Why Opposition parties seem to lose the plot against BJP

These days, Tejashwi Yadav is the target of intense trolling. Before him, the Hooda family in Haryana and the Thackerays in Maharashtra were subjected to the same treatment. So, is the battle of victory and defeat in electoral politics a tussle between dynasts versus the rest? Absolutely not.

- Shashi Shekhar

If dynastic politics were the only bane, then Hemant Soren in Jharkhand would have suffered a drubbing as was witnessed in the Maharashtra and Haryana polls. Soren not only bucked incumbency, but his party, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), returned with more seats than earlier. He proved that to win an election, you have to break the strategic contours of your opponent before humbling them.

Taking a leaf out of his opponents’ playbook, Soren, on the lines of Maharashtra’s Majhi Ladki Bahin and Madhya Pradesh’s Ladli Behna schemes, launched his own Maiya Samman scheme and systematically implemented it on the ground. With many other welfare initiatives, he tried to address the rights and needs of every voter segment.

Even then, anti-incumbency could have played spoilsport, but his arrest gave him a shot in the arm. The assembly elections added to his assembly seats while the Congress’s tally remained unchanged at 16. The trends are clear in states where the Congress is the junior partner. Despite a supporting wave, the party is incapable of cashing in on it.

We can debate whether the distribution of freebies just before the elections has emerged as a unique new strategy to secure victory. However, this is the second popular but partial truth. Arvind Kejriwal initiated this trend and became its victim during the last Delhi assembly elections. After providing almost all the basic amenities such as electricity, water, health care, and education for free, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) emptied out the exchequer.