FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
War is the continuation of politics by other means, Carl von Clausewitz once said. BJP president Amit Shah seemed to invoke the 19th century Prussian military strategist when he likened the upcoming 2019 Lok Sabha election to the Third Battle of Panipat, which saw the catastrophic defeat of the Maratha army by the Afghans in 1761.
Shah, who said this at the party’s national convention on January 12, would perhaps do well to remember the reasons why the Marathas were defeated. They lost critical allies and played to their weaknesses—a set-piece battle—rather than the nimble guerrilla warfare they excelled at. The BJP-led NDA faces a similar challenge ahead of the general election as our biannual India Today Group-Karvy Insights Mood of the Nation (MOTN) opinion poll reveals. The survey, the last one before the general election, finds the NDA in decline. The opposition is getting stronger and, consequently, as we wrote after the December 2018 state assembly elections in which the BJP lost three bastions in the Hindi heartland, 2019 is anybody’s game.
Our August 2014 MOTN, the first after the formation of the Narendra Modi-led government, forecast a surge in the NDA’s numbers from 336 to 354 seats if snap polls were held. From there, the BJP-led NDA government has consistently haemorrhaged seats—our survey last August indicated it would just squeak past with a 281-seat majority. In January 2019, the battle is evenly matched. The NDA, UPA and the Third Front have vote shares of 35, 33 and 32 per cent respectively, which translates into 237 seats for the NDA, 166 seats for the UPA and 140 seats for all the other parties, many of whom make up the Third Front. In 2016, it was TINA (There is no Alternative), and then, as the Opposition forces came together, it became AOTM (Anyone Other than Modi). Now, it seems, we are looking at TATA (There are Three Alternatives).
The BJP, on its own, is projected to get only 202 seats, largely because of losses in the Hindi heartland states where it had made the most gains in 2014. A special MOTN voter survey in Uttar Pradesh, for instance, projects a precipitous dip in the BJP tally, from 71 to just 18 as a direct consequence of the SP-BSP alliance.
The NDA is ahead in only one of the four projected scenarios with 237 seats, but even then it is 35 seats short of a simple majority of 272. The other hypothetical scenarios, where existing formations could team up to form a government, paint a still gloomier picture for the NDA.
Even Prime Minister Modi’s position as India’s premier politician and the BJP’s premium vote-getting brand is no longer unassailable. The popularity gap with his prime challenger Rahul Gandhi has narrowed considerably. From being a staggering 55 percentage points ahead of the Congress president in January 2017, Modi is just 12 percentage points ahead of his rival in this MOTN edition. Even the seemingly invincible BJP president Amit Shah has seen a sharp drop of 16 percentage points in his performance ratings in barely six months between August 2018 and January 2019, mainly due to the December debacle in three Hindi heartland states.
The MOTN results indicate that Rahul’s revised strategy has significantly enhanced his personal political equity—52 per cent respondents believe he is the best candidate from the Congress to be prime minister, up from just 29 per cent in September 2014. The number of respondents who believe he is the right person to revive the Congress has increased from 47 per cent to 55 per cent over the past six months.
Not surprisingly, unemployment tops the charts of key concerns, while the plight of farmers registers the sharpest uptick in our respondents’ perception. I believe this election will be fought on these two key issues—jobs and farmer distress. The electorate’s judgement on the NDA’s performance on these two fronts will be critical.
Despite projected economic growth of over 7 per cent this fiscal, the government’s handling of the economy hasn’t got an enthusiastic thumbs up—only 49 per cent of the respondents believe the economic performance of the BJP-led NDA government is better than that of the Congress-led UPA government, a seven percentage point drop over the past year. Overall, 41 per cent of respondents feel the economic performance is either worse or the same as that of the UPA government.
Of course, a lot can change between now and polling day. How the alliances will pan out is still a work in progress, while the BJP is a victim of its own success. It did so well in 2014 that it was inevitable that some degree of anti-incumbency would set in after five years of rule. They rode to power with a single-party majority on the wings of high hopes and great promises. India is not an easy country to govern and has now become an impatient one with great expectations. That said, Modi and his team will have many more tricks in the bag to lure the electorate. One should also not underestimate Modi's charisma, specially among the young, or the mean electoral machine Amit Shah has built. And the Opposition, too, needs a more concrete agenda beyond AOTM.
One thing is for sure: it’s a Battle Royale, with handto-hand fighting in each state. Beyond this, it’s about what kind of India we want. In that sense, it’s a pivotal election for all of us.