Has India Reached Peak Modi ?

Publishing date: 08 June 2024

Published in: The Wall Street Journal

The storied party that led India to its independence and dominated politics for decades was all but left for dead after national elections five yrs ago. The Indian National Congress party’s seats had dwindled to 52. Its most visible face was a featherweight, or so the thinking went, incapable of taking on PM Narendra Modi, and the powerhouse of Hindu nationalism. But on Tue, the party and its allies flipped the script. Congress nearly doubled its seats and the coalition it led won some 230 seats, nipping at the heels of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party with 240. Modi is set to return for a third term—but for many, the election marked a turning point. “Modi’s halo has taken a beating,” said Ajay Gudavarthy, an associate professor at the Centre for Political Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University. “Now he is like any other leader.” The opposition-bloc parties successfully capitalized on a groundswell of discontent over high unemployment, falling rural incomes and stubborn inflation. Meanwhile, Modi’s party came into the election confidently pointing to the completion of grandiose projects and India’s rising stature on the world stage. The prime minister promised to make India a developed country with higher average incomes by 2047. Still, many wondered: What about right now? “The opposition was quite smart in engaging with the anger of the people,” said Utpal Pathak, a political analyst who specializes in Indian elections. “It has been the most democratic way of protest by the people of India.” One race in particular was seen as a microcosm of the way the contrasting messages played out. Voters ousted the ruling-party candidate from Ayodhya, the home of a grand Hindu temple the prime minister inaugurated in January. The construction of the temple on the site where a 16th-century mosque was destroyed by a mob fulfilled one of his party’s oldest election promises and was expected to help him clinch another majority.
▪️But Modi’s party lost to the regional Samajwadi Party. The winning candidate, 78-year-old Audhesh Prasad, said he had a good feeling even before counting began because of the outpouring of support he got. He said by Tuesday afternoon, as it became clear his lead was insurmountable, the agent monitoring the counting on behalf of the ruling party left the room and didn’t return. Prasad said that local anger over the destruction of homes and shops to redevelop Ayodhya into a “Hindu Vatican” amplified the economic frustrations facing much of the country. “It was their hubris,” he said. The opposition alliance got off to a rocky start. It was beset by infighting. One party, the Janata Dal United, quickly deserted. That party is now expected to be a part of Modi’s coalition, helping him to secure a third term. Political experts also credited the opposition’s gains to Rahul Gandhi, a political figure who has often been maligned as ineffective. Gandhi, the great-grandson of India’s first prime minister, was labeled by Modi’s party as an out-of-touch prince. Gandhi embarked in recent years on monthslong walking tours to connect with the public. He also shifted from attacking Modi to a campaign focused on jobs and social justice, such as redistribution of wealth and expansion of affirmative-action programs that protect lower-caste groups. “We gave India a new vision—a pro-poor vision,” Gandhi said Tuesday.
▪️ The leftward shift for the party, which was in charge during India’s 1990s market-opening reforms, struck a chord with many voters. India’s overall economy has boomed, but the benefits have mostly accrued to the wealthy. Tens of millions of people have returned to agricultural work over the past four years, but the number of manufacturing jobs has barely budged since Modi became prime minister in 2014. After 10 years of rule, many Indians have lost faith in Modi’s ability to deliver on his grand economic vision. Modi appeared to try to paper over the economic discontent by doubling down on his Hindu nationalist narrative. In one campaign speech, he called Muslims “infiltrators” and “those who have too many children.”. “The more they spoke about communal and religious issues, and kept silent on the real problems like inflation and joblessness, the more unpopular they became among the masses,” said Abhishek Mishra, a spokesman for the Samajwadi Party, a major force in Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state, which delivered the biggest upset of the election. The party needs to reflect on its losses, but Modi is in part paying the price for factors beyond his control, said Urvish Kantharia, a spokesman for the BJP in Modi’s home state of Gujarat and the author of a book on him.
▪️His second term was buffeted by global crises including the pandemic and wars that sent prices soaring globally and brought economies to a standstill. “But you cannot go to people and say that ‘Look, this is due to international reasons, economic reasons,’ ” said Kantharia. “Mostly people don’t want to know the reasons. They just want to know the outcomes.” Samajwadi Party wasn’t in Congress’s 2019 alliance but joined forces with the party for this election, making the opposition a more credible option in Uttar Pradesh, a state long a bastion of Modi’s support. Congress also fielded candidates in fewer seats to avoid competing with allies. “The coalition also allowed Muslim votes to coalesce to a greater degree than in previous elections,” said Madhavi Devasher, an assistant professor of political science at the University of New Hampshire, who studies Muslim representation in India. Muslims are close to 20% of the population in India’s biggest state, a larger share than in many others. These tactics led the opposition to grab a majority of seats in Uttar Pradesh, shocking the BJP. Modi’s margin of victory in the seat he ran from in the historic holy city of Varanasi, also in Uttar Pradesh, was down by more than 300,000 votes compared with 2019. “The prime minister has seen his peak and will never see it again,” said Mishra.
▪️The opposition urged voters to consider what it would mean if Modi were to win a supermajority, a goal he trumpeted loudly on the campaign trail. That fed a fear that Modi’s government could target constitutionally sanctioned affirmative-action programs for traditionally marginalized caste and indigenous groups, political experts said. In many states, that swayed low-caste groups such as the Dalits to vote for the opposition. “People thought the BJP could go to any extent and change anything,” said Vineet Punia, a senior leader with Congress. Despite the fresh momentum, Congress has hard work ahead if it is to reverse its decline. It suffers from poor organization at the grassroots level and a shortage of up-and-coming leaders, political experts said. Modi has given no indication that he has emerged from the election chastened—or that he plans to moderate his agenda. “This is going to be a very turbulent period,” said Gudavarthy, the political analyst.