In UP, the Core Election Issue is Unemployment, not Ram Mandir or Mangalsutra

Every young person I spoke to was distressed by the collapse of opportunities and the frequent leaks of exam papers.

We cannot say we were not warned. At a pitstop near Lucknow, a dhaba owner dramatically told this writer that a storm was coming.

One heard a similar voice during this writer’s journey through central Uttar Pradesh and the holy city of Varanasi from where Prime Minister Narendra Modi is contesting the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, for a third consecutive term in the office.

He is likely to repeat his earlier win, but with a reduced margin. But what will be the nature of this turbulence?

The gathering storm was seen in the constituency of Phulpur, near Prayagraj, where lakhs of young men broke the barricades while rushing to meet Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav, perhaps in an attempt to get closer and compel them into committing to the promises of jobs and better lives.

Confidence in the Opposition Alliance Is Soaring

Phulpur’s excitement has reinvigorated the Congress, with Rahul Gandhi cheekily claiming that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will only win from “Kyoto” (the Japanese partner city of Varanasi) and the rest 79 seats will be claimed by the INDIA bloc.

This may not happen, but the confidence of the alliance is soaring to the extent that it has shown complete disregard for the impact that the Ram Mandir or the large mass of beneficiaries (due to freebies like free food and housing loans etc) will have on the polls.

UP has been in a state of fermentation for a while, even though the BJP is actively trying to prioritise the religious divide, claiming that the Congress party will transfer the resources from the Hindu majority to the minorities (particularly Muslims). Then there was the mangalsutra (sacred wedding necklace) claim, that the Congress would snatch it from Hindu women and give it to the Muslims. However, this preposterous claim did not yield the necessary dividends.

Even though UP is shown to be a done deal for the BJP, there is plenty to suggest that in the assembly elections of 2022, the Samajwadi party gave a good fight to the ruling party.

According to SP spokesperson Ameeque Jamei,

“The party was second in 89 assembly seats and taken together (all 89 seats), there was a difference of 1.5 lakh votes. The win or loss difference was in hundreds.”

According to him, the main reason for this was that in large parts of the state, the Dalits, who were mostly aligned with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), decided to vote for the BJP as they did not fully trust the SP. Would it be any different this time?

Misery, Depleted Reserves Are Driving Electoral Choices

The Dalits are anxious over the BJP’s 400-par resolve, considered high enough to change the constitution, which for them means doing away with reservations.

Although the BJP leadership is going to the extent to show that they would not drop the constitutionally mandated job reservations, trust is not easy to regain.

On the contrary, the community appears to show greater trust in Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.

According to Dalit leader Gautam Rane, the BSP at its peak in 2007 controlled 20 percent of the vote share, which has now dwindled to just four percent. Jamei contradicted this statement and said that Dalits were voting for both the SP and the Congress.

While Rane argued that Dalits may vote for the Congress party, the real reason for many of the deprived sections to switch from the BJP to other parties would be unemployment and inflation.

Despite the government giving free ration to 80 crore people in different parts of the country, this scheme was not going down well with the educated yet unemployed groups of people.

Every young person this writer spoke to was distressed by the collapse of opportunities and how the frequent leaks of competitive exam papers were destroying the hope of securing a government job.

Looking at the desperate faces of those who came for the Phulpur rally, it won't come as a surprise that many of them are willing to go and work in war-torn Israel, join the Russian, or Ukrainian armies for the sake of a little money.

The number of young people leaving the country has become truly astronomical, and they are the lucky ones. The unfortunate ones continue to blow up the hard-earned earnings of their parents as they endlessly pursue competitive examinations for sarkari jobs that take them nowhere.

It is in these circumstances that the promise of jobs by the Congress party in this election is driving the youth hysterical.

In the 2014 elections, it was the promise of two crore jobs a year that made the same people abandon the Congress party and support the BJP and its mascot, Narendra Modi.

It is a different matter that the BJP did precious little work when it came to creating jobs. Instead, they furiously went about privatising public sector companies as well as those entities that could have lent meaning to the BJP’s promise.

Now, the issue has come full circle. Deepened misery and depleted reserves are driving people’s electoral choices.

(The author is the editor of Delhi's Hardnews magazine. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)