A few takeaways from the elections results.
The Rahul Gandhi criticism industry and the genre of writing that blames the Opposition for everything can now justifiably take a rest. Opinion writers must hereon have a different clutch of ‘when in doubt’ ideas when facing a personal crisis of content.
It’s interesting how pundits apportion credit to actors from election to election: when Modi wins, the outcome is all presumed to be the effects of his personality but when the opposition does well, experts tend to focus on social and structural factors.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
There is no doubt that a happy confluence of factors worked in the opposition’s favour such as unemployment and economic distress, seat adjustments in the INDIA alliance, a broader caste coalition that Akhilesh Yadav seems to have forged in Uttar Pradesh, Sharad Pawar, Shiv Sena and Mamata Banerjee stoutly protecting their strongholds, independent media and YouTubers like Dhruv Rathee making a difference – but Rahul Gandhi certainly deserves his due.
Gandhi is scripting one of the great political comebacks in recent history. Setting out as an object of ridicule, taking on, in the BJP, the most formidable political machine seen since Maoist China (with its fabulous funding sources, chokehold on bureaucratic power, a pliant media and frenzied millions of followers), Rahul managed to get a resistance started with an inspired journey across the country – with a rhetoric focused on the Modi government’s incompetence and the politics of mohabbat and the constitution to counter the communal propaganda of the BJP.
It is quite difficult to compute the impact of a mass contact campaign, especially for a party not known for its organisation, but the reaction of crowds will have convinced other opposition leaders that there is a momentum there to be consolidated with an alliance. Gandhi declared on June 4 that the poorest and backward stood up to save the constitution. But a political leader needed to take the lead in persuading the public as well. Rahul was clearly the most visible face in the opposition’s campaign, amplified by impressive social media messaging that focused on jobs, corruption, Agniveer and crony capitalism. Critics may argue that it was an alliance campaign with respective regional sub-plots but few can deny that Rahul’s campaign was attracting wide notice. Audiences in Bengal were not tuning in to listen to leaders from Maharashtra nor were those in Rajasthan fervently interested in the DMK, but the Congress was certainly in the public eye and Rahul was perhaps the only one to give the campaign a festive air that India’s democracy generally conjures.
What happens next?
Analysts are convinced that Modi’s authority is finished even if he gets to stay in office. Institutions and individuals can breathe, knowing more change is imminent. Bureaucrats, judges, media owners and journalists can hedge bets and occasionally pretend to be neutral.
But for how long? It is not in Modi’s nature to coexist with the extorting dynamics of a coalition government. He would recall how Chandrababu Naidu exacted a price when he was an ally of the Atal Behari Vajpayee government during 1999-2004. It is tough to believe that Modi will grant to coalition partners entire control over a ministry like Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh granted to the DMK during their tenures. Chances are that, true to form, the BJP will try and break other parties at some point and gain for itself a majority of 272 making Naidu and Bihar’s Nitish Kumar redundant.
Naidu and Nitish need to keep two realities of the BJP regime in mind when deciding their course of action. One is the monopolistic drive of Modi’s politics that yields no quarter to any other political formation and, two, that the default mode of his economic policy is to transfer wealth and resources to chosen oligarchs, which makes a coalition government and ministerial autonomy more than a passing inconvenience.
Naidu and Nitish will go into an NDA government knowing that their days are numbered and that after getting 272 on its own, the Modi government will get back to governing just as it did prior to the elections, with an even more sense of desperation that it will lose power the next time.
Also read: The Radical Rahul Gandhi Nobody Expected
The reason Naidu would even entertain an alliance with Modi, who he is personally no fan of, is because the Congress has traditionally been its main rival in (undivided) Andhra Pradesh. That is no longer the case as Jagan Mohan Reddy’s YSR Congress has taken the place of the Congress in recent years. As it stands, YSR Congress has just been routed, the TDP has won in a landslide and Congress will take time to reestablish itself in his state.
There may be no better time for Naidu to pick nation over the party than now – and strictly speaking he is not even having to make that choice at the moment. He may have reasons to fear the Congress in the future but Naidu should remember that it is Congress and Rahul Gandhi that put him now in a position to choose. Without their efforts, he wouldn’t be needed.
One other thing. Liberals can sometimes get things right. One of the prevailing convictions in the populist age is that progressives and liberals don’t know anything about politics and the people they aim to speak for. They are disconnected, deracinated, out of touch, elitist; they live too much in their bubble and have a lot of confirmation bias. Well, the results suggest that their counterparts on the Right also have their own bubbles and blind spots too.
Liberals have often wondered in recent years why economic distress does not translate into political disaffection but were told that they don’t understand religion or faith-based politics work. It turns out that economic discontent does matter eventually. Liberals may not understand religion but they can draw comfort from the fact that a politics of optimism and kindness which appeals to the ‘better angels of our nature’ does not go entirely in vain.
The results also indicate that the speculations of armchair liberals are not far off from the projection of well-travelled ones. This election gives liberals the permission not to be gaslighted by themselves or the noise generated by mainstream media and online trolls.
Sushil Aaron is a political commentator. X: @SushilAaron.
Read all of The Wire’s reporting on and analysis of the 2024 election results here.
