As India waits for a final verdict, the issues that defined the polls
‘Modi factor’, accompanied by BJP’s electoral and political dominance, the Oppn’s hectic efforts to create an alliance, and reservations are set to define the outcome
New Delhi For 78 days, as a cruel sun beat down on its people, India immersed itself in the throes of the world’s largest democratic exercise — electing its national government. For 78 days, citizens young and old, healthy and infirm, enthusiastic and sullen, travelled to polling booths to exercise their franchise. Some walked to polling booths nearby, standing in queues as the mercury rose; others trekked up hills in the Himalayas; some braved not just the elements but the threat of violence in states such as Chhattisgarh or ethnic-strife torn Manipur.
Over these 78 days, India found itself in suspended animation, taking a sharp long-drawn breath, waiting to exhale on counting day. The past is key — these 78 days are a referendum on both governance and politics over the past five years — but so is the future for these 78 days are also about the dreams of what will be that are sold to India’s electorate.
The conclusions India will arrive at on June 4 are far from linear, subject to a breadth of factors commensurate with the country’s diversity; a breadth rarely, if ever, seen anywhere else in the world. There are factors that are both constant drivers of change, yet always evolving in their interactions with politics — religion, caste, social welfare, and governance. There is the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, looking to win a third term in power, banking on a potent social coalition that they have engineered over the past decade with a mix of religion, nationalism, governance, and a driven organisation on the ground. The Opposition, more fractured, but loud and boisterous nonetheless, has rooted its campaign in issues that speak to the everyday -- economic anxiety, anti-incumbency, the fear that a third term for the BJP could weaken India’s democratic foundations and further concentrate power. Here are four broad issues that will likely define the outcome on June 4.
The Modi factor
For the last decade, the most important man in Indian politics has been Narendra Modi; a man who was first announced as the BJP’s Prime Ministerial face a year before the 2014 elections; a man who has had an iron grip on both the party and the imagination of the country ever since. In 2014, he led the BJP to a feat not achieved in almost three decades, winning sole majority in the Lok Sabha elections. Five years later, his popularity—the famed “Modi factor”—only grew, and the BJP won 303 seats on its own; their electoral and political dominance a hark back to the influence once wielded by the Congress in the decades after independence.
Cut to 2024, and both within the BJP and outside, it is clear that Modi’s popularity has a direct bearing on the answers that will reveal themselves on June 4.
A decade after 2014, Modi is still central to the BJP’s campaign; everything revolves around him. He is their principal campaigner—he addressed 207 public rallies and roadshows, more than any other political leader in the country. He held roadshows and public rallies; prayed at temples and waved to crowds; and in the last few weeks of the campaign, saturated the media space with interviews. He is the BJP’s face in Uttar Pradesh in the north, and Tamil Nadu in the south; West Bengal in the east, to Rajasthan in the west. There is not a BJP poster across India, in a city or in a village that does not have his face — if the Opposition has no consensus on who India’s next Prime Minister will be, there is no such confusion for the National Democratic Alliance. Every promise made by the BJP, and there were a variety across every state, is a “Modi ki Guarantee”. He is an international leader; a man that can step in to a geopolitical crisis; the man that sat at the head of the table at the G20; the man that can fill stadia all over world. And he is a brand that has only become stronger with time. Over the past decade, it has become evident that the BJP enjoys a Modi premium in the elections.
But as the good folks at any consumer product company worth its salt (or soap) will tell you, what good is a brand that cannot extend itself. And so, the BJP has been trying to extend its reach to the south. This is not just a political compulsion, but a broader ideological project, that states like Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana have by and large resisted thus far. But for over 12 months -- the BJP and Modi are campaigning even when they are not -- Modi has positioned himself as a champion for Tamil culture, pushing the relationship between the state and the Hindi heartland relentlessly — the Kashi Tamil Sangamam, the sengol (sceptre) in the new parliament building, all clear examples of this focus. He has attempted to build bridges with Christians in Kerala, and allied with the TDP in Andhra Pradesh.
Across India, whether Brand Modi retains its lustre, and whether it has successfully extended itself to new regions, will be a key factor in the elections.
The hunt for alternatives
If the BJP’s prime ministerial choice isn’t in question, heavy defeats in both 2014 and 2019 have rendered moot any conversation about leadership among members of the Opposition. Consider these numbers from 2019. India’s Lok Sabha has 543 elected members. The BJP had 303. The next best was the Congress at 52. Regional satraps such as the YSRCP, the DMK and the TMC won 23, 23 and 22 respectively.
Politics can often be unpredictable, and yet the broad consensus in the run up to 2024 was that the Congress would find it difficult to take on the BJP on its own. This was reflected in the creation of the Opposition’s INDIA bloc, replete with teething troubles, but comprising storied parties with significant regional strength -- MK Stalin’s DMK in Tamil Nadu, Sharad Pawar’s NCP-SP and Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena-UBT in Maharashtra, Akhilesh Yadav’s SP in Uttar Pradesh and Mamata Banerjee’s TMC in West Bengal. But even as these parties positioned themselves as the repositories of regional aspiration, the BJP has asked, Modi versus who?
This battle is one of the central motifs of 2024. The BJP has argued India is now past the travails of coalition compulsions; that it now needs “decisive leadership”; only with clarity of thought and purpose can decisions like the abrogation of Article 370 be taken or the Uniform Civil Code be taken; and that political instability stymies any growth that India can aspire to. In speech after speech, Union home minister Amit Shah for instance, has said that if the Opposition is voted to power, there will be a veritable game of musical chairs for the position of Prime Minister. The Opposition response has been to question the central premise of a clear mandate—the centralisation of power; they point to institutional capture over the past decade; a weakening of constitutional mechanisms; that people have lost their voice in government.
For some powerful regional satraps, even this fracture presents a campaign opportunity. Only in an alliance can the DMK, or the TMC have a share of power. Stalin or Mamata Banerjee may not be on the ballot, but vote the Opposition in, and they could yet be Prime Minister in the week after June 4.
Local issues
Through the campaign, the BJP steadfastly denied the presence of any decisive anti-incumbency against the government. Any murmur of dissent, they argue, is offset by the singular popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Yet, while electing the PM is a crucial function of a Lok Sabha campaign, the process of that ascension entails electing, first and foremost, a representative from their respective constituencies; a representative that must, at least nominally, cater to local sensibilities.
It is this that the Opposition has zeroed in on, attempting to localise the election beyond broader questions of religiosity, or India’s sphere of influence in the international sphere, and definitely beyond Modi. Prime Minister Modi may yet be popular, but a decade in power leaves local representatives susceptible to anti-incumbency. And when one party has been dominant for a decade, that simmering anger is often inevitable.
This is important, because across states, there are also voices that speak of a deep economic anxiety. While the BJP front-ended its campaign on the promise of a “Viksit Bharat” (developed India) by 2047, the Opposition pounced on disquiet on questions of unemployment and price rise; around the worry that government jobs are not as bountiful as before; and around question marks around schemes such as Agniveer, the controversial new process of recruitment to the armed forces. The question is whether Modi’s popularity can obfuscate these grievances on the ground, or whether Modi himself is now the face of this distress.
Further, beyond the hyper local, general elections can often be fought on assertions of regional pride; of the interaction between the state and the centre. For several years, the BJP’s pitch in states has been to encourage “double engine” governments—a term they use for the increased cooperation that comes from the same party at the state and the Centre. Yet, there is a flip side. In the southern states, Opposition parties have positioned themselves as the vanguard of regional aspiration against a hegemonic north Indian party. In Odisha, the battle is for “Odia asmita”; in Jharkhand, with Hemant Soren jailed, the JMM has said only the party can avenge this insult of the tribal population; and in West Bengal, the TMC has continued to call the BJP “bohirogatho”, or outsider.
Constitution versus polarisation
The late eighties and the early nineties were a time when two great waves of Indian politics—mandal (reservation for OBCs) and kamandal (Hindutva) — collided . From one strand, emerged a strident BJP rooted in Hindu religiosity, fuelled by the demolition of the Babri Masjid. From the other, emerged a host of socialist leaders that grounded themselves in the aspiration of the backward castes and classes and posited reservations as the antidote to discrimination that still stalks India’s hinterland. In the Hindi heartland, it birthed both leaders and governments — Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar in Bihar, Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh, Deve Gowda in Karnataka.
Three decades later, conversations around the constitution returned with gusto.
At the beginning of the campaign, the BJP laid an ambitious target before their cadre—they wanted to win 370 seats on their own, and 400 for the NDA. Then, some regional leaders suggested that they needed these numbers to alter the constitution. Central leaders scrambled to control the damage, but it was done. This was an opportunity the Opposition seized on, basing their campaign on the disingenuous allegation that the BJP wanted to fundamentally alter the Constitution, and do away with reservations. In rally after rally, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi carried around a miniature copy of the Constitution, pressing the point, as did Tejashwi and Akhilesh Yadav in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh respectively. Forced to respond, the BJP said that under an OBC Prime Minister such as Modi, there were absolutely no plans to make any such change. Modi, in multiple interviews, said that he would perish before allowing any change in reservation benefits.
Yet, there was some evidence that this fear had percolated to the ground, and the BJP found another away to defend itself—through a mixture of mandal and kamandal, if you will. It alleged that the Congress wanted to redistribute both wealth and reservation benefits from the backward castes and classes to Muslims, arguing coarsely that the Opposition would “snatch mangalsutras” from Hindu women and give them to Muslims. It said that Opposition governments had disproportionately favoured Muslim minorities, leaning on its old battle lines of polarisation — the BJP is the party that built the Ram Temple; the Congress, they alleged, has always been a “party of appeasement”.
The battle between these two narratives is key, particularly in the Hindi heartland. For the BJP to win, or even improve its tally, it must keep expanding, or at least hold on to its social base it has so assiduously built. For the Opposition to make any dent whatsoever, it must wean chunks of supporters away.
In two days, these answers will be clear. And the country will exhale.
