One of the new default assumptions in Indian politics appears to be that of a contemporary rural-urban divide between the major parties. The argument essentially runs like this: the Congress Party has been skilful in exploiting rural distress to increase its vote base in the countryside, but the BJP remains rock solid in the cities. This was borne out, it is suggested, in the recent Gujarat assembly polls, where a significant rural wave for the Congress was only overcome by the BJP holding on to their base in the towns.

The corollary of this argument is that the Congress faces a historic new challenge. Thanks to agrarian failures and rural economic stagnation, it can be more successful in rural areas than in 2014, since many rural voters feel the BJP government has done nothing for them. But conversely, the argument runs, the Congress is clueless about how to win over the urban voter. The BJP has managed to consolidate the urban vote, where its traditional support base in the trading community has been augmented by votes from the upwardly-mobile city-dweller, the aspirational youth and the professionals (who also set the social media agenda with their tweets and WhatsApp forwards). Without these segments of the electorate, say our critics, the Congress is doomed — and we don’t know how to woo them.

It is an interesting argument, and whatever its merits, as a Congressman I agree that we need to take it seriously. The urban voter used to be ours, as recently as 2009: one of our biggest challenges in the run up to 2019 would be to win her back. India is urbanising rapidly: the 2011 census proved that the level of urbanisation in India increased from 27.81% in 2001 to 31.16% a decade later, and the proportion of India’s rural population declined from 72.19% to 68.84% between 2001 and 2011. If anything, this trend is accelerating; by 2021 there is likely to be further precipitous increase in the urban population. It’s clear the Congress party needs a strategy to wean these voters away from the BJP. 

The party’s well-wishers have another concern. The BJP government’s evident failures in ministering to the needs of rural India represent an obvious political opportunity for the Congress: the mounting farmer suicides, the inadequate funding of the MNREGA, the lack of increase in Minimum Support Prices (MSPs) paid to farmers for vital crops, and the increase in distress migration in the countryside, represent easy targets for the Opposition. But as a result, many Congress well-wishers fear, the party is likely to revert to its tried and tested policies in response, promising massive loan waivers, rural aid packages, increased funding for MNREGA and higher MSPs — which in turn will alienate the urban Indian voter. In other words, the way it exploits the rural vote could cost the Congress more of the urban vote. Agricultural welfarism has always been looked at with suspicion by the urban voter. How can the Congress manage to appeal to the farmer in distress without losing the cities? 

Let’s start with the assumption that the BJP’s urban support has become more consolidated since 2014. The principal basis for this contention is that in the Gujarat assembly elections, the BJP recorded a success rate of 82.7% in urban areas, often with huge victory margins. The BJP was long seen as a party of the trading community: these results suggest its support has gone beyond that. It’s also suggested that the city is now home to the “aspirational Indian”, who will vote for the right-of-centre economics advocated by Mr Modi and the BJP.

I respectfully disagree. The fact is that the trading community and the small <

Source: https://www.news18.com/news/opinion/opinion-by-shashi-tharoor-congress-must-point-out-that-we-too-sh