FOR MODI, A BIGGER VICTORY THAN 2014

The thumping BJP victory in Uttar Pradesh — combined with the results in Uttarakhand, it amounts to a sweep of the old, pre-bifurcation UP — is arguably a greater achievement for Prime Minister Narendra Modi than his 2014 Lok Sabha triumph.

Back then, Modi had a great deal going for him: He had a record of economic success as chief minister of Gujarat; his main rival, Congress, was completely discredited by a scandaltainted second term in government. Smart political management by his war-time consigliere Amit Shah, plus superb organisation by Hindutva groups, had wrapped Modi in a cloak of inevitability.

But this time around, the odds were somewhat against Modi.

For a start, he certainly couldn’t run on his record. Modi has not yet had significant economic success as prime minister — not on the scale he was able to claim in his home state, and not the kind of success the average UP voter could feel. Modi’s biggest economic gamble, demonetisation, has not yet delivered results that would be tangible to anybody pressing a button at the polling booth. If anything, most voters were still experiencing the pain wrought by demonetisation: Shortterm unemployment, restricted access to cash, and so on.

For all the hype of Modi’s foreign visits, he has not yet scored a major foreign-policy win. Where it matters most, relations with India’s neighbours, there has been no change for the better: With Pakistan and, to a certain degree China, relations are actually worse. The feel-good factor of the “surgical strike” into Pakistani territory had already faded by the start of the seven-stage voting process.

And whereas in 2014, the Congress, led by an indisposed Sonia Gandhi and an inexperienced Rahul Gandhi, was practically supine, in UP this year Modi’s party was up against two formidable — on paper, at any rate — local rivals: The charismatic Akhilesh Yadav, and the redoubtable Mayawati.

So there was nothing inevitable about a BJP win this time. Indeed, Modi had lost some of his aura of invincibility with state-level defeats in Bihar and Delhi.

What did not change was Modi’s personal appeal to voters. In 2017, as in 2014, large numbers of UP-ites were convinced that he, more than anybody else, would serve their best interests. But it was not a given that his own credibility would deliver victory in the state: After all, UP has a history of voting one way in general elections and another in assembly polls. If demonetisation was an economic gamble on a national scale, in UP, Modi took a political risk: He refused to name his choice for the chief ministership, blithely disregarding the fact that this had cost the BJP dearly in Bihar.

Finally, Modi had to avoid the drift that usually follows a big election win. We’ve seen this before: Winners become complacent, party factions start bickering, sloth and corruption creep in. Early in the campaign, it was noticeable that the normally reliable RSS cadre were not exactly putting their shoulder to the wheel, and rumours abounded that Shah had antagonised many state-level leaders.

The fact that Modi overcame all these things makes 2017 a bigger feather in the prime minister’s cap than 2014. Can he go on to crown this achievement in 2019? That’s hard to imagine now, but impossible to rule out. After all, he does have a penchant for extravagant headgear.