Will Modi wave, caste combos work IN UP?

Since the 2014 elections will be won or lost in UP, it is fairly clear that all parties will concentrate their critical efforts here. So what will their strategies be, now that ticket allotment is over for some, and in the final phases for the rest?

For the BJP, the effort will be to maximise its expected gains in this heartland state with 80 seats; for Mayawati's BSP the aim will be to hold on to what she has; for Mulayam Singh's SP, the goal will be to minimise losses; for the Congress it will be to prevent a rout and see if Modi can be tripped or forced to expend himself more in UP so that his party does not benefit from his campaigning elsewhere.

The BJP clearly lost some momentum last week by delaying seat announcements, which enabled the likes of LK Advani and Jaswant Singh to waste more party time. The party spent lots of time placating him and other oldies like Murli Manohar Joshi when it should have been out there campaigning. Mayawati and Mulayam have been smarter, having more or less completed their UP nominations.

The BJP still had 10 seats to go as at the end of Friday, 21 March. The Congress had 15 more seats to announce, but the delay will prove less costly for it as it does not expect to win too many seats.

A look at the candidate selections of the four major contenders shows what their hopes and fears are in 2014. From their caste and community configurations we can make deductions about what the parties themselves think are their strengths and weaknesses. Despite the fact that this election looks less caste-oriented, the main thing one notices in the serious efforts put in by all the four parties to get the caste arithmetic right. Take the BSP, which fears an erosion in its Brahmin vote due to the rising fortunes of the BJP.

It has fielded 21 Brahmins – the highest among all parties so far – and 19 Muslims, which suggests that Mayawati hopes to make some gains among the minorities in view of their antipathy to the BJP’s mascot. Dalits get 17, OBCs 15 and Thakurs 8, which means Mayawati is reasonably confident of her Dalit base. It is unlikely she will be expecting too many votes from Thakurs and OBCs. In contrast, the SP has fielded the maximum number of OBCs – Yadavs – since this is its core vote, and vulnerable to Modi’s pitch. Modi comes from the most backward caste segment, and Kalyan Singh is a major factor among the non-Yadav OBCs. The SP has given Muslims 13, the upper castes 18 (Brahmins plus Thakurs), and Dalits 17. This distribution of candidates indicates that SP expects Muslims and OBCs to vote for it, but is not setting great store by the upper castes. The Congress, which has announced just 65 candidates, also appears to be writing off a good chunk of its upper caste vote by giving Brahmins nine and Thakurs eight. Dalits get 14 and OBCs another 14, with Muslims getting 11.

This even distribution among castes and communities so far suggests that the party is not expecting any gains in any particular group. It is a cut-your-losses, defensive strategy. The BJP candidate selection is most skewed – and thus aggressive.

It has zero Muslims, which means it is expecting strong, tactical voting by the minority community against it. Instead, it is concentrating its efforts among the upper castes and OBCs, with Brahmins getting 15, Thakurs 12 and OBCs 26.

Dalits get 15 of the 70 seats announced so far. What does this suggest? The BJP is banking heavily on a combination of upper caste consolidation and non-Yadav OBCs – precisely the combo that evolved in the 1990s to bring the BJP to power in Uttar Pradesh. Modi’s hand-picked Amit Shah, facilitated these selections based on his own first-hand assessments at the constituency level.

While the media has been talking about dissent in the BJP based on Joshi’s stated disgruntlement over being denied Varanasi and Lalji Tandon’s unwillingness to shift to Deoria from Kanpur, which was vacated for Joshi, it appears that the party has made choices based on winnability and not past reputation. The party expects the Modi wave to make these candidate selections work. The caste-combo shows aggressive thinking at work.