Friday, 17 May, 2024
Politics is one arena in India where discourse is seldom based on data and numbers. Invariably, it is dominated by rumours, gossip, “revelations” from anonymous sources and a lot of speculative opinion masquerading as analysis
Politics is one arena in India where discourse is seldom based on data and numbers. Invariably, it is dominated by rumours, gossip, “revelations” from anonymous sources and a lot of speculative opinion masquerading as analysis. Besides, the implications of political events are usually via ideological lenses where data is ignored it is not fitting the narrative. Not surprisingly, news coming from the ruling party BJP became fodder for exactly that kind of discourse. The news was fairly straightforward. The party has reconstituted its parliamentary board. Some new names have been added and some dropped. Two prominent leaders who no longer find a place in the parliamentary board are Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan and Union Minister of Road Transport & Highways Nitin Gadkari. The dropping of the two senior BJP leaders from a key decision making body raised many eyebrows. Some argued that the ambitious leaders were being cut to size. Some felt that t would be premature to jump to conclusions about a supposed internal rift within the party. Some “analysts” argued that the two were perhaps the last of the tall leaders to have emerged in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-L. K Advani era and their “exit” sends a signal.
As stated repeatedly, India Tracker respects all opinions and all shades of analysis but doesn’t offer any of its own. It relies on data to be presented to readers who can then come their conclusions. Of course, some data analysis is offered to readers. As part of this mission to deliver data driven content, C Voter-India Tracker conducted a snap poll using random sampling and the CATI technique to ask ordinary Indians the following question: Do You think the decision to drop Shivraj Singh Chauhan and Nitin Gadkari from the BJP Parliamentary Board will hurt the party? A significant majority (57%) of the respondents overall were of the opinion that the move will hurt the party. As the accompanying chart shows, more than 50% of the respondents in almost every category affirmed that the move to drop Chauhan and Gadkari will damage the party. In terms of divergence, one could see a difference in reactions of Dalit respondents as compared to upper caste Hindus. While almost 3 out of every four Dalits stated that the decision will hurt the party, a significantly lower 55.5% of upper caste Hindus agreed with the contention. What needs to be noted here is that even among upper caste Hindus, the majority perception is that the dropping will cost the party
Since the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been the unchallenged leader of the BJP though he has never been the party President. The second most powerful in the BJP hierarchy since then has been current Union Home minister Amit Shah who was party president from 2014 to 2019. There is no doubt in anybody’s minds that the duo are the ones who make the big decisions; both for the government and the party. Chauhan will play a big role for the party if it retains power in 2013 assembly elections. And Gadkari will play a big role in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections in the state of Maharashtra.
