The Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance aka INDIA’s ongoing meeting in Mumbai is being seen with interest. This new opposition group aims to challenge Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership and BJP’s two-term rule.
The not-so-easy-to-play chessboard of the 2024 Lok Sabha election is spread before INDIA’s highly successful and politically savvy leaders — Sharad Pawar, Sonia Gandhi, Mamata Banerjee, Nitish Kumar, MK Stalin and others.
The BJP isn’t foolish to ignore their congregation. The significant reduction in the price of gas cylinders seems to be a starter.
The framework under which the 2024 election will be fought is in the making. The parameters that are influencing it have been developing since 2014.
Also read: Here are two things INDIA alliance must do based on national surveys’ results
Consolidation of Hindu vote
It’s clear that over the past nine years, a big shift has taken place in India’s electoral politics — the ‘consolidation’ of Hindu votes. In 2014, PM Modi and his deputy Amit Shah arrived from Gujarat with the tag of “nationalist Hindus”. They were considered bolder than the Vajpayee-Advani duo.
But, if you look back at the past nine years from the RSS-BJP’s perspective, they have gotten a bigger political crop than they imagined. In Uttar Pradesh, the use of bulldozers to target accused belonging to the minority community is unparalleled in Indian public life. No political party has been able to oppose it with the fury and force it deserves. It speaks to the change in Indian electoral politics.
The RSS was founded in 1925, but until 2014 Indian voters did not believe in its ideology as openly and without inhibitions as they do now. This is the first fundamental issue that will influence the 2024 election.
Two, PM Modi has not once made an error in solidifying a permanent core Hindu vote base.
The modernisation and upkeep of Hindu religious infrastructure is a visible action. His persona that imbibes development and Hindutva, which helped BJP win the 2014 and 2019 elections, has not been diluted in these nine years. The Opposition has failed to dent his image as a nationalist Hindu. This is the biggest challenge on the table at the conclave of INDIA leaders in Mumbai.
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Modi advantage
Modi’s moves to woo his fans, supporters and voters will see a kind of climax when he inaugurates the Ram Temple in Ayodhya this winter. The consolidated Hindu votes and Modi’s stable rule and strong leadership are now being seriously challenged by imaginative politics of freebies, called revdis in Hindi.
On Wednesday, when Rahul Gandhi launched the Gruha Lakshmi Yojana in Karnataka, which gives a Rs 2000 monthly assistance to the woman head of BPL (below poverty line) families a new chapter began— of wooing poor Indians, the biggest chunk of voters.
For many decades, BJP candidates during elections would complain to journalists covering the campaign that their rivals from Congress would have a 20 per cent head-start as they would get all minority votes.
But since 2014, metamorphosis has taken place. Kamandal (religion-based) politics has influenced even caste-based votes. Additionally, Amit Shah carefully knitted Mandal politics into the Kamandal agenda to herald a new chapter in Uttar Pradesh. It helped the BJP win the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha and 2017 and 2022 assembly elections handsomely.
In the 2024 election, for the first time, BJP candidates will have guaranteed Hindu votes in varying degrees, depending on the state politics. The tables have turned; candidates of anti-BJP parties would now complain that BJP candidates have an advantage over committed Hindu voters.
Out of India’s 543 Lok Sabha seats, BJP has a clear advantage on around 100 seats due to the past nine years of BJP rule solidifying Hindu votes. Notice the new normal in UP and Gujarat. Here, just like Muslim votes have gone the non-BJP way, certain Hindu votes are now “reserved” for BJP candidates.
Also read: Three elements that boost PM Modi’s image on TV, in newspapers
A neutral candidate
The INDIA alliance can counter BJP’s socio-cultural movement with the distribution of financial advantages to poor voters, and by selecting much stronger caste-based candidates. Surely, Adivasis, Dalits, the poorest section of the backward classes, and unemployed voters will be attracted by this.
As such, the BJP will be forced to introduce revdis too.
However, giving free breakfast to all children in government schools in Tamil Nadu, free bus rides for women in Delhi and Karnataka, and monthly unemployment wage, etc are short-term games in the Indian election. Voters will start seeing revdis as their ‘right’ soon after the first election and stop rewarding the political parties for such freebies.
Winning elections against Modi won’t be easy without projecting a convincing prime ministerial candidate.
Already, supporters of Rahul Gandhi, Nitish Kumar, Arvind Kejriwal, Sharad Pawar, and Mamata Banerjee have claimed how their leader is best suited to be a PM candidate.
The biggest threat to INDIA alliance is the breaking of consensus.
Sources claim that INDIA coalition’s top brass may, eventually, agree to bring in an “apolitical’ professional who will have characteristics similar to Manmohan Singh, as a PM candidate. That would cool down all the parties’ ambitions. In one of the meetings of INDIA leaders, names like Raghuram Rajan, former governor of RBI, along with a couple of other known professionals with impeccable images were discussed.
Closer to the election, one such name that can “run the country like [Manmohan] Singh” would be announced.
However, consensus is a must within the INDIA fold for any such neutral personality, without a mass base and with the experience of running a government institution, to be nominated. The nominated person must be clever enough to prove that they are not a threat to anyone within INDIA.
In the theatre of Lok Sabha 2024, we will see the staunch Hindutva crowd and fan base of PM Modi which includes women and a huge section of OBC, too. While INDIA alliance will give tickets to the caste-backed candidates and offer free doles to Dalits, poor women and the unemployed.
In the remaining months, BJP will be on the prowl to hunt for these same disgruntled voter groups.
Sheela Bhatt is a Delhi-based senior journalist. She tweets @sheela2010. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)