The Bharatiya Janata Party’s debacle in the Delhi elections is likely to be explained by the predictable arguments. It’s internal report on these elections is likely to conclude that infighting in the party and the decision to ignore leaders who have loyally served the party for decades and make a person who opportunistically joined the party right before the elections the Chief Ministerial candidate hurt the BJP as did the disastrous policy of giving tickets to defectors from parties like the Congress. They can claim that the BJP was able to broadly hold on to its voters but the collapse of the Congress and the shift of its voters to the Aam Aadmi Party was the reason for the disaster. Or simply that Delhi was simply blown away by Arvind Kejriwal. These reasons may all be true, but none of them are as important as the feeling that voters have that the BJP hasn’t delivered on issues most important to them.

The voters of Delhi have repeatedly indicated that the most important issues to them are the safety of women (read proxy for crime) and corruption. A particularly important turning point was the Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case, which made voters want stringent action against criminals. The India Today-Cicero opinion poll in January 2015 in Delhi showed that 20% of respondents said safety of women was the most important issue followed by 17% who said corruption was. These are complex issues to tackle - but to voters perception matters and currently the perception is that the BJP is doing nothing to tackle them.

Much of the blame actually lies with an often corrupt and utterly incompetent judiciary, but the BJP needs to legislate to change its bizarre decisions. Look at the case of the Nithari house of horrors convict, Surender Koli, who raped, murdered and cannibalized young girls. He was convicted by a trial court and sentenced to death. He appealed to the High Court and then the Supreme Court, which both confirmed the death penalty and his Presidential Pardon was rejected. He was then allowed to appeal to the Supreme Court again, which confirmed the death penalty. He then appealed to the High Court again, which commuted the penalty because of a nonsensical judgment by the Supreme Court that an inordinate delay in carrying out the death penalty is cruel to prisoners. With India's snail-paced judicial system, this perverse judgment will lead to no criminal ever being sent to the gallows even for crimes as heinous as this one. There have been several egregious judgments like this since the BJP came to power, to which it has not responded at all, which lead voters to believe that its soft on crime.

To its credit, the BJP government has introduced reforms making it possible to apply for some permits online and reduced bureaucratic hurdles. There also has been no evidence of the sort of top-down corruption that was rampant under the Manmohan Singh government. However, for anyone dealing with a government employee, corruption is as endemic as ever. One major factor that pushed hawkers and rickshaw drivers to the Aam Aadmi Party was the belief that during Kerjiwal’s 49- day tenure policeman were scared to ask for bribes from them. The BJP needs to legislate to ensure that government servants are actually punished for their misdeeds, which is likely to reduce corruption levels. Perhaps Modi can look to China, for inspiration from its anti-corruption crusade, within the limits of a democracy.

In addition to being highly important issues to voters, these are really relatively easy issues for the government to act on. Why can’t the government take on the Supreme Court for it’s bizarre decision for stay the execution of the Nirbhaya convicts, which was a crime that shocked and horrified the country and much of the world? The other important issues to voters like creating employment, fighting price rise and improving infrastructure are long-term projects. It will take years to show significant improvements by which the government’s goodwill may have evaporated.

It’s baffling that a conservative party is showing such weakness in tackling crime and corruption, especially when there is demand for a response by the electorate. The BJP’s unlikely to face a threat from a moribund Congress at the moment, but unless it gives voters what they want, regional parties across the country could upstage it like the AAP did.

(Karan Shah is an MBA student at Harvard Business School and a political commentator).

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