Within hours of the publication of this article, the counting of the votes for the 18th Lok Sabha will begin. By this evening, the declared results and the leads should be sufficient to point to the victor of this long-drawn-out election. All Indians will follow the twists and the turns of the counting process for at stake will be the formation of the Central government. As India is now the world’s most populous country, a rising power and the fifth-largest economy in the world, the election results will also arouse great interest in the international community as well as in the boardrooms of multinational companies.
The election campaign reflected India’s ideological and political polarisation. The Bharatiya Janata Party-led ruling dispensation kept its focus on its standard themes — nationalism, Hindu consolidation, welfare schemes for people’s benefit, raising the country’s global prestige and profile and Narendra Modi’s persona. The Opposition Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance, which included the Congress, side-stepped these issues. Instead, it kept hammering on the situation of the deprived battling inflation and unemployment besides harping on the growing disparity between the rich and the poor. Thus, there was a surfeit of declamatory speeches and rallies but there was little engagement on issues impacting the lives of the people and confronting the nation.
Unlike the 2014 and 2019 elections, there was no single, grand idea underpinning this election unless it is held that it was all about Modi. In 2014, corruption and, in 2019, nationalist sentiment arising out of the Pulwama terrorist attack and the Indian air force’s Balakot action had formed the respective evocative cores of the campaigns. If the BJP had hoped that the Ram mandir would provide the glue to its campaign, it would have been disappointed. The election, therefore, became an aggregation of regional polls with the BJP expected to dominate — though not as it did in 2014 and in 2019 — the north and the west but be on a weaker wicket in the south and the east. This has made the election difficult to predict, though most foreign and domestic observers feel that Prime Minister Modi will return to power.
The real question is whether the BJP will be able to secure a majority on its own as it did in 2014 and 2019. That it will become the single-largest party is not in doubt but the exact number it secures will only be known today. Modi and his die-hard followers believe that he will do better than in 2019. This is possible but there is no certainty that it will be so. Modi’s ego will be bruised if he does not get a majority. This is because he has not failed to do so in any election in which he has led the BJP. A problem for Modi and the BJP may arise if its numbers fall 30 or 40 seats below the majority mark of 272 seats. This is because Modi has only led governments with clear majorities. It requires special skills — Atal Bihari Vajpayee had these in abundance — to hold a coalition together; incidentally, Vajpayee did not have a second fit in the BJP or in Indian politics as a whole.
If Modi wins a clear majority, he will act to fulfil the remaining part of the sangh parivar’s agenda and his own pet projects. The former category will include the adoption of a Uniform Civil Code perhaps not through the action of state governments but through Parliament. He will also seek to ensure that the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi and the Krishna Janmasthan matters are resolved in a manner which is satisfactory to the sangh parivar. In the latter category, the issues of simultaneous elections and economic decisions to make the Indian economy the world’s third-largest will take primacy. However, will he focus on reducing disparities in income and wealth which will only increase if the economy grows according to the present model? That is unlikely.
Modi’s problems will arise if he heads a coalition government that will be vulnerable to pressure from allies. They may not agree with pursuing fully either the sangh parivar’s agenda or Modi’s pet projects. They may also put pressure on how he wishes to conduct his foreign policy though this may not be a priority for them. This will take him into unfamiliar territory and he will not find it easy to show flexibility.
What about the Congress? There is little doubt that Rahul Gandhi has matured. The sobriquet, ‘Pappu’, is no longer attached to him. He will have to, in all likelihood, remain in the Opposition and show the skills to build the party’s organisation in the Hindi heartland where the mood of the Hindu majority has certainly turned rightward over the past decade. A long political struggle lies ahead for him to rebuild the Congress machinery from the grass-roots. In addition, he will have to continue to pursue the party’s ideological agenda.
Whatever may be the outcome of the election in terms of government formation, one matter is certain: ideological fractures in India will remain. This is because there has been no attempt in the political class to bridge the great divide — broadly, the two distinct visions of India that are present today all across society and the polity. A principal component of these visions is the role of religion in public and national life. It is undeniable that different formations within the national movement had different conceptions of religion as an ingredient of Indian nationalism. The Muslim League and some right-wing Hindu organisations believed that religion had to be the fundamental element in nationalism. However, the Congress, which was the main vehicle of the freedom movement, believed that religion should remain in the private domain and should not impact State policy. Certainly, the State could not discriminate between citizens on the basis of religion. It is this principle that is a basic feature of the Constitution. For many Indians, it is this principle that is under challenge. The struggle over this constitutional feature and ideal will continue irrespective of the election result.
Vivek Katju is a retired Indian Foreign Service officer
