I.N.D.I.A. and Its Discontents

CHAMPARAN IN BIHAR was the crucible of the first Satyagraha movement that provided a strong sense of purpose to oppressed indigo farmers as well as Indian youth in 1917. But that was not the predomi­nant association this September for a Congress that auto-hustled into an alliance against Narendra Modi for the 2024 polls. Instead, supporters of opposition parties exploded with enthusiasm when Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Lalu Prasad and Congress’ de facto chief Rahul Gandhi broke bread over Champaran mutton curry—slow-cooked for several hours to produce a harmonious blend of all ingredients and a mouth-watering aroma—at the home of Misa Bharti, Lalu Prasad’s daughter and Rajya Sabha MP, at New Delhi’s Pandara Park. The video of the two cooking up an apparent camaraderie was released on social media.

But this bonhomie was nowhere to be seen just five months earlier. Lalu Prasad had first heard news of Rahul Gandhi’s dis­qualification as an MP while recuperating at his daughter’s home after surgery in Singapore. That afternoon of April 11, the RJD supremo had broken into colourful colloquialisms before three important visitors from his home state: “Serves him right. What he did on the ordinance on convicted MPs hurt me the most and I’m unlikely to forgive or forget.” Back in 2013, Rahul Gandhi had publicly criticised an ordinance to be brought in by then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. It sought to protect convicted law­makers from disqualification but Rahul had torn up the ordi­nance, humiliating Congress’ own prime minister. His imperious act had ended with the withdrawal of the ordinance and the Bill. In October that year, Lalu Prasad was disqualified as a member of Lok Sabha after the former Bihar chief minister was convicted in the multi-crore fodder scam. It put an abrupt end to his political career as he was disqualified from contesting elections.

Today, Lalu Prasad and Rahul Gandhi have had to swal­low the bitterness, with only a remote shot at taking down Narendra Modi by May next year. Gandhi is unlikely to be un­aware of the humiliation behind the airbrushed images: of the 40 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar, Janata Dal (United), or JD(U), chief Nitish Kumar and ally RJD have no plans to give the ‘grand old party’ any more than two, choosing to contest 18 seats each and leave one each for the Communist Party of India (CPI) and Com­munist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), or CPI(ML).

Queering the pitch for Congress in Bihar is also the Other Backward Classes (OBC) factor. Rahul Gandhi has, of late, been loudly proclaiming the standard template of an OBC-Dalit-Mus­lim coalition. Post-Mandal, the social justice parties helmed by leaders like Lalu Prasad, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Sharad Yadav, Nitish Kumar and Ram Vilas Paswan drained Congress signifi­cantly of this vote bank while vestigial upper-caste voters moved to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Understandably, despite an alliance with Congress to defeat Modi, the social justice parties are loath to part with anything but the minimum from their hard-won electoral support.

Underlying tensions in the alliance point to a deep-rooted resentment of what is viewed as one-upmanship by Congress on the OBC issue, despite being a late entrant. From the time of BR Ambedkar till 2011, Congress was against a caste census. As recently as the first meeting of the Indian National Developmen­tal Inclusive Alliance (I.N.D.I.A.), too, Congress was not keen on backing a resolution supporting a caste-based census. Even at the meeting of a sub-committee of the alliance at Sharad Pawar’s home, Congress General Secretary KC Venugopal tried to push the issue off the table by citing a message from Trinamool Con­gress (TMC) MP Derek O’Brien that the caste census issue should be deferred till Mamata Banerjee concluded her discussions with alliance members. It was JD(U) and RJD that forced the issuing of a statement supporting a caste census.

Congress’ sudden conversion to a cause it has historically ig­nored is perceived by its social justice allies as a way of muscling into their territory. The Mandal formations are likely justified in concluding that Congress, which is ahead of them in terms of Muslim support in a Lok Sabha election, is looking to eat into their own OBC vote base.

The group of 26 opposition parties is aiming at taking down Modi together in 2024. But the caste census, which I.N.D.I.A. hopes to weaponise into Mandal 2.0 in Hindi-belt states like Bihar, is only one factor exposing the contradictions within the alliance and the fragile bonds holding it together. Yogi Adityanath’s popu­larity in Uttar Pradesh (UP), coupled with BJP’s own now massive OBC support, makes it more difficult in UP.

The Gandhis’ approach did not just jeopardise honest bond­ing with the likes of Lalu Prasad but also with other potential allies like the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). At a meeting on May 22, 2023 to decide on the formation of an opposition alliance at Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge’s residence, attended by Nitish Kumar and Rahul Gandhi, the Bihar chief minister told Gandhi that Arvind Kejriwal had tried a seat-sharing agreement with Congress before the 2022 Gujarat polls. Kumar told him that Kejriwal had talked to Sonia Gandhi. Rahul denied this. At Kumar’s insistence, Rahul then called his mother. At the end of the conversation, he acknowledged that there was indeed a pro­posal from AAP. In those polls held in December 2022 to elect 182 members, BJP won a huge majority of 156 seats, the biggest in Gujarat’s history. Congress fell to its lowest count in the state. It took this drubbing in Gujarat for Congress to shed its arrogance and join I.N.D.I.A.

Replete with contradictions, the alliance is proving to be a forced coalition forged more by the desperation to unseat Modi than by any alternative vision for India. It is weak not just in imagination but also in terms of considerations that matter on the ground. Despite the shrinking distance from the task, it has not been able to get its act together. The alliance has only managed to hand Modi and BJP a definite advantage by attacking Sana­tana Dharma, only to claim in the face of the backlash that the attacks were on casteism among Hindus. Even assuming that Udhayanidhi Stalin, Bihar Education Minister Chandra Shekhar and UP’s Swami Prasad Maurya were not reading from a larger script, they have done great damage to the alliance.

The attack on Sanatana Dharma has exposed the cracks within the opposition alliance, with TMC and Shiv Sena quickly distanc­ing themselves and a red-faced Congress sitting on the fence on the issue, with the likes of Priyank Kharge backing Stalin Jr but others left humming and hawing. Even if anti-incumbency against Modi existed, I.N.D.I.A. would be poorly placed to use this to its advantage. Unsurprisingly, a recent survey gave only a minimal addition of about 25 seats over 2019 to the parties ranged against Modi.

ANTI-INCUMBENCY IS best described as a concept based on probabilities. Often considered intrinsic to India’s politi­cal discourse, the best shot against a government in power is based primarily on resentment over non-delivery of promises on essential goods and services, especially to the neediest. This is because in every election, the challenger expects to work a political or policy setback to make things complicated for the incumbent. Consequently, there is always anticipation of political or social chaos that will give it the necessary push at the hustings. In Modi’s case, that hope is at its peak now among his opponents, given that in May next year he will be fighting for a third term after having suc­cessfully topped his 2014 performance in 2019. Led by Modi, BJP had defied this conventional under­standing of anti-incumbency. The government’s astute policy planning and efficient execution and delivery are proving to be Modi’s best insurance against anti-incumbency.

Despite a term filled with seemingly insur­mountable challenges, Modi has successfully over­come the political, social and economic obstacles faced by his government, and is well placed to face the upcoming elections in five states between November and December this year, considered a dry-run for the finals in May. In Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, BJP directly faces Congress. In Telangana, a triangular contest will ensue between the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), Congress and BJP. However, in 2018, too, BJP had lost in Madhya Pradesh (returning to power post-polls), Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh only to almost sweep these states in the 2019 General Election.

Not the least of Modi’s challenges has been the opposition’s expectation of a drought year that would serve as a catalyst deteriorating the socio-economic situation, fuelled by a rapid rise in prices of essential commodities. Early in the monsoon season, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) and several global meteorological agencies had forecast below normal rainfall, on the back of El Niño, a cyclical warming of the eastern and cen­tral Pacific that usually corresponds to depressed rainfall over India. For most of the monsoon sea­son, El Niño was ‘weak’. But an unusual September deluge due to “favourable conditions in the Indian Ocean” made up for the lack of rain for the rest of the season. From the worst rains in August in a century, India dodged the drought bullet this year. So, indeed, did Narendra Modi.

That boon from the rain gods came just after the government went on a diplomatic offensive following Canadian Prime Minis­ter Justin Trudeau’s charge that his administration had “credible allegations” about the role of “agents” of the Indian government in the killing of alleged Khalistani terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar. There was a flood of excited commentary in anticipation of In­dia’s isolation on the international stage. Policy wonks speculated that without incontrovertible evidence from India challenging the Canadian claims, the Indo-US strategic partnership could be rocked. But barely four days after Trudeau’s allegation and the beginning of the Indian pushback—confident in its place, for the US and the West, as a counterweight to China—there were signs of both the US and Canada dialling it down. The hopes of Modi’s rivals that his global (and consequently domestic) image would nosedive were belied.

Trudeau’s assertions came barely weeks after the successful New Delhi G20 summit where India scripted history by securing a consensus on more than 100 issues, including on the Ukraine war. The New Delhi declaration attested to India’s growing geo­political heft. Modi managed to ensure multiple gains for the members from a G20 summit sceptics had written off as a non-starter. Every leader who participated acknowledged that the Delhi declaration was “conceived, drafted and delivered” by Modi.

But the G20 summit was not the only time the opposition’s hopes soared about a possible catastrophe undoing Modi. At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, there was the morbid expecta­tion that the virus would wreak havoc across India. Modi man­aged to come out with a vaccine made in India, firing up doctors and health professionals into working overtime, setting up doz­ens of temporary health facilities, even handling the largescale labour migration from cities to rural areas during lockdown, ensuring free foodgrain and essentials to crores of Indians.

With Modi at the helm, the government managed to defy the opposition’s scare-mongering and largely insulate people from what could have been an economic catastrophe. Post-pandemic, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) reiterated its commitment to bringing inflation down to 4 per cent. Policy shocks and external headwinds notwithstanding, data shows the trajectory of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation before and after the Flexible Inflation Target­ing (FIT) regime has been “reasonably range-bound” within the 4 +/- 2 per cent since October 2016 until just before the pandemic. Compared to that, prior to October 2016, inflation stood in the range of 8-12 per cent, with periods of double-digit inflation in 2009-10 and in 2012-13. To the government’s credit, inflation in India has been lower than that in key developed econ­omies, especially since their figures were impacted by Russian oil and gas supply shocks. Modi leveraged India’s traditional good relations with Russia and secured discounted prices for Rus­sian oil, keeping domestic prices stable.

Analysts predicted that on the Ukraine issue, Modi could not get away forever with straddling the fence. The West accused India of buying “blood oil” at discounted prices. India stood firm. With deft diplomatic manoeu­vres, it defied analysts’ assertions that crude oil prices would go into a spiral and even breach $200 per barrel, break­ing the back of the poor Indian con­sumer. Again, belying the opposition’s fear-mongering, India’s gross collection of Goods and Services Tax (GST) in fis­cal 2022-23 stood at `18.2 lakh crore, 22 per cent higher than the previous year. India is today the fifth largest economy by GDP, and has scripted one of the fast­est economic recoveries post-Covid.

Modi’s best insurance against any­thing remotely like anti-incumbency has been his undeniable efficiency at framing and executing a whole host of social security measures for the needi­est, cutting across communities, caste and gender. The dramatic shortcom­ing, the big crash, that Modi’s rivals expected is still missing.

THIS IS NOT the first time the opposition has banded together to oust a powerful party and its leader. But the biggest difference between now and then is Modi. His popularity remains unassailable despite two terms, something that his rivals are loath to acknowledge in public as their worst nightmare. Attacks on the concentration of power in Modi’s hands within BJP have failed to take away from the fact that BJP has emerged electorally triumphant under the arrangement, unlike the case of the Gandhi monopoly on Congress. The 2004 General Election was against the coalition led by AB Vajpayee who was seen as a leader of the coalition but not its only pole. At the time, people voted for BJP or against it. No single leader was as magnetic in pulling voters towards BJP. In 2024, it is Modi alone who will substantially carry both opinion and votes.

Whenever anti-incumbency worked in the past, the opposition had either had a powerful narrative or a tall leader. Both are absent against Modi. Comparisons are often drawn with the situation in the 1970s when a range of opposition parties with contradictory ideologies came together to oust Indira Gandhi. The driving force for that coalition was a lack of options, that if they did not hang together, they would hang separately. The Lok Sabha election in 1977 was not a normal elec­tion. Many opposition leaders were jailed and democracy suspended during Emergency. All sorts of illegalities were forced on people, including forced steril­isation, and Indira Gandhi had assumed vast powers. Four opposition parties al­lied under the symbol of the Bharatiya Lok Dal and succeeded against the by then widely unpopular Indira Gandhi in north India. But in Tamil Nadu, Kera­la, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, they failed to rally voters.

Rajiv Gandhi had won a historic majority of 401 (subsequently 414) seats in the 1984 polls after the assas­sination of his mother. Despite this, he found himself struggling to defend his government over the Bofors scam, militancy in Punjab, the civil war in Sri Lanka and the dispatch of the Indi­an Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) to the island nation in 1987. His staunch­est critic was his former finance minister, Vishwanath Pratap Singh, who formed the Jan Morcha with Arun Nehru and Arif Mohammad Khan to regain his seat from Alla­habad. Out of a total of 529 seats con­tested, Congress emerged the single-largest party but lost its mandate to govern and in December 1989, the Janata Dal’s (JD) VP Singh became prime minister of the National Front government with outside support from both BJP and the Left Front. The government fell when LK Advani was arrested in Samastipur, headed for Ayodhya, by Lalu Prasad and BJP with­drew its support, exposing the internal contradictions.

When the anti-Congress opposition united in 1989, it still had only limited success. Congress chalked up 197 seats to JD’s 143 seats and did not face a total meltdown in UP. It won 14 seats and its performance in UP had a lot to do with the emergence of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) as a claimant to the Dalit vote. BSP was not part of the opposition alliance. But Congress faced a near-rout in the Assembly election that year, losing 175 seats. Mulayam Singh and social justice topped the popularity charts. Again in southern India, the opposition’s bid to wipe Congress’ slate clean just did not work.

However, every time a united opposition had trounced Con­gress, it had a strong narrative working in its favour. In 1977, there was Emergency; in 1989, Bofors, etc. While slogans like “death of democracy”, “capture of institutions”, “widespread hate and violence against minorities” are all used by the opposition against Modi, none of these issues has captured the public’s imagination. Modi remains, after two full terms in office, a leader running a muscular government with efficient policy-making and delivery of goods and services. He also holds the promise for Hindus to be able to take pride in their religious and cultural identity after generations of humiliation.

The opposition may have woven a tapestry of alleged weak­nesses in Modi’s popularity—he is popular enough to campaign in states based solely on his own image, without even naming a chief ministerial candidate—but it is clear that these issues have gained no traction among voters to whip up a tsunami against the prime minister. What is getting increasingly exposed, instead, are the political and ideological fissures in I.N.D.I.A.

There is a history of parties from disparate ideological back­grounds coming together and Indian voters indulging such opportunistic alliances. But this time round, the narrative that would persuade people to give them a chance is just not there. Non-performance and lack of delivery have felled BJP state gov­ernments earlier and powerful social coalitions in states have shown the potency to take on BJP. However, the chorus about the threat to democracy, etc has failed to travel out of the seminar halls and drawing rooms of Luytens’ Delhi.

WORDS LIKE BIGOTRY, pogrom and genocide are used liberally on global platforms to claim minorities are under threat in India. But this is no longer going unchallenged. “It [the question] should be whether in terms of the amenities, social benefits, the access, the rights, do you discrimi­nate or not. In every society in the world, at some point, there’s been some discrimination on some basis,” External Affairs Minis­ter S Jaishankar retorted to the foreign media recently. “I dare you to show me discrimination [against minorities]. In fact, the more digital we have become, the more faceless the governance has become. Actually, it’s become fairer,” he said, adding, “If you look at India today, it’s a society where tremendous change is taking place, the biggest change happening today in India is the creation of a social welfare infrastructure in a society that has less than US $3,000 per capita income.”

While Modi remains its biggest obstacle, I.N.D.I.A. suffers from other internal roadblocks. Merely changing the nameplate cannot hide the fact that in many states where it already exists, there is duplication of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) situation and no improvement over 2019 in terms of additional support. In Bihar, the social justice parties have been the main challengers and the situation has not changed in their favour after the formation of I.N.D.I.A. The same goes for Tamil Nadu where the alliance is already in power. The departure of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) from the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is unlikely to impact BJP on the ground. In Maharashtra, Congress and breakaway fac­tions of Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) are far less powerful than they would have been before the splits. In Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattigargh, where it is a direct fight between BJP and Congress, none of the alliance partners has the clout to help its partner.

Then there are states like UP, a powerful vote base for BJP under a popular chief minister, where the joining of forces against Modi has failed to rejuvenate the opposition’s support base. A case in point is the alliance between Congress and the Samajwadi Party (SP) in 2017. BJP has gained much more elec­toral heft since. In Kerala, I.N.D.I.A. will be boxing with itself. In West Bengal, TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee has rejected any seat-sharing with her allies.

And then, there has to be chemistry. Elections are not just a game of numbers. Chemistry means a lot of things—a powerful message and, of course, a unified campaign. For the Lok Sabha election, the opposition alliance is relying on just arithmetic. The chemistry is missing. Nor is there, crucially, a charismatic leader who can take on Modi.

In 2004, anti-incumbency had prevailed despite BJP having a tall leader in Vajpayee. But a self-obsessed BJP committed several mistakes. These included driving away allies like the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) who had the potential to win the game for them, Ram Vilas Paswan in Bihar to rally Dalit sup­port behind BJP, and failure to enlist the support of a leader like Sharad Pawar who, contrary to his current protestations, was keen to join NDA. This time, BJP is leaving little to chance and has already enlisted the support of important players—be it Ajit Pawar, JD(Secular), or Chirag Paswan.

In 1977 and 1989, there was another significant difference. The opposition was fighting a dominant Congress. That is no longer so. Congress is a pale version of its former self and unlikely to add the weight needed to oust Modi. Besides, the alliance partners are unwilling to work together unlike in the past. In Punjab, AAP and Congress have reasons to believe they are the main combat­ants. In some cases, the rivalry against each other outstrips their problems with BJP. Mamata Banerjee may not be fully accurate when she says BJP and the Left have joined hands to defeat her. But she is right in reflecting the sentiment of the Left workers that she has done more harm to the Left than BJP. In Delhi, Congress and AAP may have agreed to join hands, but Congress workers are unenthused about supporting a party that has rendered them jobless. Again, while a Tejashwi Yadav may be able to rally the support of his biradari in an Assembly election, it is doubtful the same would work in a Lok Sabha battle against Modi. Juxtapose these problems against BJP’s readiness to celebrate and capitalise on Modi’s feats, and it’s a no-brainer.

2024: CountdownBJPGeneral election 2024Mamata BanerjeeNarendra ModiNitish KumarOpposition partiesRahul GandhiSonia Gandhi