Modi’s Appeal Is Intact

ALMOST EVERY ELECTION in a country as vast and varied as India produces something unexpected. Often, this can be as profound as the 2004 General Election result that led to the defeat of Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s government. At other times, as in 2019, the scale of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s re-election left many surprised and others puzzled.

The 2024 verdict had a very large element of surprise.

First, the results departed significantly from what the exit polls had suggested—that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) would register an emphatic victory, bigger in scale than 2019.

Secondly, the verdict indicated that there was no categorical national outcome. A state may have voted in one way, but its neighbour went ahead and expressed a completely different preference. In some parts of the country, the vote transcended imme­diate livelihood concerns, while in other parts it was determined by whether people felt good or looked ahead with trepidation.

Thirdly, perhaps in line with the larger elevajment of tentativeness, the outcome was looked upon by both the incumbent and the Opposition as qualified victories. It gave both sides something to cheer about.

Finally, because of the results that combined predictability with surprise, the larger concerns expressed by many India-watchers, both at home and overseas, that the future of democracy was in jeopardy, came to nought. The integrity of the EVMs that had been needlessly questioned throughout the election process stood vindicated yet again. By the end of counting day, it was conceded by all that all the talk of ‘democratic backsliding’ was hogwash and that the status of the Constitution was unimpaired.

For Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who had tried to make the election a referendum on both his 10-year record in office and his vision of India as a developed economy rooted in its Bharatiya idiom, the outcome was a disappointment. The voters were emphatic that they wanted only Modi to lead the country for the next five years. At the same time, they expressed their misgivings over certain facets of contemporary politics.

Aggregating the different strands of the verdict is always a daunting proposition. BJP fought the election on the strength of the Modi guarantees. It won 240 seats, which was 32 short of the majority mark and a whopping 63 short of its tally in 2019. Yet, despite the reduced numbers, the BJP tally was more than the combined tally of the I.N.D.I.A. bloc. In terms of the popular vote, the BJP vote fell nominally from 37.3 per cent in 2019 to 36.6 per cent in 2024. If the number of seats fell disproportion­ately, it was due to a greater consolidation of opposition votes—a testimony to the relative success of the I.N.D.I.A. bloc in chastening BJP.

What the national statistics don’t quite show up is that BJP emerged as a truly pan-India force at the point of its worst showing since 2014. The party fared disastrously in Uttar Pradesh (UP), the state that had catapulted it to a majority on its own in 2014 and 2019, and it lost ground in Maharashtra and Rajasthan. Yet, a tale of the party becoming stale in its core Hindi belt states of northern India doesn’t quite add up in its entirety. Apart from losing one seat unexpectedly to Congress in Gujarat, BJP maintained its total dominance of Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Delhi, and the smaller states of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh. In UP, BJP lost big time in Awadh and Purvanchal, but won handsomely in the west and the National Capital Region (NCR).

The party was however rescued from a worse tally by the voters of the Coromandel Coast and Assam. Despite the modest showing in the Assembly elections a few months ago, BJP equalled the Congress tally in Telangana, rode piggyback on the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and picked up three seats in Andhra Pradesh and, most dramatically, decimated the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) in Odisha. Additionally, even though BJP failed to win a seat in Tamil Nadu, its popular vote rose dramatically in the state. It rose more dramatically in Kerala, where actor Suresh Gopi did the impossible and won a seat.

IN 2024, BJP’S march towards inheriting Congress’ erstwhile mantle of dominant party suffered a setback because of erosion in its core areas of support. This was, however, compensated by its emergence as a truly all-India party. Even with West Bengal’s tally having come down, eastern India (including Bihar and Jharkhand) contributed more than 50 seats to the party’s overall tally. Add to this the 30 seats won from southern India, mainly from Karnataka and Telangana, and it is possible to gleam how Modi has made BJP more geographically representative.

The larger political implica­tions for BJP are obvious. It is now sufficiently clear that the larger political effects of the Ram temple in Ayodhya were blunted by the alienation of subaltern castes over the mischievous spin given to the ‘400 paar’ slogan by Congress and other I.N.D.I.A. partners. It was suggested that BJP was seeking a steamroller majority in Lok Sabha to modify the Constitution and dilute the reservation quotas. Though there was no basis to this suspicion, it made an impression in the minds of many Dalit and backward-caste voters across northern and western India. This was strong enough to lose the party a majority of seats in UP.

To my mind what is significant is not that I.N.D.I.A. went out of its way to derail the Modi guarantees by creating a bogey. Fighting on the backfoot, it was natural that the likes of Rahul Gandhi and Akhilesh Yadav would try to secure a stick with which to beat BJP. What is more noteworthy is that the alarm signals were not picked up by BJP prior to polling to contain any potential damage. If, as is being suggested, this muted desire to win was a result of inner-party tensions over ticket distribution, it would suggest a Congress-isation (in a truly pejorative sense) of BJP. Certainly, there was an element of smugness and complacency that cost the party dearly in eastern UP. Earlier election campaigns that had been fought using Modi as the mascot—these also include the Assembly elections of 2002, 2007 and 2012—had involved a large measure of participation by walk-in volunteers, apart from the karyakartas. This sense of popular involvement was particularly marked in 2014 when the Modi campaign was accompanied by a fierce popular desire, particularly among the youth, to change India and usher in achhe din. That election also saw many social and religious organisations actively campaign for BJP candidates.

In 2024, Modi approached the voters of India with a clear sense of accomplishment and a vision for the future. His leadership was acknowledged by all sections of society, and he had been elevated into a cult-like figure. Yet, despite this, the party organisation did not take the necessary steps to elevate a party campaign to a mission involving civil society. In many parts of India, BJP operated as a closed shop, shunning the active participation of those who weren’t political activists. Anecdotal evidence suggests that a disproportionate number of those who didn’t bother to brave the summer heat and join the queue of voters were Modi supporters. The impression that victory was in any case assured plus the lack of party mobilisa­tion were factors behind the setback. The opponents of the prime minister, including large voting blocs, were sufficiently motivated to defeat BJP. The countervailing motivation among those who believed that Modi had transformed India for the good was absent.

This was a monumental political failure, a tale of missed opportunities.

Mercifully, the appeal of the prime minister was sufficiently robust to deliver a small working majority for NDA, a majority that will probably increase with the accretion of small parties and independents. Judging by Modi’s late-evening speech to karyakar­tas at the BJP headquarters on counting day, it would seem there has been no panic response to the shrinkage of the majority. Instead, Modi has said he will persevere with the chosen path towards Viksit Bharat, including the continuation of the war on corruption. This reassurance had the stock markets recovering ground the next morning, after a complete meltdown when it once seemed India had returned a fractured verdict.

It is not merely the investing classes that fear the arrival of a disparate, if not fractious, coalition whose leading party had just 99 Lok Sabha seats. After 10 years of total and unwaver­ing political stability, there were larger fears that the Centre would be buffeted by competitive pressures, verging on political blackmail, from parties that are not able to look beyond sectional and sectarian considerations. Modi’s presence as prime minister for the third consecutive term has served as a deterrent to the demoralisation of India. Yet, the fact that I.N.D.I.A. shied away from persisting with its initial inclination to try and form a government is itself revealing. Of course, neither Nitish Kumar nor N Chandrababu Naidu gave the adventurists any scope for encouragement at this stage. But, viewed dispassionately, it also suggests that the I.N.D.I.A. leadership believes that the personality of Modi will be unable to cope with the vagaries of coalition politics. In short, the Opposition believes that NDA will fall under the weight of its own contradictions.

This fear may also have gripped a section of Modi’s own supporters, although with clever optics the prime minister may have walked an extra mile to disabuse such concerns. There will, predictably, be rounds of hard bargaining over public finances involving both Andhra Pradesh and Bihar. What concerns those who have put their emotional weight behind Modi’s project for a New India is that there will be sustained and unbearable pressures on the coalition government to break the bank and enlarge the welfare architecture of the country.

My own belief is that Modi will not act out of character. There may be tweaking of the welfare payments to the poor and more focused monitoring aimed at ensuring that non-NDA state governments (as in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala) don’t run away with the credit for impor­tant Central schemes. However, the focus is likely to remain one of securing the dividends of growth through economic activity. Modi is more likely to go slow on incor­porating new civilisational issues, unless he senses that BJP has itself shed its extra fat.

DURING A THIRD term, which only a handful of leaders achieve, there is likely to be a sustained focus on legacy issues. This may see Modi redoubling his energies on the international stage, promoting economic growth relentlessly and pressing the accelerator in the fight against corruption. Modi may well take steps that allay concerns that the investigative agencies are partisan and that joining BJP has a washing-machine effect on the tainted.

Most important, it is my feeling that Modi won’t like a situation where he is constrained by coalition pressures. If such pressures are real and lead to the government losing its elbow room, the prime minister may like to engineer a situation where he can call a premature election on terms of his own choosing. If, however, being in a coalition isn’t an impediment—as it wasn’t for PV Narasimha Rao and Vajpayee—it is more than likely that Modi will settle for a full five-year term. He will use the time before 2029 to work towards a situation where BJP regains the political dominance it had slowly managed in the past 10 years, but which was lost with the loss of single-party majority.

For the first six months of the new government, an ener­gised Opposition will taunt Modi in Parliament with the abki baar, 400 paar slogan. The prime minister will be looking for an opportunity when he can return the compliment, with compound interest.

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