BJP’s electoral victories are a result of a new kind of welfarism

These explanations are more or less election-centric. They rely heavily on a direct and uncomplicated correlation between social expectations and electoral behaviour. There is a strong assumption that if the social crisis is not managed, it will naturally lead to a vote for change or what is popularly known as anti-incumbency. This rather restricted view of electoral politics is problematic as it does not explain the changing terms of political discourse and the emerging nature of the Indian state. That’s why there is a serious need to unpack the contemporary meanings of welfarism and empowerment. More specifically, we should critically examine the template called welfare state — a residue of the post-Second World War political thinking.

The notion of welfarism has changed quite significantly in the last three decades. The liberalisation of the Indian economy in the early 1990s was a watershed moment in this regard. The Narasimha Rao regime created an impression that the open market framework would eventually facilitate an independent and self-regulating economic sphere. The task of the state, in this schema, was only to resolve societal conflicts. This new imagination was uncritically accepted by all political parties including the CPI, CPM and BJP. The state began to define itself as a neutral agency to mediate between competing social groups and communities while maintaining a distance from the economic sphere. In the backdrop of this important political change, a sectoral approach to the idea of welfare evolved gradually. Social groups — women, children, Dalits, Adivasis, unorganised labour, minorities/Muslims and so on — were addressed as fragments to design independent policies. A new discourse of inclusion/exclusion characterised welfarism as empowerment.

The Modi regime has given a radical direction to this imagination. Without deviating from the political consensus on liberalisation and open market, the Modi government has made it clear that providing jobs is not a responsibility of the state. Instead, citizens are encouraged to become job creators. The official doctrine of New India is also based on the idea of responsive people and responsive citizens.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s recent interview with this paper is very relevant to elaborate this point. Explaining the BJP’s imagination of empowerment, Shah said: “There is a difference in the way we work: we have given gas connections, power connections and it’s up to them to pay their bills. We have made toilets for them but they have to maintain them…when you take populist measures, you promise to pay electricity bills, free gas etc. What we did was to provide help to upgrade their lives — this is empowerment.” (IE, March 1)

The popular reception of this changing official attitude on welfarism is equally interesting. CSDS-Lokniti’s various studies show that unemployment, economic distress, poverty, price rise/inflation are always seen as major socio-economic concerns. However, these issues do not always get translated into a vote for change. It simply means that there is no correlation between economic hardship and voting behaviour.

The voters, it seems, have accepted the fact that empowerment means one-time benefits on a case-to-case basis. Although the desire for a permanent government job has not yet completely gone, the people at the grassroots level are equally enthusiastic for benefits provided by the governments and political parties. In fact, there is an acknowledgement that the state is not responsible for social crises and the government should not be blamed for unemployment and poverty, and even the mismanagement of health infrastructure during the pandemic.

This form of welfarism takes us to what I describe as the charitable state: A state, which does not envisage welfarism as its fundamental political duty; instead, it offers benefits to citizens as acts of benevolence and generosity to bargain with them in the realm of competitive electoral politics.

The BJP’s electoral campaign in UP revolved around this model of charitable state (though a very different version of it can also be found in AAP’s electoral strategy in Punjab). The party focused on two crucial aspects: the reconfiguration of narrative and effective mobilisation of voters.

The BJP’s sankalp patra addresses the voters as possible beneficiaries (labharthi) without deviating from its Hindutva agenda. A package of carefully designed economic benefits and infrastructure development is offered simply to make a clear bargain with the voters. At the same time, the given identity templates — Dalit, backward, minority — are completely ignored to legitimise the official categories such as SC/ST/OBC. This careful reconfiguration helped the party to make skilful adjustments with voter groups at the constituency level.

The BJP’s electoral machinery is also redesigned to support the charitable state model. A three-tier system of mobilisation is created. The promises made in the sankalp patra are publicised in a highly professional manner to attract voters through media campaigns. This is complemented by the explanation given by the leaders in their speeches. Finally, the local level workers, the voter-mobilisers, translated these promises in a language of everyday interactions. This coordinated effort created a silent, yet impactful, narrative of BJP’s charity in which Hindutva always remains a subtext.

The opposition parties, it seems, have not yet fully understood the fact that the BJP’s success is inextricably linked to the charitable state model. The politics of Hindutva cannot be described simply as a project of upper caste/class Hindus supported by big corporate houses. It has invented a new class politics—a passive revolution of sorts.

(The writer is associate professor at CSDA and has recently published an edited volume (with Peter R deSouza and M Sanjeer Alam) Companion to Indian Democracy: Resilience, Fragility, Ambivalence)