The BJP’s target of 400 seats is psychological warfare and the party on its own is highly unlikely to win 370 seats, said ace political strategist Prashant Kishor. Speaking at the Hyderabad Dialogues organised by this newspaper, he nevertheless said that the BJP is currently in pole position and predicted that it will outperdo better than the Trinamool in West Bengal. Kishor highlighted PM Modi’s frequent visits to Tamil Nadu and noted the party will increase its vote share in the southern state. Excerpts:
PM Modi is on campaign mode. Does the BJP look more set for the race than anyone else in the fray? Do you therefore see 2024 as a foregone conclusion?
I don’t think they have done anything that they have not been doing in the last five years. He (PM Narendra Modi) is in campaign mode forever. So to that extent, I don’t see this as an aberration. I don’t have a crystal ball to make a prediction about who is going to win, but one can make an informed guess. The BJP-led NDA, for sure have a massive advantage over their opponents. Not necessarily because they are early with their campaign, not necessarily because he (Modi) is hugely popular, not only because they have huge electoral muscle.
It is because the Opposition has not been able to put their act together, certainly not well in time to raise a challenge. In a democracy, especially in a country like India, one should never underestimate the size or the opportunity for the Opposition. A majority of Indians are always in opposition. No party gets more than 40% of the vote. It is not a subjective assessment. Just look at data from the last 75 years. Nobody has been able to get 50% or more votes in India. Meaning, whoever went to vote, more than half were not convinced with who you are, your policies, your promises, your ideology. So, the Opposition is never weak in India. When you have close to 700 million people still not making `100 a day, you must not take the Opposition lightly.
What we are seeing is Opposition parties, or the formation of Opposition parties, could be weak. The Opposition, per se, is not weak in this country. And that is why a leader like Modi perpetually appears to be in campaign mode. If elections were to happen tomorrow, there is no prize for guessing that the BJP-led NDA would have a huge advantage.
Sitting in the Deccan plateau, how realistic does BJP’s Mission South look like?
There’s a tendency to say the South is terra incognita for the BJP. But in reality, it is emerging as a force in Telangana with a 14% vote share, making deft moves in Andhra Pradesh, and has run governments in Karnataka. Firstly, in a pan-South sense, what do you think of the typology of the whole region having a reflexive “anti-BJP” politics of seeing them as a “northern” party?
I think it is an oversimplification. I have never subscribed to this idea of North-South from the BJP’s politics point of view, because in Karnataka for almost 20 years now, they have been either the ruling party or principal opposition. So this North-South thing does not hold.
What does hold is the whole country, you can make a division — East and South, and West and North. When I say East and South, I start from Bihar. Then I go to Bengal, Odisha and come down to Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala. This East and South roughly accounts for 210 seats. For the BJP, even with their ‘great performance’ in last election in Bengal, Odisha, and in Bihar with 100% strike rate, total count is less than 50 — including 17 in Bihar, and 18 in Bengal. A lot of people think that the BJP has swept Bihar. But the BJP fought only 17 out of 40 seats, and they won 17. In Bengal, they won only 18 seats. Out of these around 210 seats, the BJP’s total count is less than 50.
If you are a BJP supporter, you’d like to see whether your graph is increasing in East and South or not. One can safely say that their graph is increasing. It may not immediately translate into a dramatically higher number of seats, but definitely this tally is going to go up. From Bihar, Bengal, Odisha, Andhra, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala, the total tally of BJP vis-a-vis what they got in 2019 is going to go up. How much… I don’t want to make a guess, but it would be up by a few seats at least. What would be important to understand is their vote share will go up dramatically.
I have already said, and I repeat myself, that in Tamil Nadu, I see BJP breaking into double-digit vote share. That would be a massive development politically, like what we have seen in Telangana, 14%.
So in a state like Tamil Nadu, if the BJP breaks into double-digit vote share, even if they get no seats, that would be a moment of significance. In Odisha, they are already number one. In Bengal, again, I don’t want to make a prediction, but unlike most people, I’m predicting that the BJP will do better than the TMC in all likelihood. Be ready for a surprise result coming from Bengal in favour of the BJP.
They’re increasing seats in all other states, Odisha, Telangana, Andhra. I don’t know if they would be able to add seats in Tamil Nadu or Kerala, but certainly there will be an increase in vote share. So from that point of view, they are the rising political force. It may take five years, it may take 10 years, but they will gain in this area.
They are cognisant of this fact that this is the area where they need to build. They’re investing time, energy. Look at the number of visits the PM has made to Tamil Nadu alone in the last five years. Tamil Nadu now ranks third, I believe, only after Gujarat and because of the recent visit to Maharashtra, now Tamil Nadu has gone to number three.
From the opposition point of view, the problem lies in North and West: The remaining 310, 320 seats, where opposition has a strike rate against the BJP in single digits. When I say the opposition, it’s not only the Congress, but four parties. The Congress is taking the BJP head on between 220 and 250 seats. In Uttar Pradesh, the SP is taking on the BJP head on in almost 65–70 seats. Then the RJD in Bihar, they are supposed to take on the BJP in 40 seats. And then finally, the NCP in Maharashtra. Until and unless these four parties, the Congress, SP, RJD, NCP, and now Shiv Sena… Unless they get their strike rate against the BJP to at least 25-30%, there is no way you can defeat it at the India level.
But in the same statement is hidden the secret of how you can defeat the BJP. If you get 50% seats in West and North, then 150 MPs would have won either from a platform opposed to the BJP or neutral to any formation, they come into play. Another 150 non-BJP MPs from East and South, club it with [at least] 100 coming from West and North, and you have a game.
The PM is making very frequent trips to Tamil Nadu. It could be that he is so confident of the BJP’s performance in the North and Gujarat that he can focus on TN, just to increase vote share, which seems to be a certainty. Do you think he sees a collapse of the AIADMK-DMK binary?
First, the two Dravidian parties which have been in ruling formations in the last 30–40 years, their combined vote share is going down below 70% now. And this has been the case for the last 10–15 years. For the first time, I see it’s going below 65% or 60%. That means more than one-third of Tamil voters are looking for some options.
Why would the BJP like to invest so much in Tamil Nadu? It’s not because there is a collapse of the DMK or AIADMK, which is not happening by the way. It’s simply because, like you cannot dominate the politics of North unless you win UP and Bihar, you cannot dominate the politics of South until and unless you start being a major force in Andhra and Tamil Nadu.
Tamil Nadu is the UP of south. So Karnataka, they have been winning for 15, 20 years. Still, you are calling them a North party. Karnataka is very much South. It’s because in the minds of people, the nerve centre of the South is Tamil Nadu.
So from that point of view, there’s a strategic, psychological and political game that a long-term player would like to invest in. And I see the BJP, like any other national party, they are long-term players, so they would invest, even if it means 2% or 4% of incremental vote share. Forget about the seats and all. They have enough seats, but they want to expand. And it also gives them cover in 10 years time. Sooner or later, someday, somebody will defeat them in Bihar or UP. They want a cover. That cover will come only from United Andhra or Tamil Nadu. You can’t cover for a possible defeat in UP or Bihar by winning Mizoram or Goa. You have to win a large state somewhere else. That’s why they are investing this much.
How do you see the re-emergence of Congress in Telangana?
I don’t subscribe to this thought process that the Congress was finished in Telangana and all of a sudden they have emerged. Again, when you are looking at data, tell me when the Congress went down below 35% vote share in Telangana ever. It’s just that after the victories, most of their MLAs deserted the party and went to the BRS, what used to be the TRS. Even in the last Assembly elections, the Congress did reasonably well. They were the principal opposition.
The Congress was a party with a constant 35% vote share, which refused to go down no matter how hard the BRS tried. So the Congress was not a dead political force, as it is in Tamil Nadu or West Bengal or Bihar or UP, where their vote share has gone down to single digits, 5%, 6%, 7%, over 20-30 years and has not moved to double digits.
Can BJP emerge as a force in Kerala if either the LDF or the UDF collapses?
Again, the question is based on the existing political parties or formations. I would look at Kerala as a society. Why the BJP has found it tough to break into Kerala is because of the huge population of Muslims and Christians. Now if the BJP were to break into Kerala — whether it’s the LDF or UDF, forget about that — you have to have substantial support coming from Hindus, OBCs and they have tried that strategy when they played this temple issue in a big way last time. But that’s not enough. Unless they break into the Christian vote and a substantial segment of Christian society starts accepting the BJP as an acceptable political ally or a platform, they would find it difficult to win Kerala. So their strategy would be to consolidate or be the dominant player among Hindus and isolate Muslims. Till now it has not happened but they are in that direction.
Language is also a major barrier. If you look at this East and South corridor I talked about, what is distinct is the language. So if you are in Bihar, how do you introduce yourself? Okay I’m Indian and I belong to so-and-so caste. I’m UPite or I am from Madhya Pradesh, but there is no sub-regional identity. But if you are a person from Odisha, you’ll say I’m Indian, I’m Odia and then the caste or the class becomes the third layer. So Odisha, Kerala, Andhra, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, in all these states, the language is one additional barrier which the BJP, or for that matter, any Hindi-speaking party has to overcome in order to become a dominant political force.
PM Modi is claiming that his party will win 370 to 400 seats. Your take.
Well, this is part of psychological warfare. Just see how the public narrative has been shifted from whether BJP/NDA is winning or losing versus whether they are going to get 370 or not. So the prime minister making that statement on the floor of Parliament has made people, even those who are skeptics, take notice. The BJP appears to be in pole position, they have a massive lead over the opposition formation. But the BJP on its own, going to 370, meaning additional 70 odd seats for them is highly unlikely.