GL Raina
giridharraina@gmail.com
Political change in India rarely begins with slogans; it begins with evidence. The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance’s decisive victory in the Thiruvananthapuram Municipal Corporation is not relevant to Kashmir because of geography, but because of pattern. It demonstrates how regions long declared politically “exceptional” eventually respond to the same forces-governance performance, institutional credibility, and voter fatigue with entrenched elites.
Kashmir has lived under the myth of political exceptionalism for decades. That myth is now fraying.
Kerala’s capital remained under uninterrupted Left control for 45 years-until voters dismantled that monopoly by awarding the NDA a clear mandate. This was not a sudden ideological conversion but the culmination of sustained public discontent with corruption, administrative stagnation, and concentration of power. Kashmiris would find this narrative uncomfortably familiar.
In Jammu & Kashmir, regional parties perfected a model of politics built not on delivery but on perpetual grievance. Anti-Delhi rhetoric substituted for accountability, while dynastic control hollowed out institutions. Governance failures were reframed as political victimhood, and underperformance was masked by identity mobilisation. Over time, this politics produced neither prosperity nor stability-only stagnation.
The early signs of political correction are now visible.
The BJP’s growing electoral footprint in Jammu & Kashmir-particularly beyond its traditional stronghold in Jammu-signals a slow but meaningful shift. Victories in District Development Council constituencies in the Kashmir Valley in 2020, and measurable vote shares in constituencies like Budgam despite coordinated opposition campaigns, mark a departure from the past. These numbers may appear modest in isolation, but politically they are foundational. Every entrenched political order collapses first at the margins.
Electoral data reinforces this trend. From a marginal vote share of just over 5 per cent in 1987, the BJP expanded to nearly 23 per cent and 25 Assembly seats in 2014, forming a government in alliance with the PDP. Since then, its presence has steadily broadened beyond traditional voter bases. This growth, as in Kerala, has been incremental, deliberate and organisationally driven.
The comparison with Kerala is instructive because it exposes a universal political truth: voters eventually prioritise governance over narrative. In Kerala, public anger against corruption scandals, declining service delivery, and administrative arrogance punctured decades of ideological dominance. In Kashmir, too, citizens are increasingly questioning the gap between political promises and lived reality-whether in employment, infrastructure, education, healthcare, or basic civic governance.
A generational shift is particularly evident. Younger Kashmiris, digitally connected and nationally aware, are less receptive to inherited political loyalties. They compare governance outcomes across states. They measure governments by roads built, services delivered, and opportunities created-not by slogans or historical grievance. For them, politics is becoming transactional rather than emotional.
This is precisely where the BJP’s appeal gains relevance. The party’s emphasis on infrastructure development, direct welfare delivery, transparency, and institutional reform has altered expectations across India. Kashmir is no longer insulated from this national benchmark. The discourse is slowly moving from “who represents us” to “who performs for us.” That shift is politically transformative. Equally important is the erosion of credibility of traditional parties. Dynastic politics, corruption allegations, and chronic underperformance have created a trust deficit that anti-BJP rhetoric can no longer conceal. Repeating fear-based narratives may mobilise cadres, but it does not solve unemployment, improve schools, or attract investment. The lesson from Thiruvananthapuram Kerala is therefore not about ideology-it is about inevitability. Political monopolies collapse when governance credibility erodes. Kashmir is approaching that inflection point.
The lotus blooming in unlikely terrain is not a coincidence; it is the outcome of voter rationality asserting itself over political mythmaking. If Kerala could break free from 45 years of ideological inertia, Kashmir’s long-standing political stagnation is not destiny.
Change does not announce itself loudly in Kashmir. It moves quietly-vote by vote, constituency by constituency, generation by generation. But once it begins, it rarely reverses.
The question is no longer whether Kashmir will change, but how prepared its political class is for a post-monopoly reality.
(The author is a former Member of the legislative council of erstwhile Jammu Kashmir and spokesperson of the BJP JK-UT)
Follow our WhatsApp channel
