The Parliament will assemble for the monsoon session next week. It will meet in very different circumstances compared to its last sitting in April. The Budget session of Parliament ended with the government failing to muster a two-third majority to pass a bill that clubbed the rollout of women’s reservation with the delimitation of constituencies. It was the first time the Narendra Modi government actually lost a vote since it assumed power in 2014. To be sure, the loss was pre-ordained, as it did not have the required numbers, but the fact that it pushed for a vote suggested a political motive, which this column had then described as a political decoy. What was also remarkable during that vote was the opposition preventing any attrition from its ranks.
The opposition, three months later, is a significantly emaciated beast. The TMC, the third-largest opposition party after the Congress and Samajwadi Party, has seen parliamentary atrophy of sorts after its loss in the West Bengal elections. One after another, its MPs and MLAs continue to desert ship to join the BJP directly or indirectly. The DMK, the fourth-largest opposition party, has parted ways with the Congress and the INDIA bloc after Congress and DMK’s smaller allies broke a pre-poll alliance to support the debutant TVK government in Tamil Nadu. Another two opposition parties, namely, the Shiv Sena (UBT) and AAP have seen their MPs deserting to the BJP or its allies. Another party, the NCP(SP) is sending out mixed signals on its legislative stance in the house.
These developments have resurrected the question of whether the BJP will actually be able to engineer the required majority to push the bills it wanted to in the Budget session. India’s opposition, which was crying about the BJP stealing elections has become so vulnerable to the BJP stealing or wooing its MPs that this question cannot be dismissed outrightly even though the existing numbers demand that it be.
{{/usCountry}}These developments have resurrected the question of whether the BJP will actually be able to engineer the required majority to push the bills it wanted to in the Budget session. India’s opposition, which was crying about the BJP stealing elections has become so vulnerable to the BJP stealing or wooing its MPs that this question cannot be dismissed outrightly even though the existing numbers demand that it be.
{{/usCountry}}While parliamentary opposition seems to be atrophying, an extra-parliamentary opposition seems to be resurrecting. Unless things change in the next few days, it will be the first time under the Modi government that Parliament will be in session with a prolonged protest – I am talking about the ongoing hunger strike by “Cockroach Janata Party” – being held in its backyard Jantar Mantar, the historical seat of protest next to the seat of power of the Indian state.
While this observation might infuriate many radicals, the protest would never have happened if the government did not want it. Unlike most protests under the current government, including the 2020 farmers’ agitation, nobody has been allowed to set camp in Lutyens Delhi’s erstwhile protest capital. To be sure, the BJP and its larger ecosystem are still attacking the protestors and their supporters with polemics, but allowing the protest near Parliament is definitely a departure from the current government’s modus vivendi regarding protests.
Another political issue which has dominated the news cycle is the alleged theft of donations from the Ram temple in Ayodhya. Here too, the BJP has been on a defensive, as the temple bureaucracy is drawn from its core ideological group. The opposition, both in Uttar Pradesh (which is scheduled for elections early next year) and the country, has spent significant time and energy on this issue.
Does the CJP protest and the donation theft issue put the BJP on a political backfoot? Will this manifest itself in forthcoming elections, especially Uttar Pradesh? Only fools try to predict elections in India. But here is a counterpoint.
What if neither of the adverse political developments which have triggered the two controversies – the medical entrance test question leaks leading to the CJP hunger strike and the mismanagement of donations in Ayodhya—happened not because the BJP wanted them but because it could not prevent them?
Saying this is not offering an alibi or apology for these developments, nor is it denying that perpetrators might be part of the larger or closer BJP ecosystem. It is only to make an important distinction. The BJP’s political history and its meteoric rise are full of controversies and polarizations – from the Ram temple movement to demonetisation and even the farm laws – which happened by design and not accident. Both of the current developments are more procedural than political in nature. And if that is actually the case, is the BJP’s top leadership willing to allow some democratic venting out on these issues and (there is still a huge) maybe, sacrifice some dispensable soldiers or even lieutenants?
My biggest motivation for arguing this comes from two facts which need to be taken note of. One, the aggrieved parties in these controversies are either BJP’s staunch supporters (Ayodhya devotees) or definitely not antagonistic to the party (middle-class young students). So it does not really need to go hammer and tongs against them, like it would go after, say, Muslims protesting against the BJP. Two, if the BJP indeed wants to make a course correction on these issues, it is perhaps not averse to the idea of being seen as doing so after some sort of a democratic pushback, lest the regime is seen as a tone-deaf oppressive beast which has completely co-opted the oppostion.
To say this is not to demean the protestors, whose struggle in the CJP hunger strike shows no reason to be called insincere, nor to dismiss the political criticism regarding the donation misappropriation. What it perhaps signifies is that the BJP now understands that it is way past its honeymoon period in government and ought to distinguish between inadvertant anti-incumbency and ideological battles. While the former could be waged by a genuinely aggrieved crowd, the latter is led by an ideological enemy.
For the opposition it presents a new kind of dilemma. It must support these struggles. And if they actually succeed, its claims of political victory will undercut its critique of democracy under siege in the country. At the same time, on the politics that is actually consequential to the larger political game—which is what the state of the parliament signifies—it continues to get hammered by the BJP. This is exactly what makes politics an extremely difficult game. Participants must engage in short-term battles and do their best to win them, but winning the battle does not necessarily entail a victory in the war. Momentary victories or even a semblance of a fight, in fact can sidetrack attention from larger vulnerabilities which matter more for the outcome of the overall war.
To conclude, the (protesting) kids are alright and the godmen who stole from the temple must be punished, but it is equally plausible that neither of these things will matter as far as larger politics goes. There, the writing on the wall is still what it was on May 4 when the latest assembly election results were declared: the BJP has more than compensated for the political ground it lost after the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The roots of this success are, more than anything else, ideological, even if factional clouds within the BJP and structural vulnerabilities of the ecoonmy might be gathering in the distance, as I argued in a recent edition of the column.
(Roshan Kishore, HT’s Data and Political Economy Editor, writes a weekly column on the state of the country’s economy and its political fall out, and vice-versa)