The sweeping victory of the BJP in three out of four legislative assembly elections — Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh — whose results were declared on December 3, has some important lessons for INDIA (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance) and the Congress party which is likely to lead this 28-party alliance in General Election 2024 scheduled for next summer. BJP ousted incumbent Congress governments in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh and bucked anti-incumbency tradition to retain Madhya Pradesh.

The consolation prize for Congress was Telangana in which this grand old party secured an unlikely victory ousting the incumbent Bharatiya Rashtra Samithi which had successfully led a prolonged struggle for separate statehood for Telangana granted in 2014.

This scorecard suggests that Congress — the sole pan-India party in the country apart from BJP — is down but not quite out. If it can ensure that the prime strategy of the INDIA alliance — ensuring a common opposition (INDIA) candidate in all 543 Lok Sabha constituencies to prevent splitting of anti-BJP votes — is implemented.

However, this is contingent upon understanding how and why the BJP swept these latest assembly elections, a highlight of which was that all parties promised a range of revadis or freebies. The difference between the BJP and other parties was the credibility of freebies promised and careful targeting. It’s no surprise that in all states, BJP overwhelmingly won the women’s vote because it has a record of providing subsidies which lighten the daily burden of women — subsidised cooking gas, reaching tap water to village homes and deposit of cash subsidies directly into targeted beneficiaries bank accounts through latest digital technology usage.

The advantage of the BJP is that its leaders have experienced food, housing and shelter deprivation. The Congress leadership — especially the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty — has not. It’s the BJP leadership’s — and in particular prime minister Modi’s — awareness of the importance of these quotidian necessities and the daily living experience of the subaltern classes that swung their vote in BJP’s favour.

A second factor is that unlike the Congress and other opposition parties, the BJP has its students wing and RSS karyakartas as a strong and dedicated grassroots cadre. They ensure that the freebies and subsidies reach the government’s target groups. In the decades under Congress rule, much of the welfare allocations for the poor and marginalized were siphoned away by India’s notorious bureaucracy. BJP’s dedicated constituency and booth level cadres ensure that welfare allocations and subsidies proclaimed by the Central and state governments reach targeted beneficiaries.

In the new digital age of the internet and ubiquitous social media, the rules of electoral democracy have changed. The pathetic living conditions of bottom-of-pyramid households can no longer be fudged and ameliorative freebies have to be seen to be delivered.