What BJP and Congress are failing to read about Uttar Pradesh

"The media had no idea what was happening on ground," a founding member of the CAG (Citizens for Accountable Governance) said to me after the 2014 Lok Sabha sweep by Narendra Modi. The CAG was involved in strategy and outreach for the BJP prime-ministerial candidate's campaign, which included collating and analysing grassroots data to decide which issues he should raise where.

"The media questioned why, at some rallies, he spoke 'suddenly' about water problems. This was because our research revealed people felt water was the real issue in those places."

Two years later, electioneering in Uttar Pradesh, India's politically most significant state, is on. It's a four-cornered contest (the SP, the BSP, the BJP and the Congress) but the two big national parties - the BJP and the Congress - seem ready to campaign harder than ever. Prashant Kishor - who helmed the CAG - is now working on the Congress campaign in Uttar Pradesh.

He now leads the "cross party advocacy group" I-PAC (Indian Political Action Committee), comprising other ex-CAG members as well, but also many new recruits.

The campaigns devised by such organisations serve to reinstate a basic principle of democratic politics: if you're an incumbent, you fight elections based on what people think you've done for them, not what you believe you have done. If you're a challenger, you do so based on what people want, not what you think they need. This is why when Modi campaigned during the Bihar polls on issues of water and electricity shortage and bad roads, his speeches - in some places - fell flat.

Since the people got water, roads and electricity, the BJP - in effect - ended up campaigning for its opponent Nitish Kumar. Similarly, during the Assam elections this year, many voters said to me that they saw Himanta Biswa Sarma as the driving force behind a lot of the Tarun Gogoi government's recent work (despite the allegations of corruption against Sarma). When Sarma switched sides to BJP, the tide turned.

Coming back to UP, the thrust of promises made so far during Rahul Gandhi's maha padyatra and khaat sabhas in the state is: Bijli (Electricity) Bill Half, Karza Maaf (loan waived) and higher MSP (Minimum Support Prices) for farmers. Precedent suggests these Left-leaning pitches - augmented by Gandhi's opposition to railway surge pricing and his rhetoric on Modi's foreign trips and expensive suit - have been built up on research similar to the one Kishor's team did for Modi's 2014 LS campaign or Nitish Kumar's campaign for re-election in Bihar. Precedent, and the fact that Kishor has had a sizeable team (some reports say 150, some say 500) of qualified professionals parked in UP for a while.

However, each of the above promises can be debated from both sides. Why should agriculture - an essential sector which sustains 58 per cent of rural households - not benefit from loan waivers and sops likethe ones offered to industry? Corporate credit did, after all, account for the majority of bad loans as per the FY16 third quarter results.

Conversely, electricity bill and loan waivers, without a long-term plan, could threaten the rural power and credit infrastructure in the state. They bring with them risks of power shortage and a downsizing of rural credit available to farmers in the medium to long run, thus pushing them into the clutches of local moneylenders.

A study says farmers don't want their children to continue farming. But then, in the absence of alternative work, should they be hung out to dry? Similarly, with MSPs, questions on whether and to what extent they impact inflation are still very much open.

In short, each of the above issues would make for a compelling debate at the Delhi School of Economics or the JNU. They would constitute ideal essay type questions in IAS or public bank officers' entrance exams. But Gandhi isn't a participant in such a debate. He isn't an examinee for the IAS or a public bank service. He's fighting an election based on what his team seems to believe people want.

Before we go into whether they are right, let's consider some advice Nikita Khrushchev had given to Richard Nixon (according to Rick Perlstein's The Invisible Bridge): "If the people believe there's an imaginary river out there, you don't tell them there's no river there. You build an imaginary bridge over the imaginary river."

Does the Congress campaign in UP - jaded as it may seem - comprise an imaginary river? Let's consider recent facts. A few days ago, a 42-year-old farmer named Ranjit Yadav reportedly hung himself, in Nauli Harnath village in Badaun, over his failure to repay a two-lakh rupee loan. This May, a farmer with a debt of Rs 3,00,000 consumed poison outside UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav's house. The UP police initiated action against him for a "possibility of breach of peace". According to a National Sample Survey Organisation report, UP is home to the highest number of indebted farm households in India.

A Human Rights Law Network (HRLN) report from 2011 profiles UP farmers who have committed suicide. Put yourself in their shoes for a moment. The crops are predicted to be better this year, you hear, but you're already deep in debt and don't have money for socio-cultural expenses like a family wedding, say, which in your village is a substantial societal obligation. Forget societal obligations. A medical emergency has cropped up.

You're about to turn, against your better judgment, to the local moneylender already. Of course you understand that the cycle of loan waivers or sops and inadequate harvests or skewed agricultural markets aren't a sustainable solution. But till such a solution arrives, would you feel your plight should be hostage to a macroeconomic Rubik's cube? The mangpatras (demand charters) the Congress is collecting from farmers along Gandhi's padyatra may not be conclusive, but are they not even indicative?

The BJP's response to the Congress yatra, on the other hand, continues to be a pitch for Vikas, or development, which led UP to vote the party in with a historic mandate in 2014. This is epitomised by the government's attempts to make a "Varanasi model" out of Modi's constituency. But, even if successful, the sheen of this model may not be enough to win the party numbers equivalent to its Lok Sabha victory in the UP polls. The people who voted for vikas didn't do so at the cost of their survival.

If people throughout the state - not just in Varanasi - don't feel the benefits of vikas trickle down to them after three years of Modi sarkar at the Centre, they may be feel like reminding the BJP, along with the SP, of the catastrophic fallout of NDA's "India Shining" campaign.

Oh and to answer Khrushchev, the river is real. Some are drowning in it. Others stand on the shore wondering if they'll be able to swim across. They understand a bridge will take time to build. They're hoping for a boat.

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