Social Change and the Changing Indian Voter: Consolidation of the BJP in India’s 2019 Lok Sabha Election

Abstract

This article is about the changing voter in a changing India in the context of India’s Lok Sabha election held in the year 2019. Positing a two-way relationship between social change and electoral politics, this article analyses the sources for the success of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in mobilizing massive support among various Hindu social groups. It examines the claims of the BJP leaders that the 2019 election has breached the barriers of caste and class. It takes the view that the social change over the decades after independence, especially after the 1990s, led to the emergence of a new elite composed of members from different social groups with shared values and social life willing to join hands for political purposes and that led to the massive victory of the BJP in the absence of any other viable alternative.

A systematic literature review to understand the difference between critical factors affecting the national election and state elections in India

“…Caste system has been dominant in the Indian political system since independence and many state-level parties have been formed with primary ideology of casteism (Singh and Saxena, 2003). Even within one religion, there were many social groups (with different caste) that prefer political parties solely on the party's inclination to a certain social group or groups (Suri, 2019). Due to a notable rise in educational opportunities and the implementation of caste-based reservations, the representation of Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) in government employment has significantly improved since independence.…”

“…However, BJP's political agenda was to divert the direction from caste-based state-level politics to religion-based national-level politics (Graham, 1990). In the last two decades, the BJP has increased its support base in various Hindu social groups of different castes (Suri, 2019). Though the BJP has registered a significant increase in vote share since 2014 in the state elections among the middle-level support states of the Hindi belt such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Haryana due to its Hindutva (Hindu nationalist) politics, its increased popularity in other state elections and national election are due to party's campaign content and party leader's (Narendra Modi) influence (Schakel et al, 2019).…”

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“…Their interest acquired centre stage at the expense of questions of equity and justice. Again, theorists have argued that their growing political clout is not just about their increasing share of the population but also the proliferation of middle-class aspirations among urban workers and rural folks (Jaffrelot, 2015; Suri, 2019). The right-wing shift in North Indian politics drew much to this tendency of the assuming middle-class leadership of a large group outside its ambit, keeping several tools in its kitty, communalism and information technology being just two of them.…”

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“…Yet the BJP has also consolidated its role as a Hindu party and it had less support among minority faiths (Sardesai, 2019). Suri (2019) goes further and argues that whereas the Congress party relied on caste during elections, the BJP appealed to nationalism and development across class and caste divisions and also extended its appeal to lower strata. Mairano ( 2019) similarly shows increased support for the BJP among the rural population, and Deshpande, Tillin and Kailash (2019), like Maiorano, point out that increased benefits from welfare schemes (such as pensions, sanitation, cooking gas) may have widened the BJP's appeal downwards.…”