THE VISIONARY leader Kanshi Ram, who founded the Bahujan Samaj Party in 1984, influenced Indian politics for decades. He used to say, “We will not form an alliance with political parties; we will form an alliance with the public.”
The public is becoming political day by day. With seven decades of democratic experience, they have become politically literate and mature. As the Bollywood song goes, Ye public hai, sab janti hai, ye public hai. (This public knows everything.)
The political public is not homogenous. It is a divided public. Political parties that aspire for power need to form rainbow alliances to win them over. They do it in two ways. One: through direct alliances by mobilising them on political agendas and programmes. Two: through alliances with small and regional parties that claim to represent one or the other section of the public.
Political strategists assume that the easiest way to win over the divided public is by approaching them through such small parties. But, the influence of most such parties is limited to certain castes, certain social groups and certain regions. Any public mobilisation acquired through them may only be a fragmental mobilisation.
The political insight of Kanshi Ram comes to mind when we see political groups in power and in the opposition competing with each other to extend their alliances. Recently, the opposition parties met in Patna and in Bengaluru to discuss their rainbow of alliances. They formed a political group of 26 parties and adopted the name Indian National Development Inclusive Alliance and the acronym INDIA.
On the other side, the National Democratic Alliance, led by the BJP, has attracted 39 political parties to its fold. Most of the parties in these two alliances are small parties active at the regional or state level.
While embracing such parties, the BJP is also trying to develop a holistic identity of a development-seeking public. It is appealing to these ‘labharthi’ by implementing social development schemes. Besides, the BJP is redefining ‘the poor’ as a homogenous, aspiring class of poor people irrespective of their caste, community and region.
The BJP came to power with the aspirational metaphor of development. It is now trying to evolve new categories to concretise this developmental experience of the public―categories such as ‘labharthi’ and Garib Kalyan communities, the mobile middle class and the constant achiever higher class.
As a political analyst, I believe the Lok Sabha election in 2024 is going to be a contest between two narratives: the opposition INDIA group’s narrative of saving democracy, Constitution and law, and the ruling NDA’s narrative of giving the public a tangible developmental experience, of projecting people as the makers and achievers of a new India, and of enhancing public aspiration for a developed India.
The BJP has often done ‘politics of the past’. But during Narendra Modi's prime ministership it is also doing politics of the future. He recently said India would become the third largest economy in his third term in office. He has often said that India will be a developed country in the next 25 years.
The politics of the future was not very vocally present earlier in India. We have been doing politics of the present or around the present. In 2024, too, the political diction of opposition-led alliances is going to be focused on worries and anxieties of the present.
In contrast, Modi's NDA will paint itself as a great achiever working for a great India. It will use a sharper political diction of hope, in a grand narrative of the future.
Let us wait and see whether the opposition alliance will listen to the grassroots and make an effective plan to do holistic politics. And whether the NDA can make everyone feel the developmental experience of making a new India.
The writer is director, G.B. Pant Social Science Institute, Allahabad.