KS Muralidharan
After Modi, Who? All speculation now seems to have been laid to rest.
Till the other day, social media was agog with After Modi, Who, post-2024. Social media and You Tube excitedly channeled speculation on Modi’s successors, from Amit Shah to Yogi Adityanath and even Himanta Biswas Sarma.
All that is now sour grapes. Modi is here to stay. It’s Modi after Modi, post- 2024 AND even after 2029. History and the voters not playing spoilsport, India is all set for 20 Years of Modi Era (2014–34).
The penny dropped at a media conclave when Amit Shah, the BJP’s number one strategist quietly let it slip that Modi will be the party’s PM for the next 10 years. A few days before, Rajnath Singh with whom Modi enjoys excellent relationship, declared that Modi was here to stay for another decade.
It is all now getting clearer. The unofficial 75 years retirement age has been given a quiet burial by the BJP. To give just one example, sitting MP, Hema Malini, 76, has been retained as the party’s candidate from Mathura for the 3rd time. Rules, as they say, are meant to be broken. The skill is to know when to break them!
Also consider the frenetic pace of campaigning unleashed by Narendra Modi, the likes of which we have not seen before, either in India or even the world over. Even going by the PM’s own high standards, it is utterly mind-boggling to the extreme.
The strikingly feverish pace of infrastructure building by the PM — projects worth thousands of crores being flagged off almost every day — reveals that he is chasing a bigger vision beyond 2024.
While 2024 elections is virtually accepted as a done deal with even the opposition having more or less given up without putting up a decent fight, how will 2029 look for Modi?
Right now it appears inevitable that history will look benignly at Modi, and the elements will rearrange themselves to let him do what he does best — pursue his vision with a monk-like commitment and laser focus. In other words, Modi will finally bring the Gujarat Model to Delhi at the national level. What about States that will refuse to cooperate with the Centre? Ans: Expand the BJP’s footprint through electoral victory or Operation Lotus, or in the worst case scenario, smoke the peace pipe with them.
2029: Opposition-bereft Democracy
The flip side to this is, India will be wrestling with a unique challenge of an opposition bereft democracy.
Consider: In 2029, the Congress would have been out of power at the Centre for 15 years. Its decline from a truly national party with a rich historic legacy, to a party of the family, by the family and for the family, is a prophesy cast in stone. The Family itself will self-destruct, if and when Sonia Gandhi is no more at the helm, sending the party hurtling down to the dustbins of history.
At the state-level, presently, it is in power in one mid-size State, Karnataka and two small states, Telangana and Himachal Pradesh. But it is more than likely that in the near future, this will shrink further, either due to Operation Lotus by the BJP or due to internal hemorrhage.
As for the regional parties, most of them are family-run and will be highly vulnerable to the passage of time and also fall victim to voter fatigue. History has shown that by the time a family-run party moves into the hands of the third generation, it loses its grip on its loyal voters. Their political currency gets devalued and their appeal becomes too jaded and fossilized for an electorate that neither shares its past with them nor is willing to mortgage its future in eternity to a party with which it has no primordial links whatsoever. The biggest example of this is the decline of the Grand Old Party, the Congress which has nearly vanished from the north, east and west. And in the south, its clout is dependent on the largesse from its alliance partners.
All the dynasts, viz. Bengal’s Mamata Banerjee, Tamil Nadu’s Stalin, Bihar’s Laloo Yadav, Karnataka’s Deve Gowda, Andhra Pradesh’s Chandrababu Naidu, Maharashtra’s Sharad Pawar and UP’s Mayawati will not be in the akhara in 2029. As for UP’s Akhilesh Yadav, while age is on his side, his party, the Samajwadi Party will be a pale shadow of itself after as many as six electoral defeats. Its very identity and survival will be under threat, after its expected defeat in 2024.
One-party rule, a unique challenge
In other words, India is destined to become not just a Congress-mukt Bharat, but also a one-party democracy. How we cope with this challenge will determine and define the course we take, politically and otherwise.
Blaming the BJP for ushering in a form of electoral dictatorship is only lazy arm-chair analysis. The rot lies deeper and a large part of the blame lies on the secular parties who, by peddling fake narratives and embracing vote-bank politics, have refused to play the role of a constructive opposition and offer a cogent and clear alternative vision for India.
While it is true that you can never write off a politician or a party in Indian politics, this time the opposition collectively is in such terrible shape and bereft of any genuine leadership — not to speak of the debilitating impact of central agencies like ED which is pursuing a raft of high-level cases against their top leadership — that not even their own leaders have any hope in hell of better days to come.
2029 will also see the BJP expand its footprint and take deeper roots in south India, especially in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, as well as Telangana. Modi’s frequent high-voltage trips to the south are not targeting short-term gains for 2024, but eyeing long-term gains in 2029.
It’s not just the opposition which will diminish but also many secular tropes in the media. The media moguls who have always betrayed pathological hatred for Modi, will also fade away into the sunset. The media will be either beholden to Modi or at worst, anecdotal or irreverent in its opposition. There will be little space or even a market for any anti-establishment media. From this perspective, it is easy to put 2 and 2 together and say Indian democracy will face its toughest litmus test and become systemically weaker, but reality is more complex and does not follow the scripted textbook linkage of freedom with democracy. A one-party democracy need not always lead to authoritarianism, as India demonstrated in the flush of gaining freedom from the British, when Congress ruled from Panchayat to Parliament.
Having said that, it cannot be denied that there will be more incentive for the ruling party to ride roughshod over the people and it will be incumbent on the people and the media to ensure that India remains a functioning democracy, warts and all. History and the native instinct of the Indian voter is our best protective shield but there is no gainsaying that we must build some strong guard rails. And there’s no guard rail stronger than the last mile voter.
The secular media will be an anomaly in the next decade under Modi and its renowned ability to set the narrative with the help of pre-determined headlines with retrofitted stories will be well and truly a thing of the past.
Misplaced fears about Hindu Rashtra
As for any fears about India becoming a Hindu Rashtra with Modi continuing to be at the helm of affairs for another decade, it is more media hype and has little substance, and akin to flogging a dead horse. Modi as PM and the BJP as a party has not taken a single decision that discriminates against the minorities over the past 10 years. At the other end, the overtly Hindu symbols and traditions mainstreamed by Modi is at best a Hindu assertion as a historical correction, and not necessarily targeting the minorities.
Unifying the much divided and fragmented Hindus can have a multiplier effect by integrating the minorities as well into the mainstream of society. So rather than being a bogeyman to fear, Hindu Rashtra can end up as a win-win situation for India. In any case, at the mohalla level, India that is Bharat has always been synonymous with a Hindu Rashtra though it has not been openly acknowledged, and no one really has had a problem with that. It’s only when politics enters the mohalla that the fault-lines in the society are magnified to an extent where peaceful co-existence seems like a utopian reality.
For India, another 10 years of Modi (2024–34) will surely be a historic paradigm shift. While India is poised to become the 3rd largest economy in the world in a few years from now by most estimates, we can look forward to see India rid off poverty once and for all. After all, if 25 crore people have been lifted out of poverty in the last 10 years, it is perfectly reasonable to expect an encore in the coming decade. This will also mean that India will be home to the world’s largest middle-class.
The world’s best companies will make a beeline to make in India and for perhaps the first time in history, we will be able to punch above our weight in world politics. China cannot easily get away by needling India at every given opportunity as the US and the democratic world will be compelled to stand by us.
A developed India will put an end to the brain-drain and the loss of intellectual and youth capital and if Modi can think out of the box as is his wont, we should be able to attract the best of global talent to India, like how historically the US and the western countries do.
If anything, a Modi-fied India till 2034 will mean a formal end of the colonial mindset, the last vestiges and hangover of the British Raj.