A new era begins

Amitava Mukherjee

(The author is a senior journalist and commentator.)

On the night of June 4, when almost all the election results were out, a friend of mine sent a pithy forwarded post on a group WhatsApp account where I also belong. It read, inter alia, “They have given the  BJP and its partners a victory that feels like a defeat. They have given the Congress alliance a defeat that feels like a victory.”

In essence, this is the beauty of Indian democracy.

This election brings to light several salient features. The first of all is the return of a coalition government. It is not that India has not witnessed coalition governments in the past. Its most resplendent example was the Janata Party government in the late 1970s. Although the constituent parties had submerged their existence in the Janata nomenclature, it was in name only. Practically, all of them had maintained their separate identities. The result was disastrous.

Coalition politics had again returned, and it reigned merrily from 1989 to 2014. During this period, governments led by I.K. Gujral and H.D. Devegowda were shaky and unstable. Lalu Prasad Yadav was principally responsible for making Gujral the prime minister, and the wily politician from Bihar extracted his pounds of flesh. He used to dictate to Gujral. The same was the case with Devegowda. Political watchers should not forget the words Sitaram Kesri, the then Congress president, used about him. Congress had blackmailed both Devegowda and Gujral.

What can the picture be this time?

Although much of the political circles and the media have been going ga ga over Congress’ performance, there is scope to remain a bit sceptic. The BJP will be the single largest party, clearly 140 seats ahead of the Congress. The Congress is still behind its tally of 145 seats, which it scored in the 2004 election, not to mention the 206 seats it bagged in the 2009 poll. But there is no doubt that it has regained some ground. Its vote percentage has also increased. Previously, in only 8 percent of instances, it could score victories over BJP candidates in one-on-one contests where the BJP and Congress candidates were chief contestants. This time, that figure has jumped up to 29 percent. This is significant and should cause concern for the BJP. It indicates that Congress is finally successfully grappling with social dynamics.

The second most important factor will be how Narendra Modi handles the coalition partners. He and the BJP are totally dependent on them. Both Chandrababu Naidu and Nitish Kumar are consummate politicians. There are already murmurs of demands from the Janata Dal (United) to make Nitish at least the Deputy Prime Minister, and Chandrababu has already said that he has communicated to the BJP leadership his reservations about Amit Shah as the Home Minister. In fact, according to one circle of opinion, he has already demanded the removal of Amit Shah from the Home Ministry. It is almost axiomatic that the INDIA bloc is also maintaining channels of communication with both Chandrababu and Nitish Kumar. More than Chandrababu, Nitish Kumar should cause greater worry to the BJP for his record of changing sides. It is also to be kept in mind that Nitish once openly expressed his reservations about Modi campaigning in Bihar.

The third important fallout to be watched is the future relationship between the RSS and the BJP. It is almost an open secret now that the RSS has reservations about projecting Modi’s ‘larger than life’ image as a campaigning plank. Instead, it wanted to give issue-based stress to the various welfare programmes that the Modi government had launched. In addition, the RSS had repeatedly cautioned the BJP government about unemployment and price rises, which largely went unheeded. The fact that the BJP has fared badly in Uttar Pradesh is, to some extent, due to the fact that a large number of RSS cadres have become inactive out of disgust.

What will the RSS do at this juncture? Most probably, it will adopt a wait-and-watch policy for a few months. It may even put forward Nitin Gadkari for a more important and crucial position in the cabinet. In the Hindi belt, it has two blue-eyed boys: Yogi Adityanath in Uttar Pradesh and Shiv Raj Singh Chouhan in Madhya Pradesh. Adityanath will be under some sort of pressure as the BJP has not lived up to expectations in UP. But in Madhya Pradesh, the saffron party has made a clean sweep. Mohan Yadav, the incumbent chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, is not regarded as a crucial factor behind the BJP’s success in MP, a laurel that certainly goes to Chouhan. Will the RSS push Chouhan to the fore if tensions grip the BJP-led coalition government in the future?

A lot will depend on Modi’s persona. In order to run any coalition government smoothly, he would have to have an accommodating personality. The nation will watch with great interest how he handles the NRC and the CAA issues within the cabinet, as at least the JD (U) is certain to oppose these two programmes. Another will be the Agniveer scheme, which proposes to absorb only 25 percent of the new army recruits after a four-year stint. The fact that the BJP has not lived up to its expectations in the Hindi belt may be due to the fact that large numbers of youth from these areas intend to join the army each year.

Both the BJP and Narendra Modi must understand that the 2024 Lok Sabha poll result is a verdict against corporatization and corporate culture. The BJP has still retained its support base in urban areas and among urban people. But India lives in many moods and many ages, which is best exemplified by rural India, where the real ages of poor people have continued to fall in recent times. Here lies the BJP’s disconnection with reality.