There is a distinct similarity between the 2004 campaign of Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) first prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Narendra Modi’s 2019 campaign - they share what can perhaps be best described as a “feel good” factor.

But what are the elements that set the two elections, and election campaigns, apart?

For starters, any dissatisfaction with Modi’s performance as Prime Minister does not appear to be necessarily leading to anger directed at him. This is a big advantage for Modi during this election season. His perceived iron-fist policy on security, his projection of nationalism, and his messaging on welfare programmes, is making supporters “feel good” about having him at the helm. But since this is accompanied with the subtext of Hindu consolidation, it causes a counter polarity of the Muslim vote, whose imprint will be more visible this time as compared to 2014, when not a single Muslim candidate was elected from India’s largest state Uttar Pradesh.

The BJP appears to be reaping a rich harvest from its schemes to provide toilets and housing in rural areas. The relative spread of public conveniences has brought about a behavioral change, and the “roof over head” mantra has struck a chord. These factors kept coming up in discussions with the locals during my travels in different parts of the country over last month.

By the end of 2018, Modi faced two distinct challenges – mushrooming farm distress, and disenchanted upper castes. The farmers complained about declining profits and the upper castes resented Modi’s restoring the provision of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act that were struck down by the Supreme Court. Both played a role in BJP’s defeat in the December assembly elections in the Hindi heartland states.

In the last three months, Modi has managed to address both. The second instalment of ~2,000 is going into the bank account of farmers even as India is still voting, and the 10% quota in jobs and education to the poor among the general category has changed the mood among the BJP’s upper-caste supporters.

Also, the corruption charges that the Opposition threw at him with its “chowkidar chor hai” slogan, have managed to get only a limited response in most parts. On the ground, Modi’s image remains his strongest draw.

Notwithstanding this background, a question needs to be asked: Can Modi lose, like Vajpayee did despite his high personal popularity?

To answer this, a comparison needs to be drawn between the BJP of 2004 and 2019. The party’s character has evolved since 2004, and how it has modified its campaign for different states makes the Modi of today different from the Vajpayee of 15 years ago. The BJP, too, has grown in size over the last five years.

The story of 2019 lies in Modi’s ability to keep India’s most backward communities, particularly in UP and Bihar, invested in him. He is winning new support from Dalit groups as well. Both these are different from Vajpayee’s support base in 2014.

With some exceptions, my trips indicated that there isn’t too much dent in the support that Modi received in 2014 – 171.6 million votes to be precise. His challenge is to get the same number of seats as last time when Opposition unity is greater.

The upper-castes remain with him, so does the umbrella coalition of smaller caste groups that appears to identify better with Modi than with regional players in states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. These are the two bellwether states accounting for 120 Lok Sabha seats. Modi has also achieved this by altering his speeches in a way that touches the different set of constituents in different states. The BJP has carefully avoided a “one size fits all” campaign, a trap in which many other political parties find themselves caught in.

In West Bengal, the BJP tapped the “nationalist” space and talked about Mamata Banerjee’s “pro-Muslim”. The decline of the Congress and the Left helped it emerge as the main opposition. If Modi speaks of development and roads in Jharkhand, a tribal state that suffered on account of political instability for years, he goes out of the way to display “soft Hindutva” with an aarti on the banks of Ganga in Varanasi.

The Balakot air strike and corruption remain common refrains in his speeches. This has helped him traverse the journey from leading a “suit boot ki Sarkar” to emerge as a socialist leader whose welfare programmes touch a billion people.

If an India Shining moment sank Vajpayee, Modi chose to be careful in articulating that his “ek bharat, shrestha bharat” (one India, best India) was a work in progress that may need a second shot in power to be complete.

When the results are out on May 23, Modi could well prove that “feel good” is not a bad phrase in politics.

First Published: May 04, 2019 08:31 IST