Nicholas Nugent
Indians have voted and the winner is…. democracy. It is difficult to name another clear winner. The losing party, Congress, nearly doubled the number of Lok Sabha seats it won last time to around 100 while the technical winner, the Bharatiya Janata Party or BJP of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, won far fewer seats than last time, down from 303 to 240, not enough to form a government on its own in the 543 lower house of parliament.
What made it worse for the prime minister is that he had confidently proclaimed 400 seats as his target, but even with seats gained by allied parties in the National Democratic Alliance he only managed 292 – just enough to constitute a majority. It is little wonder that photographs showed broad smiles on the faces of Rahul Gandhi and fellow leaders of the opposition Congress Party while BJP leaders, the nominal victors, looked sullen.
The result was a shock for the ruling party. The Kolkata-based Telegraph newspaper carried the headline ‘India cuts Modi down’ while a prominent commentator, Suranya Aiyar, took the setback further declaring ‘The king is dead’.
The BJP’s 240 parliamentary seats and 53 taken by its allies did at least garner enough for a majority and to form a government, so Narendra Modi is the election victor but will have to bargain with other party leaders in naming his new cabinet and subsequently introducing legislation. He will find it much harder to push through the sort of controversial legislation that characterised his previous two administrations, like the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, which discriminated against Muslim refugees, or the act which abolished autonomy previously enjoyed in Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir state.
So begins the inquest. Why did Mr Modi’s BJP win so many fewer parliamentary seats than he or commentators predicted? Indians are inclined to point to what they call an anti-incumbency factor, suggesting many people are tired after ten years of Mr Modi’s rule. But this hardly explains why. A more credible explanation is that the so called ‘vote banks’ of Dalits – once known as ‘untouchables’ – and tribal communities turned against the prime minister. This was especially true in the populous northern state of Uttar Pradesh where Mr Modi had hoped to capture most of the 80 seats but ended up with only 33. Votes for Mr Modi in his own seat of Varanasi fell back and his party lost the crucial seat of Faizabad to the regional Samajwadi Party, an ally of Congress.
Faizabad includes Ayodhya where Mr Modi’s inauguration in January of a vast Hindu temple in a place once occupied by a Muslim shrine, far from being an election winning gesture, appears to have alienated voters in an area with a significant number of Muslim voters. Mr Modi’s blatantly sectarian appeal to Hindu voters and apparent discrimination against India’s 200 million Muslims in the campaign appears to have backfired.
Meanwhile Rahul Gandhi, who leads Congress as his father, grandmother and great grandfather all did in their turn, increased his personal share of the vote and now presides over a party celebrating a rebirth. Commentators who predicted the demise of the Congress Party were proven wrong and find the party, which has formed the government more often than not in India’s previous 17 elections, in a much stronger position than after the 2019 election.
Another reason for the severe setback for the BJP is economic. Mr Modi’s government has played a role in boosting India’s economy, now the fifth largest by GDP in the world ahead of the United Kingdom and France, and is regarded as a friend of big business. The Mumbai stock market fell sharply in reaction to the shock election result, though recovered later.
An election pledge of Mr Modi’s was to make India a global manufacturing hub. Yet poorer people and farmers have seen little benefit under BJP rule and, crucially, unemployment remains high among young people.
The BJP’s investment in bringing electricity connections and toilets to village that previously had none served him well in the 2019 election but helped him less this time. Recent government investment has been aimed at building roads and airports which benefit far fewer Indians.
Mr Modi, a populist, has been accused of behaving like a dictator, allowing little time for parliament to debate divisive topics and steamrollering legislation through the assembly. He is said to have imposed his will on state institutions such as the Election Commission, the Enforcement Directorate and even the Supreme Court, which supported him over the Ayodhya temple.
One of the most egregious examples of what critics describe as playing loose with India’s democracy was the imprisonment during the election campaign of the Chief Minister of Delhi, who leads the Aam Aadmi or Common People’s Party, on what it was suggested were politically motivated charges of corruption. This alienated voters and gave the Chief Minister hero status when the courts ordered his release.
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal capitalised on the situation by pointing out that Narendra Modi will soon be 74, only a year away from his party’s proposed retirement age of 75, and suggested the BJP’s less popular home minister, Amit Shah, was preparing to succeed him.
Mr Modi is also charged with suppressing dissent and intimidating India’s media, which is no longer seen to be as balanced politically as it once was. That may have been a factor in the failure to predict the election outcome which even supposedly authoritative pollsters got badly wrong. So it is easy to find that the main winner of this controversial election was democracy itself, reaffirming the power of ordinary people in the world’s largest democracy and giving a new breath of life to the political opposition and the expression of alternative opinions in the media.
Weakened though he is, Mr Modi has emerged as the winner and was quick to form a government bringing in BJP allies. He will be in no position to alter with the country’s constitution which was introduced by the country’s first prime minister and Congress party leader Jawaharlal Nehru in 1950. The Congress Party had played on this fear with Rahul Gandhi holding up a copy of the constitution at election rallies. Some people feared Mr Modi wanted to alter a basic tenet of the constitution that would end the commitment to secularism and make India a Hindu state.
The Congress Party, which together with its allies took 232 seats, is now in a much stronger position to challenge the government and will be harbouring hopes of regaining power in five years’ time.
Other nations are unlikely to see change in Mr Modi’s foreign policy and will perhaps be relieved at the stability his re-election brings. He deserves credit for making India count in international affairs and for strengthening India’s traditional non-aligned status by not seeming to favour one nation over another.
His presidency of the G20 group of nations in 2023 brought a lot of attention to India. Mr Modi also played a significant role in BRICS, the economic alliance that groups India with other second level economic powers China, Brazil, Russia and South Africa. He avoided giving his wholehearted support to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine despite Russia being a major supplier both of arms and oil to India.
He held back from being too critical of Israel, with which India has commercial ties, or of openly backing the Palestinian cause which previous Indian government supported more wholeheartedly.
The United States will be especially pleased that Mr Modi remains at the helm as Washington has been cultivating India as a counter-balance to China with whom US relations are severely strained. President Joe Biden was quick to send congratulations to Mr Modi on his re-election. The Indian premier counts both president Biden and former president Donald Trump as good friends while also maintaining cordial relations with Mr Putin and President Xi Jinping of China, though relations with the latter have become strained over border clashes.
Newly elected heads of state or government queue up to visit Delhi given the important position it now occupies in world affairs as well as the country’s attractiveness as the world’s fastest growing economy. India rolls out the red carpet for its Republic Day parade every 26 January. This year President Macron of France was honoured as chief guest; last year it was President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt.
There were already signs that India’s policy towards the military junta ruling Myanmar was undergoing change, partly because of the flow of refugees from Chin State crossing the border into India. Diplomats are thought to be arguing that South Block, the home in Delhi of the country’s external affairs ministry, should give more attention to the National Unity Government (NUG) coordinating the fight against the military junta in Naypyidaw, Myanmar’s capital.
Relations with India’s traditional ‘enemy’ of Pakistan show no signs of easing, especially not with a government in Delhi displaying open hostility to Muslims. However, commentators say recently there has been less friction along the common border or open hostility towards the rulers in Islamabad, who have themselves just been through an election. But nor are their signs that either side is planning a new peace initiative to overcome differences.
A big question now will be what changes the new government makes on its domestic policy. It can be expected to offer more help towards farmers and the rural poor, not least the deprived castes who are believed to have played a major role in reversing the voting pattern. The risk here is that will undermine business which has transformed India’s economy in recent years giving record GDP growth of over 8 per cent.
The new government will be expected to address the serious shortage of jobs for young people, but will be challenged by how to do this without reducing business incentives and reversing Mr Modi’s pledge to make India a global manufacturing hub.
An expectation is that in his third administration Mr Modi will be less the world statesman and businessmen’s friend and respond more to the basic needs of India’s people who have given him such a shock in the 2024 election.
Nicholas Nugent has reported from South and Southeast Asia for the BBC. He is the author of a biography of the former Indian prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, a book about post-war Vietnam and co-author of Culture Smart! Myanmar.
