There’s the arithmetic of opposition unity, and then there’s the chemistry of Narendra Modi.
The experience since 2014 has been that whenever non-BJP parties have come together, they have defeated the BJP. We saw this in Bihar in 2015, when an RJD-JD(U)-Congress “Mahagatbandhan” or “Grand Alliance” defeated the BJP. We saw this in Phulpur and Gorakhpur bypolls recently. And in Karnataka, we saw how the Congress and JD(S) came together post-poll to keep the BJP out of power despite being the single largest party.
Preventing the split of anti-incumbency votes and raising the index of opposition unity is indeed going to make it tougher for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to return to power in 2019.
Many think that at the very least, the BJP can be prevented from winning a majority. If there is only one main contender against the BJP on every constituency, the idea goes, the BJP could be defeated constituency by constituency.
Yet, it’s not so simple. Every election has its own terms, its own logic. And the Modi-led BJP would have these seven advantages over a united opposition.
1. BJP also gains in a bipolar contest: Calculations about what the opposition unity can achieve often start with the figure 31. In 2014, the BJP won 282 seats with just 31 per cent vote share. Surely, if the rest 69 per cent were united, the BJP would lose hands down.
Mutual funds come with the warning, “Past performance is not a guarantee of future results.” Similarly, using data from previous elections is often misleading. If the opposition comes together, 2019 will simply become a bipolar contest – the BJP-led NDA versus the Congress-led UPA.
The trend in assembly elections has also been increasingly towards bipolarity. With some exceptions, the vote share and seats of small parties and independents have been shrinking. The “others” column in elections is fast disappearing.
If 2019 is a more bipolar election than 2014, it will increase not just opposition votes but also that of the BJP and its allies. It will be a more equal contest, yes, and the opposition would have a better chance, yes.
The threshold of a simple majority may increase from 31 per cent to 41 per cent, but the BJP and its allies could still get there.
2. Playing the underdog: In movies as in real life, people like the underdog. In 2014, Modi played the underdog before the Delhi establishment. He was the chaiwallah taking on the powerful Lutyens elite to serve the people of India. In 2019, he’s more powerful than he was in 2014, and than any leader was since Rajiv Gandhi.
It is time for the opposition to play the underdog. But opposition unity will turn the tables. It will let Prime Minister Narendra Modi say, look how they all got together against me! Just because I’m trying to do good for the people!
Even before the BSP and the SP could come together in Uttar Pradesh, Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave his answer to the prospect of opposition unity. Speaking on the eve of assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh in January 2017, he said the SP and BSP had come together on only one point: defeating Modi. He said, “Woh kehte hain Modi hatao, main kehta hoon bhrashtachaar hatao (They say remove Modi, I say remove corruption)”.
It’s a line inspired from Indira Gandhi who won a two-third majority in 1971 with the slogan, “Woh kehte hain Indira hatao, main kehti hoon garibi hatao (They say remove Indira, I say remove poverty)”.
3. Who’s the face? Narendra Modi remains Narendra Modi’s greatest USP.
No matter how united the opposition is, it won’t be able to agree upon a prime ministerial candidate in advance. PM Modi will once again run a presidential campaign, a Modi campaign rather than a BJP campaign. The narrative his party will spread is: is there a better person to lead the nation than Modi? If there was, the opposition would have named him or her. The worst of Modi’s failures elicit one response among his supporters –“Who else is there?”
Not just the Modi campaign of 2014, other elections have also shown the importance of a personality-driven campaign. “Paanch saal Kejriwal (Kejriwal for five years),” said the Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi in 2015. The party won 67 of 70 seats. Amarinder Singh defeated the same AAP with a face-driven campaign around the word “Captain”. Nitish Kumar allied with Lalu Yadav in Bihar but the joint campaign slogan was “Bihar main bahaar ho, Nitishe Kumar ho. (Let there be happiness in Bihar, let there be Nitish Kumar)”.
Be it Uttar Pradesh or Gujarat or Karnataka, we have seen how the personality-driven campaign of Narendra Modi lifts the BJP’s tally. Opposition unity will help, but there will still be the hurdle: who is their candidate?
4. Rahul Gandhi: It is advantage Modi if the opposition doesn’t have a prime ministerial candidate. It is advantage Modi if the opposition does have a PM candidate.
No matter who the opposition candidate is, the person won’t be able to match up to Modi’s stature in Indian politics today. No regional satrap has the ability to project him or herself as a pan-India leader against Modi.
As is already clear, the BJP wants people to compare Modi to Rahul Gandhi. It will do so even if he is not a declared prime ministerial candidate of the opposition. Rahul Gandhi has anyway declared his ambition to occupy the post, which may, in turn, hurt opposition unity since they all want to be PM.
Rahul Gandhi has improved a lot. He is no longer ridiculed as a “Pappu”. The improvement in his image is partly because the BJP has begun taking him seriously to contrast him with Modi. But Rahul Gandhi has no administrative experience and has shown zero political achievements. He has not yet been able to defeat the BJP in any major election. When voters look at Rahul Gandhi in contrast to Modi, the most charitable will say that he is yet to mature to be a PM material. Opposition unity won’t solve this problem.
5. Fear of unstable coalitions: PM Modi will inevitably remind voters of the unstable coalitions that ruled India for 30 years before him. This is a rag-tag coalition that can’t even agree on who the PM will be, the BJP will say, so how will they run a stable government? They’ll be so busy fighting each other, the BJP will say, that how will they give their full attention to serve the people? With this line of attack, the BJP will make a united opposition appear not-so-united.
6. Positive agenda: No matter what the opposition says, their coming together is, in both fact and appearance, driven by the negative agenda of defeating Modi. The reason why “Woh kehte hain Modi hatao…” works is because it makes the opposition seem like they don’t have a positive agenda to serve the people. The Modi campaign will have all kinds of positive agenda around ‘New India 2022’. The opposition will appear it is out only to grab power.
7. Uniform campaign: The Modi-led NDA will mount a uniform campaign across India in the name of Modi, his achievements and promises. The opposition may be able to come together with a pre-poll seat-sharing formula but it is unlikely that they will be able to come up with a common agenda, common slogan, and a common line of voter persuasion. Many will still be outside the fold of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA). In the absence of a PM candidate, they wouldn’t be able to put up a uniform campaign, thus, again making the Modi-led BJP look like a more serious contender.
Very emotional speech. But pmmodi ‘s first & prime task to remove vrastachar so that vrastachar mukta Bharat Will appeared before people
Very Logical analysis..!!