The BJP is back where it was a decade ago

Verdict 2009 for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) gives a sense of deja vu. The BJP’s final tally of 122-odd seats is very close to its 1991 tally of 120 seats. In 1991 too, like today, LK Advani was the protagonist for the BJP.

In 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2004 the BJP projected Vajpayee as the PM and scaled a peak of 182. Today the wheel has come full circle and so has the BJP’s tally. Even the vote share today is around 20 per cent; eerily similar to the 1991 vote share of 20 per cent.

While a direct correlation between the prime ministerial candidate and the tally may simply be unjust, the larger message cannot be missed — today the BJP has frittered away almost all the gains it made in the post-Babri phase. In terms of its base, the party stands almost where it stood more than a decade ago — give and take a couple of states. 

The battleground has changed. Today there are no unifying national issues and it is the states that are delivering the Centre — a strong regional leadership is a must even in a general election. How much ever the Congress may deny it, it is only states where the Congress groomed a regional leadership and gave it a free hand that delivered handsomely for the party. Andhra Pradesh and Haryana are cases in point.

The same holds for the BJP. The party was long used to banking on a charismatic leadership at the Centre to drive the party’s growth in various states. While that did work in the late ‘90s, the consequential gains have been ephemeral. No state illustrates this better than Orissa.

Initial estimates show that the BJP could have polled around 16 per cent of the votes in Orissa, not very different from 1996 when the party polled 14 per cent of the votes in the state. All the gains made 1998 onwards seem to be lost. Most importantly, the BJP could force the BJD into an alliance as it ate into the traditional Janata parivar space. Today the BJD has decisively reclaimed that space turning the clock back for the BJP.

It simply means that after being in power for almost a decade, the BJP did nothing to consolidate its position and in fact shrank to the point that it became dispensable. Only a strong regional leadership delivered Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat and Karnataka for the BJP. In Bihar, it is Nitish Kumar who has delivered the state for the BJP. Bihar is just entering the grey area where the BJP might become dispensable again
The positioning of brand BJP among the youth does not appear to have clicked. In the ‘90s the Congress could not offer any competition to the BJP on this turf but now the Congress seems to have cornered the BJP. There is no direct but indirect evidence for this. Delhi saw the highest turnout amongst the metros — 63 per cent — and a very high registration of new voters. When many ‘Pappus’ turned out to vote, the result was 7-0 in favour of the Congress.

Inability to communicate to ones constituency can also be fairly expensive. Uttar Pradesh amply illustrated this. The BJP and the RLD put together have a negative swing of 5 per cent votes — down from 27 per cent in 2004 to 22 per cent in 2009. The SP also lost another 3 per cent of votes to go down to 24 per cent. The Congress gained a huge 9 per cent of votes to close at 22 per cent.

The BJP’s losses were the direct gains of the Congress, especially in urban and semi-urban areas. While Rahul Gandhi was not projected as a regional leader of the Congress in UP, his frequent trips to UP provided the party with a symbolic figurehead; the BJP could not even provide that. Today the Congress has surged ahead of the BJP in UP in terms of seats as well as votes.

The silver lining for the BJP is Karnataka. Inadvertently or in a planned fashion, the BJP seems to have consolidated its social constituency there — polling an all time high 43 per cent of votes and a huge swing of 8 percentage points. While operation Lotus was conducted to strengthen the BJP’s position in the assembly, the party seems to have got leaders who have added to the party’s base as well. In that sense it has grown from the bottom.

The BJP seems to have directly hurt the JD(S) which suffered a negative swing of 7 per cent. In Himachal the party put in efforts to consolidate its position and won all four seats. A lack of consolidation and continuing factional fights wiped out the party in Uttarakhand.

The BJP needs to reinvent itself — not just its brand communication but also its growth strategy. The way to grow is bottom up, not top down.