Beyond the hype: Why the BJP is eyeing Tamil Nadu’s most prosperous region

Marathammal ran out of breath walking barefoot in the blazing afternoon sun. The elderly Kurumba woman sat down on the steps outside a row of shops, about 100 metres from a large public ground in Mettupalayam where the Bharatiya Janata Party had organised an election meeting on April 10.

In her hand, Marathammal clutched a VIP pass. Prime Minister Narendra Modi looked out from it.

What does she think of Modi, we asked. “I don’t know anything about him,” she said. “But I have seen him on TV.”

Why had she come to the meeting, we asked. “The people in my village asked me to get into the bus so I did,” she said.

Marathammal had been told she would get some money. “But so far I haven’t received anything,” she quickly added.

Mettupalayam lies at the foothills of the Nilgiris, on the road from Coimbatore to Ooty. In ten weeks, this was Modi’s seventh trip to Tamil Nadu – a state where the BJP had won a vote share of just 3.66% in the 2019 Lok Sabha election and not a single of the 39 seats. The party’s performance in the state has so far peaked at one Lok Sabha seat and four Assembly seats.

And yet, this time, the...

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