Uttar Pradesh Election 2024: Voter disillusionment, caste fault lines challenge BJP’s dominance

As I travelled through Uttar Pradesh, the country’s most populous State, touching 16 of its 80 parliamentary constituencies, spanning the distance from Muzaffarnagar in the west to Mau in the east, what was immediately apparent was an absence of billboards, bunting, or even party flags, part of the landscape of any election.

There was no sign of a wave, much less the excited anticipation that should precede a change of government—or an endorsement of the previous dispensation.

“Voter chup hain [the voter is silent)]” was the refrain everywhere.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decade in power has been marked by demonetisation (2016), the implementation of the Goods and Services Tax Act (2017), the COVID pandemic (2020-23), and two farmers’ agitations (2020-21 and 2024), a result of the crisis in the sector—in Uttar Pradesh, 59.3 per cent of the population is engaged in agriculture. Together, these have not just destroyed jobs but also the hope of a better life. The promised “Modi ki guarantee”, even the BJP’s top brass has realised, is not resonating with the people as much as it should. There is a change in the tone, tenor, and content of their speeches, from a listing of the government’s achievements to harangues dominated by divisive issues.

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The gleaming expressways, emblems of the “Shining India” that Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s generation of the BJP had dreamt up, have grown, linking the furthest corners of Uttar Pradesh. But a vast majority of the villages still do not have decent roads: in many cases, they cannot even boast of a kharanja (brick pathway) or drains.

The labharthi (beneficiary)—a class of people created by the BJP to be the recipient of free rations, the Kisan Samman Nidhi, free homes, toilets, gas connections, and water at the doorstep—is no longer as grateful. Corruption and poor administration at the local level is at an all-time high. Take the free rations: in many cases, the recipients get less than they should, with the kotedar siphoning off as much as 2 kg out of the promised 5 kg a person; toilets depend not just on the availability of materials to build them but the munificence of the village pradhan; as for water at the doorstep, pipes have been laid but nothing gushes through them yet in many cases even though several months have rolled by. The gas cylinders came free, but the cost of refilling them is prohibitive.

Jobs, inflation: the real issues

In Jaraud, a large and prosperous village in Muzaffarnagar, set amidst sugarcane fields, Madan Pal, a wealthy Jat farmer tells me he spent Rs.1 lakh to buy a new transformer to drive the tube wells, as the old one had been lying unrepaired for several months, thanks to an indifferent administration. “I know they won’t repay me,” Pal says, “but without the transformer, what would have happened to our crop?”

In a sleepy village in Lalganj, a retired Brahmin jawan points to a pipe peeping out through a mound of mud in front of his home: “It is more than six months since the government laid that pipe but there is no water yet.” In Johrasharqi, a village in Rae Bareli, a Vishwakarma couple say that the pradhan favours only privileged castes and so they are yet to get a toilet. As for police stations, Bharat Singh, a young Rajput in Indara village in Mau, says: “Go to a police station as an ‘unknown’”—he uses the English word “unknown” to denote a lack of connections—and “koi sunwai nahin hogi [no one will give you a hearing]”.

In 2022, the last Assembly election, I heard very few people say that they would prefer jobs to free rations. This time, I hear it in every village I visit: the older members want their children to be employed fruitfully; the young, simply, aspire to a better life. Most people would prefer a government job, but they are also aware that these are scarce and want to know why the government cannot help create more jobs in the private sector.

“What prevents the government from giving incentives to the MSMEs [micro, small, and medium Enterprises] to open units in the rural areas or in cities close to the villages?” a young government schoolteacher in Sitapur asks, adding, “People here would be able to commute to work and return to their villages in the evening. They would be close to their families; they would save the money they spend on renting a room in the city.”

Indeed, as more people get educated, the lack of commensurate employment opportunities, compounded by rising prices, is creating a social crisis. Many educated young men, frustrated at a lack of prospects, spend their time getting drunk or, worse, joining the rank and file of militias run by local strongmen. Some help on the family land or take up menial tasks; some leave their homes for distant destinations like Nashik, Surat, Bengaluru, or Mumbai in search of more substantial employment. Many live in appalling conditions in those cities, but they all send home money.

And it is not just the men who want jobs; Manju, a young married woman who lives in Ramnagar, a village in Jaunpur, and has passed her Intermediate examinations, asks me: “Is my life going to be limited to looking after the kids, cooking, and helping on the farm?” What would she do, if she had an option? “I have been to a tailoring school, so if there was a tailoring unit here, I could work there and contribute to the family,” she answers.

In Johrasharqi, an 18-year-old Yadav boy, whose parents could not afford to educate him beyond class IX, has returned from Surat to cast his vote. He has been working in a dyeing unit in that city for a year, thanks to his brother-in-law being the supervisor there. In Varanasi, Modi’s constituency, famous for its silk saris—part of every north Indian bride’s trousseau—and carpets, some of the traders and weavers, especially among Muslims, have begun to shift base to Benguluru and Surat.

The Union government’s Agnipath scheme comes in for universal criticism, especially from those usually described as the martial castes, such as Jats and Rajputs. “It lasts only for four years and there is no guarantee of a job after that. What will happen then?” asks a Jat farmer in Jarauda, adding, “Many young men, trained in the use of arms, will be disgorged into society—with no hope of a decent job; they will all become goondas.” Dayanand Dubey, a retired jawan who lives near Phaphamau, on the outskirts of Prayagraj, and who saw action in Kargil, also criticises the scheme.

At Fatehpur in Aligarh district, Kapil Baliyan, who is idling in a friend’s grocery shop, is also against the scheme. “My forefathers were all in the army, but now I can’t get in. This Agnipath is useless. I am thinking of voting NOTA,” he says. He is 18, has just passed his Class XII examination but is forced to work at the family-owned eatery, “Chowdhury Hotel”, that stands at the entrance to the village. His brothers Yogesh and Sonu are “Inter-pass”: one minds the buffaloes and other animals on their farm; the other the crops.

For every villager content with government handouts, there is another who says that they would be happier if the government took measures to create jobs and stopped handing out rations. Many even say that they did not like being called labharthis; it hurts their pride.

The sceptical villager

Among Dalits and sections of the lower OBCs, there is fear that if the BJP really gets 400-plus seats, a number on which the party’s leadership has set its sights, then it will amend the Constitution and end reservation. Indeed, the word has spread so far that RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat was forced recently to say that the RSS had always supported reservation as guaranteed and sanctioned under the Constitution. Union Home Minister Amit Shah, addressing a press conference on April 30 in Guwahati, was also compelled to say: “I want to make one thing clear: BJP supports reservation for SCs, STs, and OBCs and will always play its role as its protector.”

Given that all these issues figure in the INDIA bloc’s campaign, the opposition clearly has had some success in making them into talking points at the village level, acknowledges Anupam Mishra, editor of Prayagraj Times, in Allahabad.

And yet, despite the litany of complaints, there is a belief that it is difficult to oust the BJP, and it is not only because people have little faith in the opposition putting up an effective fight against the BJP. Across Uttar Pradesh—and without any question from this reporter—a subject that came up constantly was that of “button ki jeet”, scepticism about the reliability of EVMs: “Jab tak EVM machines hain, tab tak Modi hain. Ballot paper vapas lao [As long as there are EVM machines, Modi will return to power. Bring back the ballot paper]”; that was a near universal refrain. (Even as I write this, news comes from Lakhimpur Kheri, whose residents cast their votes in the third round, that voters here have alleged rigging during the election, claiming that despite pressing the cycle [Samajwadi Party (SP) symbol] button, the EVM showed a lotus [BJP symbol]. People accused the presiding officer, Prashant Kumar, of tampering with the voting process.)

Interestingly, this lack of trust in the sanctity of the voting process came from across the caste spectrum and the gender and age divide, and this is even though the Supreme Court has upheld the present system. Asked why they had not taken to the streets if they felt so strongly, the answer was always the same: “And risk being thrown into jail?” There is a clear belief that the era of peaceful protests is over.

This, however, has not stopped Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s caste fellows, the Rajputs, traditional BJP supporters, from staging a series of well-attended caste panchayats in western Uttar Pradesh in Saharanpur, Ghaziabad (Dhalauna), Meerut (Sardhana), and Aligarh (Umari) and denouncing the party for fielding only one Thakur candidate in the region, in Moradabad.

Rajput anger

They were hoping to see their caste fellows named in Ghaziabad, Gautam Buddha Nagar, Meerut, Saharanpur, Muzaffarnagar, Kairana, and Bijnor. As the third largest community in western Uttar Pradesh after Jatavs (an SC community that owes allegiance to Bahujan Samaj Party [BSP] leader Mayawati) and Muslims, their anger could adversely affect election results for the BJP in this part of the State.

In their speeches, community leaders denounced the party’s top brass for not selecting enough Rajput candidates and urged their caste fellows not to vote the BJP. This sense of “neglect” had other triggers too: Parshottam Rupala, Union Agriculture Minister, had said in a public speech that the Rajputs had a roti-beti relationship with the British (breaking bread and entering into marital relations), and former Union Minister Mahesh Sharma had, according to them, openly supported “history distortion” by opening a museum dedicated to Samrat Mihir Bhoj and describing him as belonging to the Gujjar community. (According to Rajputs, all kings are Rajputs.)

What is interesting is that while Modi, Amit Shah, and even Adityanath visited the area to calm down the agitating Rajputs, none of it worked. The Election Commission, too, took no notice of these caste gatherings forbidden during the election period.

The word in the villages, at mofussil tea shops and district courts is that Modi and Shah have plans to replace Adityanath with an OBC Chief Minister after the election. Many Rajputs explained to me that the community therefore wishes to keep the numbers down so that Modi will not be able to make any change and will have to depend on Adityanath for a while longer.

Caste, therefore, has made a comeback, with the Rajput community up in arms, both because it fears that its power in the community is diminishing, thanks to the BJP leadership’s steady wooing of the OBCs, witnessed this time in the party’s allies, as well as statements made by senior BJP leaders that it finds offensive.

The Brahmins, too, while well represented in government, fear that the backward castes, whom Modi and the BJP have been espousing, will gradually dominate State politics: whether this will translate into a shrinking of votes for the party was, however, not clear.

The question, therefore, is, given the list of complaints against the government, and the growing disquiet among the privileged castes, will the BJP’s numbers shrink? Especially as there is no overt Hindu-Muslim tension in Uttar Pradesh, and it is caste, seemingly, that has the upper hand.

Let us look at the last election to answer that. In 2019, the BJP, in an alliance with the Apna Dal-Soneylal, or AD(S), secured 49.98 per cent of the votes and won 62 seats, while the AD(S) with 1.21 per cent, managed 2. The SP fought in alliance with the BSP and the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), and the Mahagathbandhan won 15 seats; the BSP managed 10 (19.43 per cent vote share), the SP 5 (18.11 per cent), and the RLD none (1.69 per cent). The Congress, with 6.36 per cent of the votes, won just one seat.

This time, the BJP’s allies include not just the AD(S), but also the RLD, the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party, and the NISHAD (Nirbal Indian Shoshit Hamara Aam Dal) Party, representing a range of OBCs. So it begins with a broader base. The SP and the Congress have joined hands, while the BSP is contesting on its own, which means it is a much weaker configuration than the opposition alliance of 2019.

People were quick to list their complaints against the BJP, but did that mean the party and its allies would lose many seats? Their cryptic reply was: “There is no real opposition, it is very weak.” The Yadav-dominated SP still suffers from an image problem: the non-Yadavs have successfully demonised it as a party of hoodlums. The SP has sought to compensate for this and for its lost allies by making fewer of its core supporters—Yadavs and Muslims—candidates and reserving the biggest chunk of nominations for the other OBCs and SCs.

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The BSP, thanks to the fear about proposed changes to the Constitution, may get more votes this time, but it is contesting alone. Party sources say it is being “blackmailed” by the BJP: in Jaunpur, when the BSP fielded local Robin Hood Dhananjay Singh’s wife, people told this correspondent that she was sure to win for two reasons: one, Dhananjay was very popular, and there was anger that he had been jailed (he has been released since), and two, since the BJP candidate, Kripa Shankar Singh—though originally from Jaunpur—had spent his entire political career until recently in the Congress in Maharashtra, people did not regard him with favour. The BJP has since “compelled” the BSP to change its candidate, and Kripa Shankar Singh is now seen as the front runner. A similar story has emerged from the Basti parliamentary constituency.

Failure to project a united opposition

As for the Congress, Rahul Gandhi’s Nyay Yatra that passed through the State recently made a positive impact. The party’s manifesto is being echoed in villages, and the fact that Rahul is contesting from Rae Bareli are all seen as pluses. But the party leadership has failed to lead from the front and present a united opposition front countrywide.

If these factors point to the difficulties faced by the opposition, another is the state of Hindu-Muslim relations. In western Uttar Pradesh, the fires of the Muzaffarnagar riots may have died out, and people may not be very excited at the consecration of the Ram temple. As you move eastwards, the temple gets more traction but not necessarily universal traction among all Hindus. But one question elicits an answer that tells you that anti-Muslim sentiments are well and truly embedded. Among non-Muslims, across caste lines, there is widespread approbation for Adityanath’s bulldozer politics, which is shorthand for the custodial deaths of Atiq Ahmed and Mukthar Ansari, the two dons of eastern Uttar Pradesh, and the bulldozing of Muslim homes.

Forget the villages, even at the Allahabad High Court, and later at the Azamgarh district court, privileged-caste lawyers are gleeful about the use of bulldozers to “teach the Muslims a lesson, to show them their place”. When I point out that surely as people who believe in the rule of law, they cannot approve of it, they say: “Cases keep piling up in court. They take years to dispose of. This was the only way to show Muslims their place.” Indeed, the construction of the Ram temple gets less traction than bulldozer politics.

In Varanasi, meanwhile, Hindu idols have suddenly found their way into a cellar at the Gyanvapi Mosque, where once logs of wood were stored. People here are awaiting its demolition. A lawyer at the Allahabad High Court tells me: “The Babri Masjid was pulled down by the people. The Gyanvapi Mosque will be pulled down through a court order.” When I tell him that there is a law that says that barring the Babri Masjid/Ram temple, all other places of worship are to remain the way they were in 1947, he shrugs his shoulders. “Who cares about that?”

Indeed, the Varanasi Commissioner, Kaushal Raj Sharma, an IAS officer, along with his young son, have attended prayers in the cellar, giving an “official” stamp of approval to something that is patently unlawful but now has the sanction of the courts.

Indeed, if there is one community that has the greatest stakes in this election, it is the Muslim community—for them, it is a do-or-die situation. Across the State, their first preference is the SP-Congress; in places where the BSP candidate is stronger, they may vote for the party.

So, what are the Muslims doing? The Mufti of Banaras, Abdul Bateen, says that the word to the community is to keep their heads down and vote intelligently. In the well-known Shibli College in Azamgarh, the Principal, Dr Afsar Ali, tells me that 65 per cent of his students are girls and that many of the boys—after completing their degree—are opting for professional courses, such as in management, rather than doing their MA: “When the BJP came to power in 2014, young Muslims were terrified and indecisive about what to do. After a few years of indecision, they are now studying in increased numbers.”

When he says that, I recall what Neeraj Sharma, a Brahmin in Muzaffarnagar’s Jaraud, told me while summing up the election this time: “In the last couple of elections, we voted as Hindus; now that communal frenzy has died down and caste is the most important factor. My community, originally with the Congress, shifted to the BJP, but this time their votes will be split between the BJP and the gathbandhan [Congress-SP] candidate.”

Then he laments, “Once upon a time, Muslims were kattar [hardliners]. Yesterday, I was looking at the UPSC results and saw that many Muslims have got into the civil service. Now, Hindus have become hardliners, like Muslims of the past. If farming collapses, and the government does not create jobs, what will happen to our children?”

Smita Gupta, a former Reuters Fellow, is a prize-winning journalist who writes on politics, Parliament, and identity issues.