Sanjaya Baru | Of caste, class and a ‘Suit Boot ki Sarkar’

It was Rahul Gandhi’s cleverest political jibe against Narendra Modi. Taunting a Prime Minister who sported a pin-striped suit which had his name stitched in gold thread, Rahul dubbed the Modi government a “suit boot ki sarkar”. Arvind Kejriwal made the best use of that moniker in that year’s Delhi state Assembly elections, when the national capital’s working class overwhelmingly voted for his Aam Admi Party. In the Narendra Modi vs Arvind Kejriwal campaign of 2015, the determining factor was class.

Delhi’s working class abandoned both the Congress and the Communists and made Arvind Kejriwal their hero. It would appear that Mr Modi has not forgotten that defeat. His continued campaign against the AAP and Mr Kejriwal smacks of a personal vendetta.

In securing interim bail and entering the election campaign, Mr Kejriwal has now joined hands with the Congress Party, that has fielded the fiery former student leader Kanhaiya Kumar in Delhi. While caste factors remain the focus of the media’s electoral analysis, in the nation’s capital class has emerged as a major mobilising factor. The wealthy and the upper middle class still favour the Bharatiya Janata Party, but the working class and the lower middle class remain loyal to Mr Kejriwal and his Aam Aadmi Party.

The economist turned psephologist Surjit Bhalla, who has been in the business of statistically analysing voting behaviour since the 1980s, has long held that economic interests and concerns matter for more than caste loyalties in Indian elections. Bhalla repeats this argument, mobilising data, in his recently published book How We Vote: Factors That Influence Voters (2024). His argument, as a Modi supporter, is that economic factors in fact favour the BJP in the ongoing elections.

Most critics of Prime Minister Modi do not agree. They believe that unemployment, the middle class distress and rising inequality have made Mr Modi less popular.

It remains to be seen if caste factors, especially the support of backward classes and Scheduled Castes, play a larger role this time round or class factors, like livelihood concerns, dominate. The Congress Party entered these elections keeping its campaign focused on both caste and class issues, not worrying too much about upper caste and upper class support. One must view the recent political kerfuffle over Narendra Modi’s remarks on big business leaders Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani within this perspective.

Mr Modi may have suddenly discovered that while he continues to mobilise Hindu votes deploying anti-Muslim sentiment, Rahul Gandhi has deployed a two-pronged attack using both caste and class. This may well have revived the discomforting memory of Rahul’s “suit boot ki sarkar” jibe. Could this have prompted Mr Modi to try and distance himself from big business?

There are two other hypotheses that could explain Mr Modi’s decision to charge Mr Adani and Mr Ambani with amassing illegal wealth, “black money” in common parlance, and making some of it available to the Congress Party. First, that the electoral bonds scam has hurt the Bharatiya Janata Party politically, even if the funds have helped it financially. Mr Modi needs to make the point that other parties have also secured funding from business persons. Second, that business persons in the medium, small and micro enterprises (MSME) sector may have become less loyal in their support to the BJP, viewing the Narendra Modi government as one that protects the interests of big business but not those of the MSME sector.

Both are credible explanations. The importance of the second is often not appreciated by many political analysts. Consider the fact that the intimate relationship between Mr Modi and Mr Adani is not only well understood by ordinary folk but is resented by other big business as well as business persons in the MSME sector.

Demonetisation, the introduction of a Goods and Services Tax and persistent stagnation in private corporate investment have hurt the MSME sector. On the other hand, big corporates and listed firms continue to be cash rich and are doing well.

There is an internal divide within the business class.

It has been a recurrent experience for me in the past year that any conversation on politics with a group of business persons always begins with pro forma statements about how business likes Mr Modi and ends with individuals listing out a series of complaints about the government in general and Mr Modi and his ministers in particular. Among their many complaints, a recurrent theme is the favouritism shown to Mr Adani. Many in Hyderabad are aware of how Mr Adani used his clout in New Delhi to edge out the GVK group from the Mumbai airport.

The charge of a “suit boot ki sarkar” has come to stick. The slogan of “Adani-Ambani ki Sarkar” mimics a Communist slogan of the Nehru-Indira years when their governments were dubbed by the Communists as the “Tata-Birla ki Sarkar”. Indira Gandhi ended that with her turn to the political Left in the late 1960s and the wave of nationalisations that she authorised. Narendra Modi will find it difficult to make such a turn to the Left given the class and caste basis of his support.

Consider the manner in which the artificial controversy over an inheritance tax has panned out. Mr Modi tried to put Rahul Gandhi on the defensive alleging that the Congress Party would introduce an inheritance tax. BJP supporters enthusiastically campaigned against this claiming that it would hurt the interests of the “rising, aspirational middle class”. Rahul is so antediluvian, alleged an assortment of the so-called “influencers”. Then came the over-enthusiastic vice-chancellor of Galgotias University, who ordered students to march on the streets of New Delhi denouncing the inheritance tax idea.

That march fizzled out not just because of the dumb replies of the students interviewed on television, which then went viral on the social media, but because many knew that these were kids from well-off families. In a country where 10 per cent of the population, covering most of the upper caste, upper class families, accounts for 60 per cent of the national income, students at private educational institutions are unlikely to stir the emotions of the other 90 per cent. While the Congress Party has clarified that its manifesto makes no mention of an inheritance tax, and that it was Rajiv Gandhi who abolished wealth tax, the fact is that the issue does not concern a vast majority of the electorate. It matters only for the BJP’s upper caste, upper class support base.