A google search of “PM ne di Saugat” produces a staggering 81 million pages in less than a second. It lists news items about the schemes and programmes the Varanasi MP launched, announced or promised as prime minister. Even the inauguration of a 52-km road in a small town of northern Chhattisgarh or the unveiling of a statue in Assam was headlined as “PM ki saugat”.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
The Persian word saugat denotes a gift, especially brought from a far-off land. The projection of essential official duties as “saugat” by the media was in furtherance of his diligent agenda to reduce the citizens into labharthis, a class of people who are unable to avail of the rights they have as citizens and have been repeatedly told they are only alive as they live off the crumbs offered by the benevolent emperor.
At one level, the Modi government directly suppressed the civil liberties by targeting academics, journalists and writers, on the other it sought to inject a feeling within citizens that it’s not their constitutional right to have a road in their village or food on their plate, it can arrive only via charity offered by a divine and non-biological king.
His election victories were consistently attributed to the labharthi, a beneficiary who must bow before him with humility and servitude. The agitprop pushed the state-citizen relationship several centuriesbehind, into a time when all rights were at the mercy of the king.
Not that the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government didn’t have its failures, but those ten years were marked by legislations that focused on citizens’ rights, and a vibrant discourse about rights and their implementations was the order of the day. In contrast, Modi incessantly underlined citizen’s duties, with his brigade targeting and undermining those who demanded their rights.
The Lok Sabha results mark the assertion of the citizen against the pernicious agenda to diminish her into a labharthi. Modi’s penetration into rural India is often attributed to his electoral gains in the last decade. The ‘saugat’ that the visitor king offered to the needy took the predominantly urban-centric party to the hinterland. In 2019, his party won 236 of 398 rural seats. He lost 71 of them in 2024, the near-exact number of total seats he lost this year. The biggest drop of 2.2% in the vote share of his alliance has come from rural India. If the proposition of labharthi had worked before in rural India, it stood rejected this time.
Another devilish propaganda that stood exposed was of the Muslim vote. The Modi machinery is still attributing his defeat to ‘Muslim consolidation’. But these are Hindus who have rejected him. Uttar Pradesh, that knocked him out of the contest has 79.7% Hindus as against 19.3% Muslims. Haryana where he lost five seats has only 7% Muslims, Rajasthan that saw him losing as many as ten seats has a mere 9% Muslims as against 88.5% Hindus, Maharashtra that dented his tally by 14 seats has just 11% Muslims. Even Faizabad, where Ayodhya is, the showpiece defeat of this election, has a staggering 84.8% Hindus against 14.8% Muslims.
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Consider his rejection in the land of Ram that he lost all the five seats of the zone — Barabanki, Ayodhya, Amethi, Sultanpur, Ambedkarnagar. Move further to find that he lost even seats like Basti, Shravasti and Jaunpur adjoining the Ayodhya zone. He met his Waterloo in the vast area of a few hundred kilometres, in and around Ayodhya. Make no mistake, it’s Hindus, Hindus alone. They brought him to power, and have now thrown him out as well.
Given that these seats fall in the rural areas which he wanted to conquer by offering ‘saugat’, the assertion of the voter against the labharthi gets a new dimension. The devout Hindu voter spoke loud and clear against the labharthi tag.
There are more signs.
Fearing anti-incumbency he had denied tickets to a staggering 132 of his sitting MPs, 43% of the total 303. Gauge the scale of rejection that despite such a change, he lost 92 of the seats he had won in 2019.
The incumbency anxiety had made him drop several of his sitting ministers including General (retd) V.K. Singh and Meenakshi Lekhi, and yet nearly 20 of his ministers lost badly, with Kailash Choudhary losing by 417943 votes, and a few others by more than 1.5 lakh votes.
One can say that his party still has the biggest majority and can form the government. So be it. Let the voters watch the divine hero uncomfortably wedged among unrelenting allies with little breathing space, the man who didn’t let anyone come near him now forced to concede his own ground, swiftly abandon ‘Modi sarkar’ and embrace ‘NDA sarkar’. The Nagpur pracharaks whom he had summarily dismissed now constantly hovering over him. The leader of a tiny party with just a few seats dictating him notes.
We have written earlier on why he should retire with the leftovers of dignity to the ghats of Kashi. Perhaps, the voter wanted otherwise. He should stay back in Delhi.
To get diminished every passing day, his aura gone and mask stripped off, an emperor without any clothes, weak, on borrowed support, constantly performing stunts and theatrics to save his throne — a labharthi of his allies.
Read all of The Wire’s reporting on and analysis of the 2024 election results here.
