The Diminishing Middle

Before campaigning for India’s general election started in April this year, I was in Delhi discussing the Bharatiya Janata Party’s candidates in the capital with party workers. As we talked about the BJP’s prospects, I asked whether they thought the Congress would make something of a revival in Delhi. One party worker dismissed my query immediately. “Of course not, this is clearly Modi’s election!” he said. On the sidelines, the Aam Aadmi Party and the Congress were facing a breakdown in talks over an alliance that did not come through.

The BJP, at the time, was dealing with a public showdown of its own. Udit Raj, one of its prominent Dalit members of parliament at the time, was furious over the party’s delay in ticket distribution, specifically its reluctance to renominate him for his constituency of North West Delhi. After sending his followers to make a commotion over the tickets at the party office, Raj finally quit the BJP after the ticket was given to the singer Hans Raj Hans, and joined the Congress. In the press conference held by the Congress to welcome him—party workers—“use this propaganda as their weapon and as a source of pride, and say that the party will do what the internal survey says.” He argued that the survey’s findings indicated that the seat should have been given to him. “My only mistake was that I was neither deaf nor blind in the party. If that was the case, perhaps they would have rewarded me for being mute, and I could have even become the PM!”