pediatrician in my hometown of Sultanpur, I found that most people whose daily wage would by no means be more than Rs. 50 were paying that amount to the doctor for consultation. Is that a very difficult situation for a grassroots organization to redress by creating some kind of vigilance mechanism at hospitals? Ensure that mid-day meals are provided to all children – here the starting point is zero, so anything will be an improvement - Ananth Kumar and his wife’s work in Bangalore is an amazing success story for other BJP district units to learn from (about mid-day meals as public service and way to connect with people).

To some it may sound Utopian, but achieving 5-10% success in two or three such initiatives may not be impossible. In any case it is a more achievable Utopia than BJP winning next elections in UP by working out caste combinations right in the state. A party in as hopeless a state as BJP in UP can only attempt something so unlikely. Barack Obama, ‘the black guy with a name rhyming with Osama’ had no chance of competing with the Clintons had he not campaigned for ‘Hope’ and ‘Change’. He may not even realize that only hope for a right-wing party in a BIMARU state in India, is to emulate him!