The Limits of Welfarism

Outreach to the middle class helped the BJP win Delhi. The verdict will impact the Opposition's tactic to forge a united front against the BJP

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Welfarism works in Indian politics. It's important to start from there. The BJP's success after it rode to power at the Centre on a pro-development, anti-corruption platform in 2014, and till its subpar performance in the 2024 general elections, was built on a potent mixture of welfarism and Hindutva. It can be argued that the first helped it consolidate the Hindu vote across OBCs, SCs and STs. It can also be argued that the party's performance in 2024—it emerged as the single largest by a distance but needed allies to muster a majority—was the result of not doing enough on welfare in the interim budget of 2024-25 that was presented ahead of the elections.

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) was an early adopter of an extreme form of welfarism—and that, combined with an increasingly ambiguous stand on Hindutva, helped propel the political startup to power in 2015 in Delhi, and also helped it retain power in 2020. It was also one of the factors that helped the party expand (successfully) into Punjab, but the state's political dynamic is complex and warrants a separate analysis.