THE HINDU Editorial Vocabulary-March 13, 2017- Topic 1

First among unequals (Part – I)

Five Assembly elections in five different States cannot possibly have one running national theme. But when one of them is in Uttar Pradesh, with the largest electorate in the country by far, the debate inevitably moves to the possible pointers for the 2019 Lok Sabha election. Even if the Bharatiya Janata Party’s victory in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand was expected, the more than three-fourths majority was a surprise to supporters and detractors alike. 

Nearly three years after the Lok Sabha election, nothing much seems to have changed on the electoral ground. The biggest takeaway is that Prime Minister Narendra Modi remains the pan-Indian face of the BJP, and the combination of the promise of economic development and the propagation of a muscular nationalism is hard to beat. Those who thought that Mr. Modi’s popularity had peaked in 2014 were probably right, but instead of a sharp decline from then on, his acceptance among voters seems to have reached a comfortable plateau.

In both U.P. and Uttarakhand, the BJP’s vote share dipped only marginally, from 43.6% (together with smaller allies) in 2014 to 41.4% in the former, and from 55.9% to 46.5% in Uttarakhand. In the absence of a united opposition, as in Bihar in 2015, the elections in both States were a stroll in the park. Any gains the Samajwadi Party and the Congress made through an alliance were lost because of the infighting in the SP, and owing to a slightly improved performance by the Bahujan Samaj Party, which at 22.2% polled 2.4% more of the total votes in 2017 over 2014 despite finishing a poor third. The SP leader and outgoing Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Akhilesh Yadav, did try to shed some of the anti-incumbency baggage by distancing himself from the old guard in the party, but in the process his party came across as a divided house. Voters quite rightly refused to buy into the narrative that the failures on the law and order front and the shortcomings in governance were entirely on account of an earlier generation of leaders. If he was attempting to appeal to the youth, projecting himself and Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi as the face of the campaign, he did not quite succeed in it. A grand alliance of the kind that saw the BJP lose in Bihar would have had to include the BSP, unthinkable though it is given the caste dynamics at play. But BSP supremo Mayawati did herself no favours by continuing to be averse to a pre-poll tie-up, while displaying an unseemly readiness to align after the election without any ideological compunctions. The BSP, which has allied with the SP and the BJP at different points, needs to reconsider this strategy if it wants to expand beyond its core Dalit constituency. The party may not have held much appeal for minorities, despite fielding Muslims in about one-fourth of the total seats. In the present political climate, in the absence of a Bihar-type grand alliance it would appear that the BJP’s rivals can do little but hope that Prime Minister Modi squanders his goodwill over the next two years in a series of political missteps and administrative failures in delivering on promises.

Vocabulary

Inevitable: certain to happen.

Example: War was inevitable

Synonyms: unavoidable, inescapable, inexorable, ineluctable, assured

Detractors: a person who disparages someone or something.

Example: Of course, detractors and critics emerged instantaneously out of the woodwork.

Synonyms: critic, disparager, denigrator, deprecator, belittler, attacker

Muscular: of or affecting the muscles.

Example: Energy is needed for muscular activity

Synonyms: fibrous, sinewy, motoric

Stroll: walk in a leisurely way.

Example: I strolled around the city

Synonyms: saunter, amble, wander, meander, ramble

Incumbency: the holding of an office or the period during which one is held.

Example: His chief advantage is his incumbency and its inherent command of the free-media forum that will be pivotal over the next eight weeks.

Baggage: past experiences or long-held ideas regarded as burdens and impediments.

Example: The emotional baggage I'm hauling around

Averse: having a strong dislike of or opposition to something.

Example: As a former CIA director, he is not averse to secrecy

Synonyms: opposed to, against, antipathetic to, hostile to, ill-disposed to

Squander: waste something, especially money or time in a reckless and foolish manner.

Example: Entrepreneurs squander their profits on expensive cars

Synonyms: waste, misspend, misuse, throw away, fritter away