Modi pulled bahujan voters to the BJP. Many are now drifting away
This might not unsettle the election results. But it could damage the party’s ideological project.
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Only 40 km separated the venues of Narendra Modi and Tejashwi Yadav’s election meetings in Bihar’s East Champaran on May 21. But moving between them felt like some kind of time travel.
For the Modi meeting, the Bharatiya Janata Party had erected three giant prefabricated structures with internal walkways and neatly partitioned sections, each fitted with large LCD screens and sound systems. In contrast, all that Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal could afford was a cloth tent pitched on bamboo poles, with old-style loudspeakers hung on them.
Tens of thousands had gathered for Modi’s meeting, bussed in by the BJP. The 500-odd people who came to listen to Yadav had largely walked or cycled to the maidan.
The tent was packed – as Yadav launched into a speech berating Modi, an empty chair was hard to find. And so, when a middle-aged man seated close to me said something about not leaving the kursi, I thought he meant his chair. Nathuni Das clarified that he was talking about the prime minister’s chair. “Narendra Modi will win a third term, no matter what critics say,” he said.
Das was a BJP supporter who had come to check out the rival camp. He heaped praise on the prime minister, provoking an...
