The American Journal of Political Science (AJPS) has published a recent study that suggests that the terror attack on Indian security forces in Pulwama on 14 February 2019, downgraded the BJP’s support in states where it holds government offices.
The study report titled ‘Who Rallies Around the Flag? Nationalist Parties, National Security, and the 2019 Indian Election’, was co-authored by Milan Vaishnav, a senior fellow and head of the South Asia Program at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Jamie Hintson, a junior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
In a series of tweets, Vaishnav summarised the paper’s argument: ‘At a macro level, it’s widely accepted that the 2019 Pulwama terror attacks in Kashmir generated nationalist rallying that aided the BJP’s re-election campaign. Yet, we find those most acutely affected by the attacks were much less likely to rally behind the BJP.’
According to the study, nationalist regimes are generally well-positioned to profit from security-related crises and are more likely to have hardline views on national security policy. Vaishnav argues that granular data on electoral outcomes and village-level data suggest that proximity to Pulwama victims’ funeral processions in areas where the BJP was not the incumbent substantially weakened its support in those areas.
‘Our effects cannot be explained by prior electoral behaviour, spatial correlation or personal connections to victims,’ Vaishnav wrote, adding that even if several mechanisms are at work, the preponderance of evidence points to anti-incumbent blame as the primary source of the supposed decline in support for the BJP.
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Gopal Krishna Agarwal, a BJP spokesperson, downplayed the study findings, claiming that such a broad conclusion could not be derived from a single survey. ‘There are very huge negative impacts of the Pulwama attack. But the strong action taken by the government had brought out a very positive image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi that he means business,’ Agarwal pointed out.
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