Narendra Modi’s government is bracing for five assembly elections in four states (Kerala, Assam, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu) and union territory of Puducherry with more weights tied to its feet than ever before.
Though state assembly polls are fought on local issues rather than national, the atmospherics created in the run-up to these elections is imbued with issues that are confronting the Indian nation as a whole. The Congress party has cleverly choreographed these issues and ensured that these dominate the national politics in parliament and outside.
These issues revolve around the volatile student community and are a combination of intolerance, attack on freedom of expression and the Modi government’s alleged apathy toward the Dalits or the downtrodden. The central characters in this narrative are Rohith Vemulla, the 26-year-old researcher of Hyderabad university, who committed suicide in his hostel room two months ago, and Kanhaiya Kumar, the 28-year-old left-leaning president of New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) students’ union, who was recently released on bail in a sedition case.
Congress, the main opposition party, has deliberately stoked fires in the university campuses across the country, particularly in Hyderabad and JNU, and has made its intentions clear of using these issues to the hilt in the upcoming five assembly polls. The Congress has been projecting the issues triggering massive students’ unrest as intolerance by other means and wants the assembly polls as a sort of a national referendum against the Modi government.
First things first. The upcoming state assemblies polls do not pose any threat to the Modi government even if the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Modi were to lose all.
In any case, the BJP doesn’t have much of a chance in southern state of Tamil Nadu and the contiguous union territory of Puducherry. The BJP is not a serious contender in another southern state of Kerala either, though it hopes to enlarge its presence in Kerala’s political space.
In the eastern state of West Bengal, it is campaigning hard and hopes to give its political rivals, the ruling Trinamool Congress of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee as well as the Left Front and the Congress, the run for their money. If the BJP puts up a sterling electoral performance in West Bengal it will provide a major face-saver to Modi and the BJP, but its failure to do so won’t exactly mean a setback for the BJP.
It is in the northeastern state of Assam where the BJP is hoping to turn the tables on the ruling Congress. If the BJP plays its cards well in Assam there is a fair chance that it can emerge as a potential kingmaker, if not the king.
The results will be out on May 19. All eyes will be on how the BJP performs in the five assemblies. An important political side impact will be on the tally of major political parties like the BJP and the Congress in the Elders’ house in parliament or Rajya Sabha where the BJP is in a minority.
It is from this larger national perspective that the upcoming assembly polls need to be seen. Unlike the recent Bihar assembly polls, the elections for five assemblies won’t be a game-changer unless these produce earth-shattering results, which is highly unlikely.
However, all eyes will be on Kanhaiya Kumar who is all set to make a debut as a star political campaigner for the party he is aligned to, the Communist Party of India (CPI). Kumar is likely to be a star campaigner for the Left Front in West Bengal and Kerala.
Kumar has already emerged as the go-to budding politician for non-BJP parties. He needs to send a thank you note to the BJP for making him an anti-BJP pivot for all opposition parties. In many ways, Kumar is another Hardik Patel in the making, a youth leader from Modi’s home state of Gujarat who too is facing a sedition case.
Going by the huge coverage Indian print, electronic and digital media have given him, Kumar might well have landed in the Rajya Sabha but he will have to wait for two more years as Rajya Sabha considers only those candidates for an election who are at least 30 years old.
The BJP has ironically helped in enlarging the political persona of young leaders like Kumar and Hardik Patel. Strong performance by Kumar in the upcoming assembly polls will be antithetical to the BJP’s interests.
Modi has indulged in carpet-bombing tactic in campaigning for last year’s assembly polls in Delhi and Bihar and in both his party was decimated. He will do well to keep a low profile in the upcoming assembly polls, as his party doesn’t have much stakes in most of the poll-bound states.
