KS Muralidharan
JD(U)’s Nitish Kumar and TDP’s Chandrababu Naidu: They are the unexpected and real newsmakers of 2024 elections, who will decide the making and unmaking of Modi-led NDA for the next five years.
Nitish and Naidu make a perfect pair, uniting the realpolitik of east and south. Both are friends turned foes turned friends of BJP. Both are expert at exploiting any situation to their advantage. Both have risen time and again like a phoenix from the ashes. Both are powerful regional satraps who yearn to play a national role. Both are known for their tough negotiating skills, with a reputation to have their way.
So, will Nitish & Naidu rock the Modi-led NDA boat, which is precariously afloat on the strength of BJP’s 240 seats, 32 short of the majority mark of 272? They certainly can, but this time they have to deal with, not Vajpayee & Advani, but Modi & Shah.
Let’s spot the difference between then and now: Unlike their mentors, the Modi-Shah combine is known for its killer-instinct, and treat every battle like a do-or-die. Plus, they are known to launch a counter-offensive to pre-empt any move by the opposition, without waiting for them to make the first move.
Coalition Dharma Challenge for Modi
Modi 3.0 will pose a new challenge of working with coalitions, something Modi has never faced till now in his long political career as a head of government for the past 23 years, first as CM of Gujarat and then as PM.
Coalition dharma is a template that seems out of place for PM Modi’s style of governance. But having surprised his critics by effortlessly easing into his role as a global leader with his innovative foreign policy outreach, post-2014 — something that was elusive to all his otherwise illustrious predecessors — it would be injudicious to assume Modi will fall short of his new challenging responsibility as a leader who can take along his coalition partners. Although, it is indeed a road not taken before and an extremely tough and arduous terrain to cross, with snakes and foxes galore to contend with!
Along this unknown but expected path, there will be compromises, and even big ones. For instance, Nitish and Naidu may demand Modi to go slow on his promises like CAA & NRC, uniform civil code, one nation, one election and maybe even delimitation. They may even insist on having their way on, say, caste census, a pet project of Nitish Kumar, before his hopping over to BJP prior to the elections.
All this will make for a Hindutva meltdown, but will Modi bend or break away? That’s something the nation wants to know.
Knowing Narendra Modi, he will surprise his critics by carving out a third way, beyond bending or breaking. He might give in to a few promises, but at the same time, try to regain and restore his credentials by pursuing his other core interests more visibly and aggressively, viz. act against corruption, expand the number of laabharatis or scheme beneficiaries, make access of the various social welfare benefits to the citizens easier and more hassle-free, give infrastructure a massive boost to greatly speed up the economy, and heavily incentivize job creation to counter the narrative against his government.
The overriding messaging for the people from a Modi under siege could be to make them aware of the debilitating impact of coalitions and what they have missed by not giving BJP a majority of its own.
The opposition at large and even NDA allies should not harbour any illusion that they can stop or slow down Modi. Whatever his faults, his oft-repeated statement that “we are here not to run a government but to run the country” should be taken seriously and not dismissed as an election rhetoric.
If push comes to shove, Modi-Shah will not just give in and bow out of office. On the contrary, they will not hesitate to punch their weight of being the single largest party in Parliament boasting of more than the strength of all the parties combined in the INDI alliance, and use it to play the game of numbers the over-eager opposition is adept at, and turn the tables on them.
Modi-Shah are perfectly aware of the too-tempting-to refuse offers before Nitish and Naidu. For instance, the opposition has already offered to make Nitish deputy PM, if he makes another of his famed U-turn. So too for Chandrababu Naidu, for whom it is even more attractive. While he can become deputy PM — or why not, even PM like Deve Gowda in the 90s– his son can be the CM of Andhra. Add in the special status to AP and Bihar and it would be 101% irresistible for both.
This temptation will indeed be a Damocles sword for Modi. But Modi-Shah too can claw back to the 272-mark without Nitish and Naidu by roping in the YSRCP (4 seats), and a clutch of independents, and along with their other NDA allies, survive to live another day.
In the interim, Amit Shah is sure to get into the act and pre-empt any attempts by the opposition to lure his allies, by taking the war to the opponent’s camp.
Both Nitish Kumar and Chandrababu Naidu are perfectly aware of this permutations and combinations and so will find it more rewarding to stick with Modi and extract the best possible deals for themselves, their state and their party.
Sobering lessons for all
The election results have a sobering lesson for both the BJP and the opposition.
· Losing Ayodhya (Faizabad) post-Ram Mandir and winning Varanasi with a rather workmanlike margin of over one and a half lakh votes despite Prime Minister, Narendra Modi’s name on the ballot (as against over 7 lakh margin in Amit Shah’s win in Gandhinagar, Gujarat) will rankle, like a slap on the face of the H-community, though unintended, and the echo of which will be felt for a long time, reminding one of the famous thappad ki goonj (echo of slap) dialogue of Anupam Kher in the Hindi blockbuster of yore, Karma. For the secular parties, this is verily a gift from the gods from whom they turned away! It’s a takeaway that defines the tragic trajectory of the fragmented Hindu vote.
No one, but no one will dispute that both Ayodhya and Varanasi wear a spanking new look under Modi and Yogi, compared to pre-2014, when they resembled ghost towns. Which reminds one of what Subramaniam Swamy once said: Development alone does not fetch you votes.
· Caste-based politics continue to lord over elections, and it will always remain as a readymade template for the political parties to milk it to the maximum and divide a wedge among the Hindus.
In other words, the Hindu vote is by and large a myth and the majority community’s DNA is to stay divided and fragmented on caste, and coming together only when a war-like situation faces the country. In contrast, the minority community and in particular the Muslim vote is a solid vote-bank whose preferences — defeat the BJP — are crystal-clear and their negative voting pattern will continue to pose an eternal danger to the BJP.
· The united Muslim vote (against the BJP) and the divided Hindu vote are combining together to de-Hinduise Indian politics, in more than one sense. There is nothing new in this, for de-Hinduise is but the other side of the secularism practised by the opposition.
· The national elections in India are more a combination of several mini elections, with each state pulled by its own dynamic and persuasions. If caste dominated UP, its impact was limited in Bihar. If Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Uttarakhand tuned in to the Hindutva bandwagon, Tamil Nadu where the CM’s son rubbished Hinduism as a corona like virus, turned a blind eye to this slur and backed the ruling DMK to the hilt.
· The Congress literally promised the moon to the voters like giving away one lakh rupees every year to the people, and in the bargain, its strength almost doubled from 55 to 100. But can it outdo its promises beyond this absurdity, in the future elections? Next to impossible. Ironically, the grand old party is in a celebratory mode for scoring a century but it cannot hope to go beyond this figure. Any further improvement in its numbers will be at the cost of its allies, like the SP, RJD, DMK, NCP, who will be wary of giving it more space as it will be at the cost of their own growth.
So net-net, fears of Modi not being PM for his entire tenure or the BJP losing out to the possible machinations of its own allies, are vastly exaggerated. Modi 3.0 is here to stay and will go on for its full tenure, with or without Nitish and Naidu.
Having tasted blood, the opposition may be too eager to go for the kill, but a wounded tiger like Modi-Shah will prove to be more dangerous than the aging tigers and their cubs in the INDI alliance.