Much of the analysis that suggests the government at the Centre is in trouble and is heading to defeat in the 2024 general election is not analysis at all. It is wishful thinking.
The argument is usually framed as follows: the BJP is not in power in the majority of India’s states. So, if the parties that run those states come together then the BJP can be defeated at the general election just as it is in assembly elections.
This argument usually leads to one inevitable conclusion: opposition unity is the answer. All the opposition has to do is to come together and the BJP, which is popular in only a part of India, will be defeated.
It sounds plausible enough. Until you think about it. First of all, as Arun Jaitley used to say, general elections are not won on the basis of arithmetic, they are won on the basis of chemistry. Much more important than simple vote calculations is the mood of the electorate in the months leading up to the election. If that mood is pro-BJP, then Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a hard man to beat.
But the arithmetic is also flawed. The calculations on which the whole opposition-unity-is-the-answer argument is based actually fall apart when you look closely at the numbers. Yes, the BJP is not an all-India party. But it is the most popular party in many of the states, which contribute the most Lok Sabha seats. And it sweeps those states.
Flawed argument of numbers
On Monday, the Hindustan Times ran a series of charts on the nature of the BJP vote. The first chart took apart the central plank of the opposition-unity-is-the-answer platform. We are often told that the BJP’s national vote share is much under 50 per cent and that it wins elections only because the opposition is divided. After all, we are told, in a first-past-the-post system like ours, a party can win a seat with even 30 per cent of the vote if the other 70 per cent is divided among many other candidates. So, if the parties that win the other 70 per cent put forward a single candidate, then they are certain to win.
This argument is based on the experience of previous elections where the parties that have formed governments have rarely got a majority of the votes in the seats they have won. When former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee took office in 1998, the BJP won over half the votes in just 56 seats. When he won re-election in 1999, this went up to 83 seats.
And yes, opposition unity played a role in the two elections in which the Congress took office. In 2004, the Congress won only 64 seats with more than 50 per cent of the vote. When it was re-elected in 2009, that number actually went down to 43 seats. In all of those elections, you could have made the point that the party in power rarely wins many seats with a majority of the votes cast.
But that argument collapses when there is a wave or a landslide victory. In 1971, Indira Gandhi won 262 seats with over 50 per cent of the votes cast in each seat. When she was defeated in 1977, Janata Party won 266 seats with a majority of the votes cast in those seats. In 1984, Rajiv Gandhi won as many as 293 seats with over 50 per cent of the vote.
When we talk about Modi’s electoral victories, we are not talking about the modest mandates of the Vajpayee-Advani era. In 2014, Modi’s BJP won 136 seats with over 50 per cent of the votes. And that figure shot up to 224 seats in 2019.
So yes, the BJP has never received Indira-Rajiv-type landslides. Nevertheless, it has done very well: since 1984, no party has won as many as 224 seats with over 50 percent of votes cast in each of those seats.
What this means is that even if the opposition had united effectively in 2019, the BJP would still have won. The 224 seats were a done deal and the 50-60 seats it needed to gain a parliamentary majority were easy to find.
So, in purely arithmetic terms, opposition unity does not guarantee the BJP’s defeat, contrary to what we are told.
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Where BJP scores
And then there is the chemistry to consider. It is hard to dispute that Modi is the single most popular leader in India. You could even make out a case for saying that he is far more popular than the BJP.
In the 2019 general elections, the BJP swept even those states where it had previously lost assembly elections, such as Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan for example. When it comes to choosing a Prime Minister (and most landslide elections — except 1977 — are Presidential in nature) voters want to put their faith in a national leader who is up to the job of running India. This is where the BJP scores.
As popular as Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is in West Bengal, for instance, the rest of India does not regard her as prime ministerial material. It’s the same with Tamil Nadu’s Chief Minister MK Stalin, Odisha’s Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and other strong regional leaders.
So how can the BJP be defeated? Well, if Modi does lose the next election (which does not seem probable at present), it won’t be only because of the arithmetic of opposition unity. It will be because voters fall out of love with him. Or because they see an attractive opposition alternative. Or both.
And the truth — though regional leaders don’t like to accept it — is that the only real alternative to the BJP is the Congress, perhaps with the backing of regional leaders.
While opposition leaders spend a lot of time running down the Congress as a party with no future, the BJP is more far-sighted. It recognises that the Congress is the only real threat. If it gets its act together, it will be seen once again as a party that could provide stable governance and replace the BJP.
This is why, even when the Congress was at its lowest ebb, the BJP never stopped attacking it. The attacks on Rahul Gandhi and the attempts to turn him into a figure of fun were relentless. That’s why it is not enough to defeat Gandhi in Amethi. What is important to the BJP is that Gandhi is disqualified from Parliament. If he can’t be an MP, then how can he be a prime ministerial candidate?
To be fair to the BJP, it has not had to try too hard to discredit the Congress.
The party can be its own worst enemy. In 2014, the dismal record of UPA-II in coping with corruption allegations and its failure to provide visible leadership led to its defeat. And in 2019, Rahul Gandhi focused on the wrong issues and fought an ill-judged campaign, which failed to enthuse even his own party leaders.
Has any of that changed? I would argue that it has. Gandhi is hardly a perfect leader but he has now finally dismantled the BJP caricature of him as a foolish and entitled dilettante. Consequently, there is now a certain desperation to the BJP’s attacks on him: they scream where once they used to sneer.
Once you see through the arithmetic-is-everything argument there is only one possible route open to the opposition if it wishes to defeat the BJP. It has to accept the pre-eminent role of Congress as a national party in any electoral battle at a national level. Otherwise, nobody is going to believe that India can have stable and competent governance without Modi in charge. Certainly, it will be impossible for the electorate to believe that any Third Front government can last. There are the examples of Morarji Desai, Charan Singh, VP Singh, Chandrashekhar, HD Deve Gowda and Inder Kumar Gujral to remember. Not one of them lasted much over a year.
Even if the regional parties do unite behind the Congress on the UPA pattern, Modi is still very hard to beat. The solid block of seats he can win from UP will go a long way toward shoring up a parliamentary majority for the BJP.
But if the Congress can give the BJP a good fight in the forthcoming Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan assembly elections, then it will win much-needed credibility with the electorate. As of now, it looks as if – in those two states at least — the Congress will not let the BJP walk all over it as it did in the 2019 Lok Sabha election.
Even if the Congress can demonstrate that it is battle-ready, it still has to contend with the prime ministerial dreams of every regional leader before any effective front can be formed. And that may be an even tougher battle.
If the opposition can’t even agree on how to unite then what hope does it have of defeating Narendra Modi?
Vir Sanghvi is a print and television journalist, and talk show host. He tweets @virsanghvi. Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)