Data on caste and religion has dominated electoral discourse in India so far. But now, the use of development data is becoming more prominent.
Use of data is central to the BJP’s plans to win the Lok Sabha election in 2024. For instance, the party has identified 160 constituencies where it lost by a small margin and came second or third in the election in 2019. And it has launched a plan, Lok Sabha Pravas Yojana, to win them.
The party has grouped these challenging constituencies into several clusters, and assigned each cluster to a senior leader. Most of these constituencies are in West Bengal, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Odisha. The party has appointed whole-time volunteers, called vistarak, to assist the cluster leader in coordination with the district president.
Under this plan, the party aims at developing an organisational structure to collect various kinds of social, demographic and development data. It has created a central committee and district and local committees for this purpose. They do economic mapping of the clusters and constituencies, including the number of women, youth, the poor, and list beneficiaries of Central government schemes for the poor. The cadres collect lists of eligible claimants of the schemes. The party is also mapping the working of self-help groups.
Efficient leaders like Dharmendra Pradhan, Piyush Goyal, Bhupendra Yadav and Mansukh Mandaviya are among the cluster-in-charges who have been given the task of implementing the Lok Sabha Pravas Yojana.
Clearly, development data and economic information are crucial in the BJP’s strategy for the 2024 election. Data on beneficiaries of Central government schemes such as PM Awas Yojana, PM Anna Yojana, direct benefit transfer, pension schemes, Ayushman Bharat Yojana and PM Jan Dhan Yojana have become key in the BJP’s mobilisational strategy.
More than ever before, politics now needs data on social and developmental issues, along with data on caste and religion. It means that the poor, youth, women, self-help groups now matter in Indian politics.
Another important category that has emerged as an identity of mobilisation in electoral politics is the labharthi (beneficiary). This category goes beyond caste and religion and imbibes some of the traits of class. As in the Uttar Pradesh assembly election in 2022, the BJP will have a consistent focus on mobilising the labharthi in the 2024 election.
The Narendra Modi government has created a huge group of labharthi with its developmental programmes. These programmes have mostly been centred on poor and marginalised people. Their beneficiaries evolved as a ‘beneficiary community’ with a ‘beneficiary consciousness,’ whether active or passive. This beneficiary consciousness works beyond caste, community and religion, and creates a non-conventional solidarity, whether in a planned or unplanned manner.
Politics of data, however, is not new in India. Socialist leaders like Ram Manohar Lohia, George Fernandes and Madhu Limaye had employed it. But they relied mostly on macro data from the government. But the BJP is collecting and making use of micro, local and people-specific data. These are mostly social, economic and development data.
The collection of these data indicates that a major portion of the BJP’s electoral discourse in 2024 will be centred on social welfare and development. If the BJP sets its electoral agenda around development, the opposition parties in various states will be compelled to respond it. In this way, claims and counter claims around development may form the election discourse in 2024.
The writer is director, G.B. Pant Social Science Institute, Allahabad