Modi grows stronger as opposition blows it
Narendra Modi-led party is ready to hit the ground running for the upcoming state and general elections
Something fundamental has changed in the political matrix of India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s latest throw of dice could mark a significant shift in Indian politics that will give the BJP a headstart in the race for power at the Centre in 2019. With his choices for the next President and Vice President, he has scored a double win, and if the judicial verdict of August 27 on triple talaq goes in the Government’s favour, the BJP-led ruling coalition will gain a big psychological advantage in the run-up to the General Election due less than two years from now. If all this were not enough, the likely coming apart of the anti-BJP Mahagathbandhan in Bihar will not only tilt a key battleground state towards India’s ruling party, the disarray it pushes the opposition into could cripple the all-India challenge it plans to pose.
The opposition sets immense store by Bihar’s political model of 2015 by which a ‘grand alliance’ of opposition parties led by the JD(U) trounced the BJP in the state’s Assembly polls. AntiBJP parties have repeatedly referred to that formula as replicable for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. They viewed the just concluded presidential poll as a dry run for the forging of a platform that would project opposition unity countrywide as offering a viable and stable alternative to the BJP at the Centre. However, by having the JD(U) leader Nitish Kumar break away so early from that formation in favour of his party’s nominee Ram Nath Kovind, the Prime Minister dealt a severe blow to those grandiose plans, one that the opposition can hardly hope to recover from in time for 2019.
On July 17, the former Bihar governor, BJP leader from the Dalit community and RSS man garnered over 65 per cent votes to win the Rashtrapati Bhavan. The outcome suggests plenty of cross-voting among opposition parties. The overwhelming favour found by Kovind among parliamentarians and legislators speaks of a successful NDA script for power that has roles for a wide range of political players. Modi’s move has marked the main opposition Congress as a party isolated beyond hope in its attempted assault on the BJP. It also exposed a lack of imagination within Sonia Gandhi’s inner circle. The across-the-aisle backing of Kovind apparent in the poll outcome was in spite of the Congress president appealing to MPs and MLAs to “listen to the voice of your conscience” and her shrill clarion call that despite the opposition being short of numbers, a “battle has to be fought” in order to “protect the Constitution of India and its basic tenets from coming under siege by those who do not believe in
More than halfway through his first term, Modi’s popularity remains high. He is known to work for almost 18 hours daily with no sign of a let up.
it”. It was an emotional appeal that few heeded on voting day. The writing on the wall was clear: Modi’s choice of Kovind as India’s President had disrupted the Congress scheme of politics as usual. This has had the effect of tipping power equations rightwards—irrevocably so, many believe. For a Congress leadership known to defend its Vice President Rahul Gandhi’s ad hoc cause shopping-and-dropping on the contention that electoral issues can only be built upon six months before elections, such a setback couldn’t have come at a worse time. More than halfway through his first term, Modi’s popularity remains high. He is known to work for almost 18 hours daily with no sign of a let up. A recent OECD report cited an opinion poll that found his government has 72 per cent support and trust among Indians.
Of Modi’s big political moves lately, the co-option of Nitish Kumar was the most decisive. His support of the NDA candidate set the cat among the opposition pigeons, opening up a vast— if underplayed — trust deficit between the JD(U) chief and the Congress-led UPA-plus. This gap is unlikely to be bridged in a hurry, notwithstanding the talk of Nitish Kumar’s sustained support to anti-BJP forces. The JD(U) has declared its support for Gopal Krishna Gandhi as the vice-presidential candidate of a united opposition. The defeat of the Congress’ choice, like that of Meira Kumar, is a foregone conclusion, but the JD(U) announcement is being cited as proof of Nitish Kumar’s renewed commitment to the opposition. Overt gestures, however, need not reveal the underlying reality of politics.
Among opposition parties, the Congress has been under pressure to dump its claim to leadership of a coalition against the NDA. The former ruling party was beginning to mull the need to consider itself one among equals and let an astute and mature politician take the lead instead of Rahul Gandhi. Unstated though it was, Nitish Kumar was the leader many were leaning towards. This was the context in which the JD(U) leader declared, “I myself told Rahul Gandhi at this function (for DMK patriarch Karunanidhi’s birthday held in Chennai) that as the leader of the biggest party in the opposition, he has taken the initiative in coining a credible alternative political narrative, and that he has to devote himself fulltime to political issues from here on.” Similar advice laced with impatience had been offered earlier by the NCP chief and Maratha leader Sharad Pawar. Soon after the NDA’s announcement of Ram Nath Kovind as its presidential candidate, Pawar was seen seated on the foremost bench of Parliament’s Central Hall for the midnight launch of GST, a function that the Congress boycotted.
With Sonia Gandhi counted out of the prime ministerial reckoning, the question of who would lead opposition forces into battle has been a big one ever since the UPA defeat of 2014. Rahul Gandhi’s routine absence from the political scene, his missing of key battles over issues like demonetisation, and his sudden holiday overseas right after the BJP’s victory in UP have done little to inspire confidence even among his own party leaders, some of whom are openly clamouring for Priyanka Gandhi to take charge of the party. Now with Nitish Kumar veering towards the NDA ranks, the opposition faces an existential crisis.
On one hand, we have a party that is ready to hit the ground running for the upcoming state elections and the General Election of 2019. Ranged against it, on the other, is India’s Grand Old Party heading a fragile coalition trapped in befuddlement marked by a tenuous link between ambition and reality.