December 09, 2024

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A MANDATE FOR MODI 3.0

Nothing helps the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) succeed like a bout of failure. Just six months ago, in the Lok Sabha election, the party fell 30 seats short of the major ity mark of 272 in the lower house. Even though Naren dra Modi was sworn in as prime minister for a histo ric third consecutive term, there was a sense of defeat in there was a sense of defeat in that victory. The BJP had vowed to storm back to power with a mammoth majority of more than 350 seats on its own rather than depend on its National Democratic Alliance (NDA) partners for support, as it does now. For the Congressled Opposition bloc, the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA), the 234 seat tally may not have been enough to form a govern ment at the Centre, but denying the BJP a majority still felt like a victoryThat changed last week, as the BJP notched a giant assembly poll victory in the prize state of Maharashtra, a few months after winning the prestige battle in Haryana. Together, they have neu tralised the setback of the Lok Sabha election and seen the party bounce back and strengthen its hold over the Centre. The wins are also creditable because the NDA and the BJP were able to dra matically reverse the damaging regression of Lok Sabha fortunes in these two states. As a senior BJP leader put it, "With these two big wins, particularly the one in Ma harashtra, the sense of unease that our party was on the decline has been wiped out. By exposing IN DIA's fragility, it has also signalled to the NDA partners we depend on for support, like Nitish Kumar in Bihar and Chandrababu Naidu in Andhra Pradesh, that the BJP re mains their only option." With some caveats though, as the INDIA bloc's victories in Jharkhand and Jammu and Kashmir did expose that chinks in the BJP armour remain even as it put guard rails on the party's ag gressive Hindutva. That said, these tsunamilike assembly poll victories for the NDA will end the perceived drift in Modi 3.0 and give the prime minister the mandate to proceed full steam ahead on his agenda for develop ment and change. In a post on X soon after the Maharashtra win, Modi wrote, "Development wins! Good governance wins! United, we will soar together!" Later that evening, at a victory rally in BJP's Delhi headquarters, Modi told a wildly cheering crowd of supporters, "The voters don't want instability, they want nation first...they don't like those who dream of kursi first." The PM's dig was clearly directed

BJP'S NEW PLAYBOOK

By now, the ruling party's victory celebrations have become a familiar affair for the country. The dhol beats, the firecrackers at the BJP headquarters in Delhi--and this time in Maharashtra too--and, of course, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's message of gratitude to his untiring party apparatchiks and workers. After the huge disappointment in the general election this June, where the party fell agonisingly short of a simple majority mark on its own, normal service has been restoredThe turnaround victory in Maharashtra--a major factor in that underwhelming Lok Sabha effort--has rubbished any doubts on the core competency of the BJP's election machinery with Modi as its totem. At the heart of the Mahayuti sweep was the BJP's solo tally of 132 seats out of the 148 it contested, a near-90 per cent strike rate and a far cry from the nine LS seats it won out of the 28 it contested some five months back. The Jharkhand results may have led to some hand-wringing, but the national impact of winning Maharashtra, with its outsize influence on India's economy, puts everything else in the shade. Indeed, for BJP enthusiasts, it has been months of cheer, inaugurated by a miraculous win in Haryana against a decade of anti-incumbency, and a creditable performance in the first assembly poll in Jammu and Kashmir since the abrogation of Article 370 in August 2019. All of this has ensured that Modi 3.0 can continue to peddle the soft Hindutva line while having enough headroom to dodge any googly by the Congress-led Opposition in ParliamentAll is Forgiven The turnaround, though, would not have been possible without the BJP leaders first making peace with their counterparts in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The ideological patron had been upset for some time at the goingson in Modi 2.0, the fact that the BJP leaders didn't consult them on key appointments, or the way the party had forsaken ideology to engineer defections and topple Opposition governments. It all came to a head after BJP chief J.P. Nadda's comment during the LS poll campaign that the party was "saksham (capable)" in handling its own affairs, that it had outgrown the RSSMany analysts attributed the statement to the Sangh's visible absence from the BJP campaign at crucial junctures. The disappointing results of the general election gave the opportunity to the RSS leadership to hit back, with even sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat allowing himself some scarcely veiled censuring of PM Modi. It took a series of parleys between the two sides to break the ice, but not before the BJP