New Delhi: The first month of Narendra Modi’s third tenure as the prime minister marked a new political scenario in India. The opposition appears to be buoyant after it successfully stopped the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) below the halfway mark in Lok Sabha. The BJP, on the contrary, has been mostly muted and measured in its aggression, despite the prime minister attempting to give an impression that nothing has changed.
The Congress leader and the newly-chosen Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi has been out and about, visiting Hathras to meet the victims in the aftermath of the tragic stampede, and also BJP-governed states like Gujarat, Manipur and Assam in what is evidently an attempt to consolidate the Congress’s position in its weak spots. Similarly, the other partners in the INDIA bloc, too, have shown unforeseen aggression, taking digs at the Modi government, pointing out its alleged failures, and unhesitatingly jumping at every opportunity to make the prime minister accountable.
The opposition has clearly received a fillip from the way it unitedly conducted itself in the first session of the Lok Sabha. The first session of the 18th Lok Sabha witnessed at least three changes, even as the Narendra Modi government tried very hard to give an opposite impression.
Clear ideological lines
One, never has been the ideological lines between the treasury benches and the opposition has been this evident in the last decade. Be it Rahul Gandhi’s dogged defence of Indian plural and syncretic religiosity and his scathing criticism of Modi-led cronyism that according to him is the central cause of India’s economic inequities, or A. Raja’s advocacy of Dravidian political culture as an equalising social force, or Manoj Jha and Akhilesh Yadav’s assertion of social justice politics through their demand of a caste census, or the newly-elected Left leaders’ attempts to re-establish pro-poor development in India, all of it stood in stark contrast with Modi’s consistent rhetoric around corporate-led development, muscular nationalism, and Hindu majoritarianism.
One saw the Congress president Malliakarjun Kharge hurtling towards the Rajya Sabha chairman Jagdeep Dhankar when he accused him of following the “varna system”, immediately after he proposed the name of the erudite Jairam Ramesh to replace Kharge as the Congress’s leader of the upper house. Similarly, TMC MP Mohua Moitra in her irreverent best tried to stop the prime minister from leaving the Lok Sabha when she began her speech, reminding the audience that she won despite two electoral visits by Modi to her constituency Krishnanagar.
The fiery but short parliamentary session was full of instances and occasions that saw the Prime Minister’s carefully-cultivated cult plummeting to new lows. The opposition MPs spoke with each other with an assumption of unity and mutual understanding; they walked out together, they shouted together, they also heckled and hooted at the prime minister. It reminded people of the BJP that was similarly militant in the opposition benches pre-2014.
The increased strength of opposition in the Lok Sabha did not merely reflect in numbers but also its improved coordination that seems to have matured even more after months of fighting together as the INDIA bloc.
Plurality of voices
Two, the session itself mirrored the true nature of Indian democracy in all its diversity, which appeared stifled in the last decade because of the BJP’s near-absolute majorities in the last two Lok Sabhas. The 18th Lok Sabha brought out the plural democratic voices like never before.
Whether it was Asaduddin Owaisi’s persistence in raising the serious concerns around the cornering and victimisation of Muslims in India, or Dalit leader Chandrasekhar Aazaad’s argument on why Dalit politics needed to be independent amidst increasing attempts by mainstream forces to polarise society and polity, or the Left leaders speaking about the dire need to focus on the improving the living conditions of the poor, or even the academic-turned political Bimol Akoijam punching the Modi government in his midnight speech listing down fiercely the multiple failures of the Modi government in Manipur, many such independent voices were heard and noticed.
Om Birla, Bimol Akoijam and Narendra Modi in parliament on July 1.
Many opposition MPs challenged the alleged partisanship of the chairs, Om Birla in Lok Sabha and Jagdeep Dhankar in Rajya Sabha. They pointed at the instances where the chairs behaved differently with the treasury benches and those in the opposition.
If that was not enough, almost all opposition MPs, including the Biju Janata Dal which is not a part of the INDIA bloc, were united in their protests against the Centre’s failure to find a resolution for the 14-month-long conflict in Manipur, its alleged inaction in ‘paper-leak” scandals that has tormented scores of aspirants, and the Modi government’s poor record in generating adequate employment and controlling price hikes of essential commodities.
They were unsparing even when the prime minister spoke, hooting him with slogans of “Bharat Jodo”, “Justice for Manipur”, “Manipur, Manipur”, and even “jhooth bole kauwa kaatey” to point out what they believed were lies peddled by Modi.
A representative Lok Sabha
Three, and most importantly, all such trends began to be seen only because of the Lok Sabha’s demographic make up. Compared to 2019, the OBC representation increased by nearly three percentage points – from 23% to nearly 26%, and matched that of the upper caste representation which has historically been high. The Dalit representation in the 18th Lok Sabha also increased marginally, from 15.8% in 2019 to 16.2%. Similarly, the Adivasi representation also registered a minor increase, from 10.3% to 10.7%.
Among those on the margins, only the Muslim representation showed a decline, from already a poor 5% in 2019 to 4.4 in 2024 – nowhere close to their actual numbers in the Indian population. The 2011 census pegged their population at 14% of the total Indians.
Although this remains a concerning factor for the opposition, the 18th Lok Sabha is still more representative of the population, especially of the marginalised peoples. This ensured that the prime minister’s one-sided political rhetoric was challenged and silenced fiercely, leading to a substantially democratic environment in the Parliament.
The first session of the 18th Lok Sabha gave a glimpse of what may unfold in the budget session later in July. As ideological lines between the opposition and the ruling coalition are getting sharper by the day, one may assume that India’s parliamentary democracy may get the much-needed thrust – something that was increasingly sought to be undermined by the brute majorities enjoyed by the BJP in the last two Lok Sabhas. The prime minister surely will find it hard to continue in his old ways where he piloted a culture of authoritarianism in India without fear or remorse.
