'Ram Ya Rozgaar?': The Real Winners & Losers of the 2024 Lok Sabha Elections

Based on ground reports, Rajdeep Sardesai's new book explores the surprises of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

The roadshow was streaming live across news channels, the on-air commentary breathlessly describing what the media projected as ‘public euphoria’. My crew and I had been filming all day in Ayodhya for an election programme. We debated a provocative question—‘Ram ya Rozgaar’ (Ram or jobs)—and heard a range of voices.

(Photo: Aroop Mishra/The Quint)

(Excerpted with permission from Rajdeep Sardesai's new book 2024: The Election that Surprised India, published by HarperCollins Publishers.)

On the first Sunday of May 2024, Ayodhya was awash with saffron. Scores of Sangh Parivar activists from across Uttar Pradesh had poured into the town. Roads were being cleaned up, shops wore a festive look, and temple lights were twinkling in the night sky. Prime Minister Modi was on an election roadshow. Thousands had lined up for a darshan of the self-styled ‘god’ of political Hindutva on his first visit to Ayodhya since the January Ram Mandir consecration ceremony.

At every street corner, there were life-size cut-outs of the Prime Minister with posters thanking him for bringing Ram Lalla ‘back home’ and promising a ‘char sau paar’ victory as a return gift. When Modi climbed atop a gleaming yellow-hued van and brandished the BJP’s lotus symbol in the direction of the crowd, the police struggled to hold back frenzied supporters showering rose petals and chanting ‘Jai Shri Ram’ and ‘Bharat Mata ki jai’.

Standing behind Modi was Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, consciously remaining a step away from the star attraction.

Caught between the two heavyweights was Lallu Singh, a sitting MP and five-time MLA from Ayodhya, which is part of the Faizabad Lok Sabha constituency. Singh waved to the crowd only occasionally, mostly basking in the afterglow of yet another Modi moment.

Ram Ya Rozgaar? 

The roadshow was streaming live across news channels, the on-air commentary breathlessly describing what the media projected as ‘public euphoria’. My crew and I had been filming all day in Ayodhya for an election programme. We debated a provocative question—‘Ram ya Rozgaar’ (Ram or jobs)—and heard a range of voices.

The pilgrims from different parts of the country who had come to catch a glimpse of the Ram idol were mostly upbeat, applauding the Modi government for building the temple. The shopkeepers in and around the temple precincts seemed just as happy. The upsurge in tourist traffic had been good for business. We did hear a few locals complaining of rising LPG prices and civic corruption.

But BJP supporters shut these discordant voices down. Then, just as we were about to switch off the camera, an auto driver stepped into the frame and insisted on having his say. ‘Bhaisahab, na Mathura, na Kashi, abki baar Awadhesh Pasi (This time, neither Mathura, nor Kashi, but Awadhesh Pasi)!’ he emphatically declared. My first reaction was, ‘Awadhesh who?’ Like many Delhi-based journalists who parachute into the election battleground, I hadn’t really decoded Faizabad’s complex web of caste and community politics. [...]

The man whined about how big-ticket land deals were being struck between influential local BJP politicians and ‘outsiders’ for hotel complexes in the city, how municipal authorities were razing old houses only to widen roads for tourists and how those with ‘connections’ to mandir officials were profiting from rising property prices. ‘Sab paise ka khel hai (It is all about money),’ he insisted.

Cut to Milkipur – and Awadhesh Prasad

The morning after Modi’s eye-catching roadshow, we were in the small tehsil town of Milkipur in the Ayodhya district. Unlike the temple hub, no tourists visited Milkipur. No cameras filmed its dingy dirt tracks, and no VVIPs posed for photo-ops here.

But the lack of media attention hadn’t stopped Awadhesh Prasad, the Samajwadi Party candidate for Faizabad, from kicking off his door-to-door campaign in the area. The seventy-eight-year-old Prasad was a veteran politician and the sitting MLA from Milkipur, one of the five assembly segments that comprise the Faizabad Lok Sabha seat.

Dressed in a crumpled kurta pajama with the Samajwadi Party’s distinctive red topi on his head, Prasad seemed pleased to see us. ‘Koi toh national media humse bhi baat karne aaya hai (At least someone from the national media has come to meet us),’ he said with a snigger.

The grey-haired Prasad was no political novice but a nine-time MLA. He was jailed during the Emergency and won his first assembly election in 1977, the tumultuous year of the victory of the Janata Party. He was then a young political activist, a self-confessed ‘chela’ (follower) of the former Prime Minister and Lok Dal leader Chaudhary Charan Singh.

Such was his devotion to his mentor that he could not attend his father’s last rites as he was away in Amethi during the 1981 by-polls in which Rajiv Gandhi made his electoral debut by defeating the Lok Dal’s Sharad Yadav. Prasad was Yadav’s campaign manager and had been instructed by Charan Singh not to leave the counting room till the last vote was counted.

Prasad’s staunch loyalty extended to ‘Netaji’ Mulayam Singh Yadav when the Samajwadi Party was formed in 1992. The Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh was one of several regional parties that emerged when the Janata Dal fragmented across the country.

A Dalit face from the Pasi subcaste in a Yadav-dominated party, Prasad was unwavering in his commitment to Netaji, even when the BSP became the preferred option for the majority of Dalit voters. ‘Hamari rajneeti wafaddari ki hai, avsarwadi nahi (My politics is of loyalty, not opportunism),’ he said. Which is why when Akhilesh Yadav offered him a ticket, he unhesitatingly agreed to take up the Faizabad challenge.

As I tracked his campaign, it was apparent that Prasad was not fazed by the Ram Mandir excitement around him. ‘BJP Ram ke naam par apni politics karti hai; vote ka business karti hai. Asli Ram bhakt to hum hain; mere parivar mein kai logon ke naam Ram se jude hain (The BJP plays politics over Ram; the vote is a business for them. I am a true believer in Ram; many members of my family have Ram in their name),’ he argued. [...]

‘Please don’t see me as a Dalit leader. I am a Samajwadi first and last,’ was Prasad’s parting shot to us.

'Kamandal’ and Mandal

Seen against the backdrop of the larger ongoing battle between the forces of ‘kamandal’ and Mandal, between the religious and caste identities that have shaped Uttar Pradesh’s politics for three decades now, Akhilesh Yadav’s choice of candidate was pitch perfect. Prasad is a Dalit in a constituency with a 26 percent Dalit population, a 14 percent Muslim population and substantial Yadav and Kurmi OBC pockets.

On the other hand, the BJP’s candidate, Lallu Singh, was a Thakur in a constituency where upper castes were comparatively fewer in number. Ayodhya-Faizabad was, in a sense, the ideal demographic profile for Yadav to project his PDA alliance as an alternative to Hindutva politics. [...]

When the Faizabad result came out, it was a bit of a shocker. Prasad had lived up to his claim of being an ‘asli Ram bhakt’. He won by more than 50,000 votes, defeating not just his BJP opponent, Lallu Singh, but the entire Hindutva machine. Caste equations and local issues had trumped Hindu consolidation. Mandal had scored over kamandal.

And I had been served a telling reminder of some of the oldest rules of election field journalism: one, never discount the opinion of a streetside chronicler—as in this case, an auto driver—who takes the trouble to quietly share a bucking-the-trend insight, and two, never get trapped in smug and hyper-partisan echo chambers.

(Veteran journalist Rajdeep Sardesai is currently a consulting editor with the India Today Group and anchors a prime time show on India Today.)